Althouse: "Just remember, we are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter in a vast, unforgiving universe and our brief, ultimately meaningless, lives are over in the blink of an eye."

June 14, 2023

"Just remember, we are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter in a vast, unforgiving universe and our brief, ultimately meaningless, lives are over in the blink of an eye."

A man writes in the comments section to "The summer of the BKB (that’s big-knickered bikini)/They’re back this year and, yes, they’re flattering. What a revelation, says Charlie Gowans-Eglinton" (London Times).

37 comments:

Clyde said...: Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to Bethesda Softworks' Starfield coming out in September, knock on wood.; 6/14/23, 9:24 AM
readering said...: Woody Allen writes comments?; 6/14/23, 9:26 AM
Rocco said...: "Just remember, we are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter in a vast, unforgiving universe and our brief, ultimately meaningless, lives are over in the blink of an eye."

I'm sorry you have such a bleak existence that your life is meaningless and inconsequential to you.

My life may be inconsequential and meaningless to you. But not to me.

Especially once I outgrew my hormone-addled teenage years.; 6/14/23, 9:27 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Bikini nihilism.; 6/14/23, 9:39 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Bikinihilism.; 6/14/23, 10:07 AM
Xmas said...: I thought they meant Black King Bar. It's one of the most useful items in DOTA2.; 6/14/23, 10:19 AM
Kate said...: @Clyde -- heh. I'm waiting for the inevitable debugging.; 6/14/23, 10:19 AM
wild chicken said...: "My life may be inconsequential and meaningless to you. But not to me."

Right? What else we supposed to take away from these profound observations. We're not all that, or the rest of you aren't?

Tendentious.; 6/14/23, 10:26 AM
Narr said...: Bikinihilism? You mean like at Nobikini Atoll?; 6/14/23, 10:30 AM
donald said...: I’m a triangle guy.; 6/14/23, 10:53 AM
Friendo said...: Bikinihilism - now that's funny, I don't care who you are...; 6/14/23, 11:03 AM
DAN said...: My life has meaning as long as I resist buying subscriptions to newspapers just because they have a good tease.; 6/14/23, 11:08 AM
rosebud said...: Gotta say, I prefer big knockers bikinis; 6/14/23, 11:08 AM
Big Mike said...: Ladies, why stop at 1950s swimsuit styles? Why not go waaaay back while you're at it?; 6/14/23, 11:14 AM
Jaq said...: Nihilism requires too much faith in that which can't be proven for me.; 6/14/23, 11:23 AM
n.n said...: Articles of faith of the back... black hole... whore h/t NAACP kind. Perhaps a carbon cluster deemed a "burden". A twilight faith, an ethical religion, a liberal ideology.; 6/14/23, 11:25 AM
paminwi said...: These types of bikinis are making a comeback because trans can more easily hide their junk!
They rarely want to cut their balls off so this accommodates the delusional who think a man can be a woman.
My new rallying cry,

Bring back the string bikini!; 6/14/23, 12:35 PM
Two-eyed Jack said...: We are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter, some of whom look pretty attractive in a bikini.; 6/14/23, 12:56 PM
MadTownGuy said...: Ann Althouse said...

"Bikinihilism."

Ah! A portmanteau. Wish I'd thought of it.; 6/14/23, 1:38 PM
Mark said...: I prefer this view of things:

Today we are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. But the net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendor of God’s light, into true life.

It is really true: as we follow Christ in this mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the light of God. It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is.

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary....

If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation.
-- Pope Benedict XIV, Mass of Inauguration; 6/14/23, 1:54 PM
robother said...: Speaking on behalf of the vast universe, I forgive you.; 6/14/23, 2:04 PM
Wince said...: MILES: I'm so insignificant, I can't even kill myself.

JACK: What the hell is that supposed to mean?

MILES: Half my life is over, and I have nothing to show for it. I'm a thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.

JACK: See? Right there. Just what you just said. That is beautiful. A smudge of excrement... surging out to sea. I couldn't write that.

MILES: Neither could I. I think it's Bukowski.; 6/14/23, 4:16 PM
charis said...: Ecclesiastes 1:2
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

This is an old sentiment, yet appropriate in this age of nihilism.; 6/14/23, 5:01 PM
Joe Bar said...: Thank you.; 6/14/23, 5:12 PM
mccullough said...: Saying the Universe Is Unforgiving ascribes meaning to our lives.

Nihilists don’t post comments.; 6/14/23, 5:23 PM
Robert Cook said...: "'Just remember, we are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter in a vast, unforgiving universe and our brief, ultimately meaningless, lives are over in the blink of an eye.'

"I'm sorry you have such a bleak existence that your life is meaningless and inconsequential to you."

It's neither a bleak view nor is he particularly speaking about himself personally. His statement is an objective statement of reality. There is no intrinsic or extrinsic meaning to our existence, but...as living, sentient beings who can think abstractly, we create meaning for ourselves. We have meaning for and to each other, a result of our capacity for empathy and pair-bonding (and group bonding) with others, which we experience as affection and love.

