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Notes -
I want to resurrect a variant of an old question that has got me wondering again. Is it possible for an atheist to think deeply about life without losing motivation to live well?
It’s trite to phrase it like this, but the atheistic model still seems utterly devoid of motivation or purpose when you dwell on it. Obviously, if you don’t dwell on the facts of life, you can distract yourself with various concerns and pursuits. But what if you don’t distract yourself? Someone with a religious model involving a loving God can ponder his existence forever and be motivated and purpose-filled, provided that they forever presuppose a loving God as an article of faith. But I’m trying to envision an atheist pondering life while still maintaining motivation to live vibrantly and maximally. How do they do it, do they do it, or are they just distracting themselves?
Eg, “an atheist believes they need to make life count” —> count for what? Your life does not count, by your own definition. You will cease to exist, like the dinosaurs, who surely did not count. So why are you programming your own Operating System as a hobby? It doesn’t count! “But it makes me happy” —> drugs will surely make you more happy. Why not do them?
This is precisely why philosophers go with "human flourishing" instead of happiness.
Once you accept that happiness is not unitary or reducible to just hedonism this hardly seems a question.
I think this just moves the question down the line. Of what purpose is human flourishing? If flourishing is important because it makes humans happy, then happiness is the point. What is this thing that makes humans unhappy that they must do out of obligation, and what underpins it in the face of the inevitability of extinction of all humans across an infinite time span?
"Flourishing" is eudaimonia/"happiness", it's just that translating it that way for moderns seems to bring to mind hedonism or fleeting emotions. Which is how you get the drug question. Or humorous misunderstandings like this.
If you don't take happiness to be the mere sensation of pleasure at any given moment (which always abates and you will always want more of) "why do drugs?" has an obvious answer
Well, because part of my flourishing is cultivating a variety of virtues and capacities - health, discipline, familial relations, friendships - that are all correlated with my well-being and, ugh, "happiness" in a deeper sense. Taking drugs provides me with short-term hedons but harms my ability to do that and may make me - and those around me - much unhappier in the long run.
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