“God is dead,” proclaimed Nietzsche.
“Nietzsche is dead,” sighted God few years later.
Although, in my opinion, the above joke encapsulates the reality to a T, it’s only because how I understand Nietzsche and subsequently existentialism. Just to elucidate my grasp or lack thereof — according to Nietzsche, it’s the madman, now without compass, who bemoans the absence of God killed by natural science, God who’s shadow humanity still has to overcome, and who’s absence causes the world seem absurd, hence the man goes mad in panic. The “western enlightenment” presented him with the inevitable problem of meaning with no possibility to fall back to previously authoritative texts and explanations — it poses the question “What will you do as a random cog in a ruthless meat grinder that makes no sense without the untenable image of God?” Existentialism then laughs at that cosmic joke and gives a Sisyphian middle finger as its solution. According to some anecdotes, Nietzsche died, in conventional terms, a madman, seen dancing naked in his room, which, however, also could have very well been his last moment of revolt, perhaps even liberation.
Your proposal then brings aesthetics and art to the table as the means to “a sustainable, honourable way of improving ourselves in light of reality’s absurdity and of the death of God.”
I would say, why not. Listening to symphonic orchestra playing Haydn or Brahms, getting absorbed into paintings of Vermeer or Alfons Mucha, but also creating walls of feedback noise to a grooving drum beat are, in essence, as old as Homo Sapiens could be classified as such, since they are no different from listening to stories, beating the drum and dancing in ecstasy around campfire, or observing jumping sketches of animals on the walls of a cave in the flickering light. Especially when high.
But, why reinvent the wheel?
To me this problem boils down to the most fundamental question, “Who am I?” Most fundamental, because its solution also reveals answers to all whys.
Now, the problem naturalism is facing is that it thinks it has killed the God. But it’s only a false image of what ancients at some point started to call God, and what during ages became filtered and understood merely on the level of mind, which led to various misinterpretations ending with (in the case of monotheism) a sole (even anthropomorphized) image of the Absolute. So, this problem is ironically equally false, in the sense that it causes naturalism lose the awareness that what it deals with are aspects of All-That-Is, in ancient parlance — God.
Therefore I think that modern science should seriously re-embrace old traditions, strip them of all bullshit that goes contrary to obvious natural facts, and be inspired by ideas that it does not provide. On the other hand, e.g. Oppenheimer was quite fascinated by Bhagavad Gita and Indian philosophy, and today’s philosophers like David Chalmers are very close in their views to what is for ages already known in Indus valley as samkhya philosophy (or some interpretations of Kabbalah, if you want an Abrahamic example).
It’s not clear to me whether Chalmers was, indeed, inspired by Indian thought (or “spiritual ideas” in general for that matter), but if not, he would be a prime example of reinventing the wheel, nevertheless, slowly closing the remaining gap in second evolutionary circle of knowledge.
The main problem I see, and why scientific naturalism at large refuses to go to the old sources, is that it thinks of our ancestors as idiots. I know it’s a pure speculation, but I doubt that the first person to have the courage to contemplate lightning or storm jumped to conclusions and imagined invisible fairies hurling winds and throwing thunderbolts. They more or less considered everything very personal, subjective, and dreamlike (see Aboriginal “dreaming”) with attributes assigned to perceived phenomena according to the language of the day (which was, however, taken literally by many who came later and didn’t make the effort to observe the phenomena themselves).
Of course, like with everything, there’s a catch.
To answer the question of one’s true nature and identity one cannot do an experiment on an object, because, obviously, one’s own subject is the subject of the inquiry.
Now, if that is a no-go simply because of the nature of the problem and implied methodology, the science is actually rather limited and should not make claims about God in any way. If that’s not the case, everyone, but first and foremost scientists, should be able to answer that primordial question. That would inevitably translate into education, and then we could finally start to create well.
I hope I got what you said in the opening statement ;)
