/lit/ - Literature

>>11942076
This is true only if you view things in terms of linear causation, i.e. falling dominoes, which is a reductionism that ignores that multiple occurrences can affect each other. This is the view of the Cartesian-Newtonian mechanistic universe that has been completely overturned in the sciences in favor of a dynamic universe characterized by emergence, statistical probability, and interdependence, but is retained in our popular metaphysics, whether it be pop materialism or substance dualism.

The true nature of reality is that everything creates everything else, and is created by everything else, relationship and context is primary, not something that merely happens secondary to the thing-of-itselfness of thing-ness. In contrast to domino-metaphysics, a physical analogy is three sticks balanced so that they each support each other, with the removal of any resulting in collapse - they share causal attribution in keeping the structure supported. In place of causation comes degrees of relevance; to truly consider the whole of something requires considering the whole universe, and so we must necessarily draw artificial distinctions to make sense of anything. An object isn't concrete but an abstraction, an artificial distinction that breaks down in some considerations (such as with atomic or cosmic scales) but is useful for our daily interactions.

The idea of an All-Creator is a monopolization of creativity, a sort of cosmic plagiarism that maintains a false dichotomy between creator and creation. This is reflected in our view of human creativity, which it used to be popular to attribute to God, i.e. "divine inspiration." Popular atheism isn't truly atheistic, but merely reflects a decapitated theism; to truly transcend the creator-creation dichotomy of theism requires unifying it into an immanent creativity that is inherent to all things. We are existential artists who co-create with the self-creating tapestry of existence, not as Creators creating meaning ex-nihilo out of a meaningless universe, or a "one weaving a many into its pre-existent unity of its oneness. It is, rather, the "growing together" (con-crescence) of objects to create a novel subject which enriches the many from which it springs. 'The many become one, and are increased by one.'" (Kraus, "The Metaphysics of Experience," paraphrasing Whitehead.) To not just intellectualize this but to perceive it as a reality, and to relate with your existence with it as an actuality is to be truly at home with the universe, while the nihilism of modernity is rooted in a deep philosophical alienation from it caused by the creator-creation dichotomy that has infected all aspects of human life.

>>11531315
Carl Sagan's famous quote "we are a way for the universe to know itself" reflects this pancreativist perception of the world, and is found in many other nonreligious thinkers. Pop Atheism is dominated by negation and at best active nihilism (a dominative philosophy where one places themselves as a creator of all meaning, to impose meaning onto a passive, meaningless existence) but following the intellectual trend lines strongly suggests that a post-atheism that is beginning to emerge is a pancreativist worldview that has a real chance of confronting the problem of nihilism that defined modern society. What respects our most human intuitions than a view of the universe as art continually re-creating itself, and what more wondrous a thing that this ongoing work not have one author, but has shared co-creation among all that comprises it?