I love the idea of making meaning out of nothing. My personal motto has long been that, “I choose to see the world as imbued with magick”.
In the age of science and reason it’s not possible, (for me), to ‘believe’ in any superstitious nonsense. But it’s self evident we have to choose to make meaning from the world around us or we have nothing but the horror of the great abyss. Contemporary culture is rife with a depressing nihilism that simply isn’t an option I’m willing to live with.
I think this is the essential reason humans make art.
Choosing to see the world as imbued with sacredness and meaning, is itself a form of art. It’s a creation of meaning, a shaping of it. Choosing to align oneself with all that is beyond our own permeable borders is a sort of willful communion with the divine.
And experiencing the divine need not be motivated by having been programmed to “believe”. Nor has it anything to do with there being anything really there. I’ve been motivated by a nagging feeling that meaning exists only when and where we will it to exist.
Anyways, this sounds like a book I’d like to read. Written by two philosophy professors, (Sean Dorrance Kelly at Harvard and Hubert L. Dreyfus from U.C.Berkley), it urges a re-reading of classic literature to ‘lure back the gods’ into our secular lives.
Check it out. Here’s the Amazon link to the book and review. Here’s the link to Sean Kelly’s blog for the book.
