Belief

[andrewducker]

There's a terrible article in the Guardian on belief here.  I was vaguely incensed by various bits of it, but particularly by

If we truly believed that life was meaningless, we would have no reason to get up in the morning - ultimately, the most rational thing to do would be to jump over the edge of a cliff.

I've seen this kind of thinking before.  And never an explanation of _why_ jumping over the edge of a cliff is more rational than going for a long bath, having sex, or saving children from starvation.

The answer is that none of these is inherently rational - all of them are choices, based around our emotions, and just because we don't have a 'reason' it doesn't suddenly make us stop caring about things.  It just means that our emotions are rooted in ourselves, not in some kind of universe-defining primal cause.

On the other hand, it can mean that if what really, truly drives you is TV, beer and Nachos, then that's fine too:

Comments

[darkoshi]

Why does one get up in the morning? To use the bathroom, of course. And because there's only so long one can lie awake in bed without becoming bored and restless.

And the reason one does or doesn't jump off a cliff usually has more to do with whether or not one enjoys being alive, I would think, than with whether one thinks there's meaning to it.