Another recent BK interview

[AshvinP]

No! I don't think BK is a nihilist. I believe him when he says that he has anxiety about what is beyond death. I grok his dilemma with the mind. As the Dalai Lama has said, "The mind can rationalize anything." When I went to live as a North American in Brazil, I found that it was crazy for my mind and delicious for my heart and I loved it. Going in the opposite direction, BK seems to have had an opposite experience toward which I feel compassionate and I grok that his commitment to analysis has made of him a rather perfect philosopher to challenge the core assumptions of dogmatic reductionist physicalism. However, I'm not here to play shrink with Bernardo. I just wish him well and am happy that he has found a mentor as extraordinary as Jung. My prayer is that BK will also plunge deeply, find his way, be led to faith and find new lingo with which to express it to an often Godless audience in a compelling way.

What if this whole anxious drama of life and death can be resolved through human reasoning activity? This is what we keep pointing to - the person who arbitrarily declares human reason to be illusory activity, only adding pesky ideas on top of the "real" world of mind, will, matter, etc., will never find out if that question can be answered. That, in short, is what we call "nihilism". No one can be surprised at perpetual anxiety about death, or any other significant aspect of life, when they have declared themselves and everyone else forever unequal to the task of understanding it and thereby redeeming it in and through their own meaningful activity.

What if this whole anxious drama of life and death can be resolved in many ways, some of which are dependent on human reasoning and others depending on other ways of participating in this incredible process of being?

ni·hil·ism
/ˈnīəˌlizəm,ˈnēəˌlizəm/

noun
the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.

Sorry, I don't see BK as doing this. If he was, why in the world would he think it's valuable to save Western Civilization?

Maybe this has something to do with it... I know it won't be popular to criticize the guy who is signaling so much "empathy", but I think the guilty conscience could have something to do with the fact that he is tweeting about Ukraine and focusing on how it makes him feel. Feeling without Reason naturally points back at ourselves. I mentioned this on another thread before, but this is even reflected in our language. I will say, "this table makes me happy". If I observe something about the table in thinking, I say "this table is made of wood". The "I think" is implicit but rarely spoken. Thinking is self-sacrificial in that way, as it devotes all of its energy to the object of its activity. It literally kills itself in the process of making us self-aware. Maybe thinking deeply and qualitatively about Ukraine and what is going on in the geopolitical sphere will prove to be a more active way of eventually addressing the underlying problems rather than passively tweeting about how it makes us feel.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Bernardo tweeted "...and then feel disgusted about myself and my life. I don't know how to get out of this mental space."

If going by BK's take that he has no choice about how his life is unfolding (see the recent chat with Mishlove) —i.e. to paraphrase, "If I had choice, I would be living an idyllic life in the Swiss Alps, far away from all the stress and seeming madness, and not be involved in the struggle of following this Daemon-driven directive /destiny"—then presumably he also has no choice about lying in his comfy bed feeling disgusted about himself and his life, with no way out of that mental space. Alas, when starting with that apparently written-in-stone premise, even if one could know what to do to get out of the mindset, it would seem pretty much futile to even try.