Non-human sentient animals have a drive for self-preservation, but, beyond that, they probably have lesser (if any) sense of a "meaning" to their lives, simply because they have lower (or nil) capability for abstract thinking, depending on the animal. Herd (or hive) animals, as we, do exhibit pair- and/or group-bonding, the source of the drive for group survival. Depending on the animal, they can also experience affection and "love" for their companions. Our "meaning" comes down to of an elaboration of these innate drives of self- and group-preservation.

For many of us, our fables of omnipotent other dimensional "gods" who created us or otherwise are implicated in our existence represent our attempts to create a context in which we do have meaning greater than ourselves and our brief lives, beyond mere instinctive survival drives.; 6/14/23, 5:58 PM
PresbyPoet said...: This is my well founded view. I have it on the highest authority that:

The God/creator of the universe, a universe so strange, that even I can do no more than stand mouth agape in awe, like a 3 year old trying to understand quantum mechanics, a God so far beyond me, i am mere speck of cosmic dust/
This creator LOVES me, is totally involved with me, has a perfect plan for me, and wants me to be JOYFUL.

This is the great paradox. I Know it is true.; 6/14/23, 6:08 PM
Wince said...: Ann Althouse said...
Bikinihilism.

"Nihilists? Fuck me. I mean say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."; 6/14/23, 6:10 PM
KellyM said...: These high-waist brief bottom two-piece suits (they are not bikinis by strict definition) have been around for the last couple of years. I happen to like them, but I'm too short waisted for them. I've seen some with very retro elements - stripes, patterns - that make me think of Esther Williams and her synchronized swimmer movies.; 6/14/23, 6:28 PM
Rocco said...: Robert Cook said...
"It's neither a bleak view..."
Describing life as "Inconsequential", "Unforgiving", and "Meaningless" sounds pretty bleak to me.

"...nor is he particularly speaking about himself personally."
I never said he was. He was talking about us peasants, and may or may not have included himself in the group.

"His statement is an objective statement of reality."
Objectively define "Inconsequential", "Unforgiving", and "Meaningless" in this context. Because they sound like value judgments to me.

"There is no intrinsic or extrinsic meaning to our existence..."
The fact that we exist has meaning and value.

"but...as living, sentient beings who can think abstractly, we create meaning for ourselves. We have meaning for and to each other, a result of our capacity for empathy and pair-bonding (and group bonding) with others, which we experience as affection and love."
So you sort of in a limited way at least partially agree with me ??; 6/14/23, 9:16 PM
Rocco said...: Two-eyed Jack said...
"We are all tiny, inconsequential bits of matter, some of whom look pretty attractive in a bikini."

I thought tiny, inconsequential bits of matter *was* the definition of a bikini.; 6/14/23, 9:23 PM
Dustbunny said...: This is right in The Althouse big/small wheelhouse. All I can think about is the burkini and how Marine Le Pen said Brigette Bardot was French but the burkini was not. I can’t get past the paywall so I don’t know if this is a precursor to international incident, “we shall fight on the beaches…”; 6/15/23, 6:40 AM
jp said...: "You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.
That is how important you are."

-Eckhart Tolle; 6/15/23, 8:34 AM
Robert Cook said...: "The fact that we exist has meaning and value."

Meaning that we create and apply to ourselves and to existence at large, as I described. But this is a meaning that ceases to exist when we do. There is, as I said, no intrinsic or extrinsic meaning to existence.

We could observe a couple in conversation from yards away, unable to hear their conversation, but by interpreting their body language we may create what we think to be a possible "meaning" to their interaction, a meaning about who they are to each other, etc. Yet, the meaning we create for the couple may have nothing to do with the reality of their interaction or their actual relation to each other. Our projections of meaning on the world and cosmos around us are not innate in the world and cosmos around us.

Meaning is man-made.; 6/15/23, 8:41 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Objectively define 'Inconsequential,' 'Unforgiving,' and 'Meaningless' in this context. Because they sound like value judgments to me."

You're projecting.

We live lives effectively as brief as flies, relative to the age of the earth or the universe, and then we're gone, and with us all our thoughts and feelings and efforts and successes and failings and grand designs.

The poem "Ozymanidas" by Shelley expresses it beautifully:

"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'"; 6/15/23, 8:50 AM
traditionalguy said...: Life is precious from 3year on to puberty and mating and then raising children who raise grand children.

So why let the Marxist SOBs end it all by pushing our children into a castration using FAKE SCIENCES blathered out in schools

The FAKES need to be destroyed before they destroy human life on earth. If we need an MTG to say that then , hail MTG..; 6/15/23, 2:52 PM
Robert Cook said...: "So why let the Marxist SOBs end it all by pushing our children into a castration using FAKE SCIENCES blathered out in schools

"The FAKES need to be destroyed before they destroy human life on earth. If we need an MTG to say that then , hail MTG."

Have you sought any help with your delusions? They're obviously causing you great pain.; 6/16/23, 7:30 AM