Np friend

Persoanlly from several of my psychedelic experiences I came to the conclusion that existence has no intrinsic meaning or purpose. And - while in the West you are correct: you would be the odd one out if you believed as much before the advent of social media - in the East, Hinduism and Buddhism, perhaps Maya, especially the idea of Sūnyata, would indicate meaninglessness.

I hold now more to the notion, less of Intrinsic meaning, but of Intricate meaning: that meanings and purposes are suspended, and substantiated by their relationship to one another. This at least gives me the clarity to investigate the subfocal valences affecting my behaviours.

I think the difference between Modern Nihilism and Spiritual Nihilism can be grounded in the above: the former is a lack of participation with life and relationships to others, which would have interwoven into one another, leading the person to literally feel empty or lacking; the latter is a realisation of relational interwoveness which allows the person to disentangle and detach themselves egoistically from fictional construals - such as ambitions, expectations, reactions, hate - which often lead to suffering.

While I agree that social media has ostensively sucked meaning from people’s lives; I also think it is due to what I coin as vacuity: the distance and separation between things, increasing time to arrive, such as a relationship or even a gym, leading to alienation and eventually emptiness.

Why does mind-body dualism make life meaningless?

I wouldn't say that I have an academic experience with these topics necessarily, I've just been interested in history, philosophy for a long time. Honestly what you have said of yourself is great and I think trying to provide these "simple life philosophies" with an intellectual veneer is unnecessary and detracts from the potency of such an outlook.

As for myself, one thing that I feel that I had happened upon during my readings and interactions with others is the notion that, bluntly put, sadness confers intelligence. It feels that many people heard the phrase "ignorance is bliss" and took the contrapositive to heart: "to be sad is to be smart". You can see this notion in alot of media (something like Wednesday the show comes to mind). Again this is my interpretation of the matter, but there seems to be this implicit notion floating around our societal ether that you are intelligent if you find reality to not be sufficient - if you are irritable, if you are morose, if you find life unsatisfying, if you yearn for true meaning yet cannot find it. This interpretation is always taken as meaning that life is inherently boring, full of suffering, meaningless, etc, and instead of these qualms with reality prompting a deeper introspection into one's outlook, investigating why they find aspects of life to be melancholic and valueless, they assign the insufficiency to the external world rather than asking themselves if the insufficiency is internal, in how we view ourselves, life, reality.

This is the conceit of the philosopher, that only simple people can be happy with their station in life while they (Schopenhauer for example) have apprehended the true nature of reality and that reality is one of sorrow and suffering. But these are all metaphysical interpretations of reality, not reality itself. The language games that I refer to in my OP is that as soon as one puts words to reality, it becomes an interpretation and not an accurate description (metaphysics is unavoidable) and in these interpretations is the value judgement that these people would rather cultivate a sense of intelligence than cultivate joy (again, this is operating under the assumption that ignorance is bliss, sorrow smartness). You can be both intelligent and joyous!

There probably is something to the notion that intelligent people are more likely to suffer from some kind of mental illness, and that the more intelligent you are the increased likelihood of it occurring and the more profound its impact upon the person. But these might be just-so post hoc rationalizations, and even if they were immutably true we can still choose our outlook. We are bound by our biology in many ways, but we still have choices in the matter of outlook.

This is a long-winded way of saying that we can/probably have memed ourselves into melancholic dispositions. I did so myself at one point, as all young men are prone to do (Napoleon writes about this in his journals during his time at artillery school). I slowly realized that I didn't have to entertain such a disposition to be actually intelligent, well-read, educated. The Stoics are excellent on this, but their wisdom is lost on young men with few life experiences, as it was lost on me when I read it young and unappreciative.

"You dwell on the vastness of the Cosmos and think yourself small. I realize I am a part of the universe and think myself big. I am up in this bitch."