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_All Things Shining_ amzn.to/2pyetIp has the same aim as _Meaningness_: an account of meaning, neither nihilistic nor eternalistic.
Hubert Dreyfus coauthored _All Things Shining_; my PhD drew heavily on his critique of artificial intelligence: meaningness.com/metablog/ken-w…
Dreyfus’s _Being-In-The-World_, an explication of Heidegger’s account of meaning, heavily influences _Meaningness_: amzn.to/2oqnTB5
It took me six years to get around to reading _All Things Shining_. Tempted to blog about it, but I’m going to post some bits instead.
_All Things Shining_ casts Captain Ahab as the Kantian desire to find certainty in a world where meanings are hidden:
Ahab’s insane error is eternalism: the stance that there is some singular, ultimate Truth underlying all meaningfulness.
Dreyfus/Melville’s hero Ishmael’s insight is also that of Vajrayana Buddhism: that the actual world is sacred, and adequately meaningful.
Much contemporary guff starts from implicit assumed nihilism, and talks about “finding your own true meaning” by some heroic mystical quest.
But meaning is obvious everywhere—if you do not blind yourself to it with the idiotic Quest For The Ultimate Truth Of Everything.
To find out what is meaningful, you must learn to see. Coffee is a trivial example, but the same pattern applies to the most consequential.
I described learning to see, reopening the senses, and finding out what you like, in my recent Shadow Eating series: buddhism-for-vampires.com/hunting-the-sh…
When you pay close attention in order to appreciate the unique specifics of an occasion, routine is transformed into sacred ritual.
Great value in non-rational, communal sacred ritual—and great danger. Dreyfus’ “meta-poesis” plays similar role to my “meta-rationality”…
Meta-rationality / meta-poiesis is the learned skill of knowing when, and how, to deploy rationality
There no one sort of meaning, but many sorts; the skill of meta-rationality is knowing which is apposite in a particular situation.
Mastery of meta-rationality is the essential task demanded of us by this particular moment in history—as my most recent essay also argued.
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