Schopenhauer's truths
In chapter 6 of Searching for Meaning by James T. Webb (page 123), the author lists three truths as emphasized by Arthur Schopenhauer. In short:
- Material possessions are temporary.
- The opinion of others you can never know, and these are as ephemeral as material possessions.
- What you are is the only thing that truly matters.
The first seems impossible to deny, and their actual meaning for your life is even more temporary than the time spend in your possession (see also Happiness as a state). Two seems equally valid, we can't read minds and learning more about a person can quickly and drastically change our opinion of someone. Yet, it seems to me that there is a gaping hole between 2 and 3. What is missing is what we mean to others, regardless of how their opinion of us might be.
Humans can only exist as a group, see Principle 4. Opinions of each other in the group change all the time, but that doesn't mean the group membership does not endure. Sure enough, groups can fall apart and people re-arrange themselves into new ones, but there will never be humans without groups. What binds us together surely goes beyond opinions and what can be expressed in words alone.
I'd like to read a bit more on Schopenhauer to really appreciate what he means with 3. For this post I'll assume that it is as individualistic as it sounds. As I wrote in The Meaning of Life, I think that requiring people to answer what they are for themselves is misguided. It must be a much more shared effort, considering how a person contributes to the community. Which is of course not the sum of the community's opinions about an individual, but really about how that person strengthens and improves the group.
After some reflection on existentialism and humanism, it struck me that it is absurd to hold on the one hand that a person must find his or her meaning, while on the other agreeing that humans are weak and so easily misled. We are so small and fallible all alone, but we are expected to answer the most difficult of questions by ourselves nonetheless. Maybe I'm misinterpreting just how individualistic this is meant, but this reflection is pretty helpful to me and definitely something I'll be exploring further.