RE: What If There Is No Big "T" Truth?
I guess I feel "directed" by a couple of things... one being my wife's fundamental principle for living: "Don't be shitty."
The other being that I am totally at peace with "not knowing," which (oddly enough) seems deeply disturbing to a lot of people. But sincerely, whether there is "God" or "not-God" does not occupy part of my sense of self, except as an occasional intellectual discussion I enjoy.
Some would try to pigeonhole me into a corner saying that it is inherently human to have a "belief" in something, even if that something is nothing. So, if I must align myself with a "belief," what I "believe in" is possibility. I believe we live in a universe within which our (meaning "humanity's") understanding is constantly expanding. I believe what's out there is infinitely complex, and I believe that 200 years from know we'll know and do things that make no more sense to me than your smartphone would make to the average person in the street in the year 1800.
I believe it's possible that we might discover that "God" is real, and we might discover that we created God (not vice-versa) as a result of collective focused intent; the need to believe in something greater than us as a path to find enough inner peace that we could manage to stay sane through a mystifying world filled with unknowns... and unknowables.
What are you? What am I? Ultimately... "arrangements of energy." We're not even "things." There's no mass; no matter as most people understand those. But we "are," in some sense. I believe that somewhere along the line, we'll come to understand how that "works;" and perhaps even how it comes to be that some feel like they have "reincarnated" or "seen ghosts." Just because we can't explain it now doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Microwaves, X-rays, ultraviolet light, radio waves... all existed before we gained the capacity to observe and measure them.
In the meantime, Golden Rule. Don't be shitty. Live that meme. Use NVC. Strive to make the world a better place for our having been here...
Thought provoking post @lukestokes-- thanks!
What is "don't be shitty" based on, if not the current status quo (i.e: nothing)?
Moreover (connected to your claim that 'we're not even "things"), why should things be more "real" the smaller they get; i.e: why should it be the case that atoms, which are 99.9% emptiness, should be ontologically dominant over the objects that emergently form once the atoms start to clump together? You /could/ claim that the atoms are what we /really/ are because if you take the atoms away, then the emergent properties disappear too... but I think that they are codependent! I mean, you can't separate the two; you can't have the emergent properties without the atoms.. and vice versa!