this picture will never not be funny
just the absurdity of donald duck putting out that statement (which even makes some sense and fits donald’s overall depressed mood) and mickey mouse being the sly one and contradicting donald, coming out with the upper hand from the argument, is just so amusing.
Seriously. Why are chemicals absurd? Answer: They are not absurd. They are arranged and tuned to your relations with your surroundings. They are sensory organs. Ignoring your senses is a choice I guess, especially when they are badly calibrated or misinformed by fake inputs (social media, rage bait, w/e)
These chemicals have been assigned moral and intrinsic value based on how they affect us. In a universe of unfeeling, indifferent chemicals we derive meaning. Like divining order in a storm of chaos. The miracle is that we can find meaning in the meaningless.
Yeah, sometimes the chemicals are signals and they are telling you things. Sometimes they are noise. Either way they are hard to filter.
This is the existentialist stance. Misunderstood by many as being nihilistic (which it is not) but I think it is correct. As Jean Paul Sartre said, Existentialism is humanism.
Yeah - reducing things to material components isn’t absurd and doesn’t destroy subjective meaning.
Like, I don’t believe in free will, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find life meaningful - it’s just a fact about how the world works. I still perceive choice, I perceive meaning - it’s a subjective and phenomenological matter, not an objective/material one.
I think it is also about the terms of the debate and definitions of self. For me the absurdity is to propose invisible essences that transcend physical reality. My body is my self and I kind of own or rent the material that makes me work. The processes are physical as well, but they are mine too. I freely make decisions all the time, all by myself. There is no other self worth talking about.