The meaning of life

[pataphor]

Is it time again? Somehow I think posting here evokes less response
than in my other dead newsgroup, which is probably a good thing because
instead of answering the question directly I am just going to rant
indirectly against some vaguely defined people endorsing vague but very
wrong or disconcerting world views.

Maybe it is because I am still progressing on some weird path that was
caused by me taking up physical exercise seriously, since that time I
have broken several personal records, made progress in projects that
have stalled for years, and gained new insights in many things, mainly
because I retrieved the original cases after some dumber version of me
had filed them incorrectly as being unproductive.

So I guess it is my turn now to criticize various approaches in the
hope of removing barriers to progress in my fictional and vaguely
defined colleagues from all over the web that interact with me somewhat
not unlike quantum interference or entanglement.

It is maybe not that they read here, or probably elsewhere, indirectly
connected to my bubble via some social media that reports on my
writings via someone else trying to let me live as long as it promotes
their own stories, but it's more like the grand ensemble of memetic
activity that rides the information oceans.

So what washes up at my cognitive beaches is just the effect of all
these minds processing similar aspects of reality, selected for and
curated by yet other minds but more and more by algorithmic processes
exploiting all these interactions as long as it enhances their masters
imagined objectives.

I was watching some Korean drama some time ago where someone who had
died mysteriously got another chance to live except he had stayed the
same age while the rest of the world had continued for several (11?)
years. What caught my attention was at some point the main character
stood in front of a mirror and saw his image slowly fade, making him
aware that his second time on earth would soon end. There was an other
character he had met that also belonged to that group of people who had
returned from death, except that person had a much larger time
difference between his old life and the world as it was now, or in the
series. That person had somehow done what he came for and soon after
disappeared without a trace. This leads one to think he was here with a
purpose, and once that purpose was fulfilled there was no reason
anymore for him to keep existing.

In a later episode I watched recently I noticed that the main character
behaved in an unbelievably boorish manner, like his girlfriend found a
video of him saying goodbye to her, expecting that he would be gone
soon, but feeling unable to tell her, and after that girlfriend found
the tape and was confronting him about it, he just stood there saying
nothing but repeating her name a few times, as if that would make the
matter any clearer. It dawned on me then that this world was the world
of the producer of the series, in that the actors just exist as long as
they serve the purpose of doing what the director of the movie wants
them to do, disappearing from the screen or reappearing as he sees fit,
even coming back from death if necessary, if it fits the purpose of the
story as the producer sees it.

So, in this Korean drama, but possibly in most actors experience, the
world the actors live in is not unlike the story of the actor coming
back from death in the story, except for them it is about their careers
as actors. It seems then that it is not so strange for a story like
that to be generated in that context.

But maybe we who think ourselves to be really alive are manipulated in
much the same way? It is not too far fetched to imagine ourselves to be
curated away from some social media audience if the algorithm decides
we are not conducive to their bottom line. But even beyond that, is it
possible this whole universe is just a simulation acting out some
ulterior motive a hyper intelligent alien has planned for us, only to
disappear whenever we go over the colored lines or find out about the
true state of the world, which may be about the same thing.

Aargh, while going into this rant I completely forgot to criticize
these people I promised to help find the truth by exposing their
cognitive failings. So I'll just give short descriptions of what is
wrong with them, so that the criticism is transported back over the
ocean of memes to them, like a message in a bottle.

The first one I want to describe is one that thinks everything is about
people. He is like some brilliant math student that unfortunately made
an error early on and gets only a few points subtracted because all his
later errors are a consequence of this early mistake, while his later
work based on that is impeccable, from a methodological standpoint.
Curiously, with this I mean the one who, despite a STEM education
writes the most postmodern prose imaginable, while I at the same time
hasten to mention that there is nothing wrong with postmodernism, the
method, but that there are some people linking it to all kinds of evil
things that have nothing to do with it, thereby exposing themselves as
frauds to any discerning observer.

The second one is quirky as a frog or an insect one never knows of when
and where it is going to jump, except one can be sure that some pattern
matching stimulus has crossed their retina. He excels in generating
endless prose based on applying these narrow and technical
extrapolations to his original findings while scaring the hell out of
people that try to see the gestalt as a whole. I hasten to mention that
there is nothing wrong with statistics when the subject matter is
narrow enough and one does not venture into broad speculations based
on the results, and that curiously this person seems to be the least
STEM out of the people mentioned here, but he does a good job of
catching up, even if caught in some kind of initial overenthousiasm for
the method, making him forget its limitations.

The last person I don't know that well, except that they suddenly
seemed to go off track mistaking some kind of group experience for
reality, which can be understandable given the fact that things can be
intense and personal in such a situation.

There is another person, that I am not going to say stuff about however,
because she is beyond me in many ways.

So, what is the real meaning of life, after excoriating all these false
and one I don't understand yet, approaches?

I believe it is not to be found in work, certainly not while the world
of work is dominated by ruthless capital, nor is it found in
companionship, and it is also not to be found in immortalizing oneself
either through fame or having one's ideas be propagated by one's
offspring or by the waves ones has generated in the memetic ocean.

Daily tedious work that seems to be necessary to escape into a
situation where one can think and analyze, even acquiring the financial
means for a longer or even lifelong vacation from that drudge, friends
and family, social recognition, even the recognition of oneself and
what one is capable of, that I recently was fortunate enough to
experience somewhat, and, while I am on the topic, beautiful women
acquired, money in the bank, having high social status are but a
debilitating surrogate for it, all of these things are just ladders,
ladders to get us to some other realm we don't know of yet, but that as
surely stays out of reach as when trying to walk to mars without having
taken the necessary mental adaptations, especially if we get stuck in
one of those earlier error modes that I mentioned, and that Freud would
possibly have called fixations.

P.

"don't be sad, you're doing great"