Terrible News

Or: We cannot have cosmic meaning—(from David Benatar's book The Human Predicament, chap. "Meaninglessness"):

I have argued that cosmic meaning is unattainable. The final optimistic response to this is to deny that we should either be seeking cosmic meaning or regretting that we do not have it. I loosely classify moves of this kind as "sour grapes" arguments (although those who advance such arguments would of course reject the sour grapes appellation).
     The argument comes in varying forms. One form, often only implicit, is that it is not worth worrying about the unattainable, as such worry will not yield any good. The problem with this, however, is that if it is not worth seeking something that one cannot attain, it can still be appropriate to regret the unattainable. Consider a terminal patient for whom there is no cure. Getting better is not attainable, yet that person may very reasonably regret having a terminal condition.  (....)
     One problem with this sort of argument is that those advancing it simply have not settled on what would make life meaningful from the most expansive perspective. However, the argument fails even if we assume that there is nothing that could make our lives cosmically meaningful. It fails not because the premise is false but because a comforting conclusion does not follow. If our lives are irredeemably meaningless sub specie aeternitatis, and no conceivable alternative circumstances could have made things otherwise, it is still the case that our lives are (cosmically) meaningless. The meaninglessness is then so deep a part of the human predicament that it simply could not have been otherwise. That is terrible news, not good news. 
     According to a third version of the sour grapes argument, desire for cosmic meaning suggests some defect in the person who has the desire. For example, Susan Wolf speaks (in passing) of "an irrational obsession with permanence" and Guy Kahane suggests that "there is more than a tourch of narcissism in this wish for cosmic celebrity" and that the desire for grand cosmic significance is "embarrassingly megalomaniac" —akin to the "madmen pretending to be Napoleon or Jesus".
     The most plausible candidates for the "megalomaniac" description are those who believe that we do have cosmic significance, not those who believe that we do not. But is the desire for such meaning (and the regret that we lack it) narcissistic and megalomanicaal? We do not typically think that those weho want but lack familial or communal meaning are narcissistic or magalomanical. Thus, it seems that at least part of the explanation why a desire for cosmic meaning is thought to reflect badly on the desirer is precisely that it is unattainable. However, I see no reason why we should not regret the absence of some good merely because it is unattainable. A predicament can be lamented even if it is unavoidable. Just because we cannot have cosmic meaning does not mean that we should not think it would be good to have. 
     Meaning from the cosmic perspective would be good for extensions of the same reasons that meaning from the other perspectives is good. People, quite reasonably, want to matter. They do not want to be insignificant or pointless. Life is tough. It is full of striving and struggle; there is much suffering and then we die. It is entirely reasonalbe to want there to be some point to the entire saga. The bits of terrestrial meaning we can we can attain are important, for without them our lives would be not only meaningless but also miserable and unbearable.

Existencias fantasmales

—oOo—