alt Hacker NewsThe next level of realization is that every path you've been following your entire life has been laid out by someone else, or chosen due to the value system imparted by someone else, so there's not really an authentic "you" in the way that people like to believe.
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This is a distinction without a difference. We can conceptualize ourselves as fully deterministic individuals, or transcendentally connected nodes in a greater consciousness, or innumerable interpretations in-between. It's completely possible to be a deterministic materialist without being a nihilist.
In fact, I'd argue it's inevitable. A deterministic metaphysic dictates that you must come to the conclusion that it simply doesn't matter how you interpret things, and therefore you will eventually, accidentally, trivially choose to interpret yourself in a non-nihilistic way, thus breaking the trap and allowing yourself a compatible sense of self-determination, despite being capable of understanding the untruth of it.
> every path you've been following your entire life has been laid out by someone else
Not really, no.
The actual realization is that other people in the past walked paths of which segments yours will share. A lot of stuff is just repetition upon repetition.
The way you phrase it however makes it sound like it's actually predetermined and that there is nothing new to discover, which couldn't be further from the truth, but probably helps as a coping mechanism for existing within the corporate world.
I was born with heart defects and surgeries and the constant threat of death and also intelligent parents who grew up in very weird multi cultural backgrounds.
Not all of us were believed we had to be a specific thing handed to us, some of us were born natural absurdists and figured it out as we went along.
If not by someone else, certainly by the circumstances of your birth which you did not chose. So, life is very much like a lottery and what we think of us as individuals is mostly shaped by what's around us.
It is a humbling view. But there can still be an authentic "you" despite your circumstances. You can be forced to fight in a war you don't want to, but you can always run away and take a chance. Living authentically doesn't mean you are not bound by laws of the universe and of soceity but rather what you do despite that. Ultimately "you" will be inspired by everyone around you or value systems you engaged with but that doesn't strip away your individuality inherently.
Kind of touches on what Camus and Sarte mean to live your life in good faith.
I realised this in 2006 when I committed the faux pas of wearing a cerulean blue sweater to a screening of The Devil Wears Prada.