What’s the saying… Something like everyone is a nihilist until their finger gets smashed by a hammer?
Regarding this nihilistic statement about the hammer, I was thinking about the relationship between pain and truth.
I actually think about this relationship a lot, as you might imagine. And how it fits into my earnest conviction that struggle is the ultimate teacher.
I also think about Sam Harris. This is one point that always resonated with me. Pain is the realest real. It is a guiding force. You can deny ideas all day long so long as you’re insulated from their denouement, so long as you don’t feel the weight of their logical conclusion. This makes relativism a viable philosophy. It makes everything nihilistic.
When there is no “consequential force” to expose the ignorance of ideas, they persist.
I feel this is much like our current culture.
The talking heads are full of opinions about the way it is. Social media, mainstream media, icons, experts, Authorities.
They live in comfort. Our entire society does, even the lowliest stratum rarely if even know starvation, no exposure to harsh elements, to hard manual labor that tears the skin and breaks the back, to wonton death.
At the end of the day, pain and suffering are the only thing that is real.
Struggle reveals the world. Pain illuminates consequences. It reveals the physical forces that reinforce the value of ideas, that aid in our survival, our flourishing.
In pain, there is truth.
Struggle is the greatest teacher.
It reveals the essence of what it, devoid of illusion.
William Dare 