anti-purpose

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 10 Feb 2024 11:11
Open in Logseq
    • Not everybody feels that purposefulness in itself is such a great thing. This page is a collection of some who expressed doubts. Generally they aren't really opposed to purpose as such, but against a kind of limited, narrow, selfish variety of purposefullness. (see also gradgrindism).
    • July 2022 Followup

      • When I first made this page I thought I was being very clever in identifying a common topic, but I realize that I'm hardly the first, people have been thinking about this for a long time, there are whole philosophies founded on this idea. What do I have to add to it?
      • I also realized there is a more interesting question lurking though, it's something like "what purposes are you allowed to express and which ones have to be hidden"? Hidden might mean socially, but it also means hidden from yourself. This is the basis for the Freudian unconscious, the home of purposes we are unable to acknowledge.
    • Gregory Bateson's "Conscious Purpose vs. Nature" might be the best statement of this point of view. Note the qualifier – he's not against unconscious purpose, which presumably has closer ties to Nature. An equivalent standpoint is to say that goals work best when they are illegible or at least partly so.
    • This very text is working really hard against the idea of having an explicit or unified purpose. Normal texts are organized around a single goal or topic, which makes them readable and also helps people figure out if they are worth reading. I just don't feel like doing that, and the resulting product might appear formless or useless. On the other hand doing so allows me to write in a spirit of play.
    • James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games
      • The dichotomy he sets up between finite games and infinite games is basically between narrow, game-based goals of "winning" and the more expansive goals of infinite play.
      • In kind of a related fashion, this study of children's play behavior: Why are Rooie Rules Nice shows how children manage the purposefulness of their own play activity: they disallow what they call "purpose stuff", which is roughly playing with too much finite-game attitude and not enough niceness which permits the game to go on.
    • There's something authoritarian about being goal-directed. To be purposeful means that one particular sub-agent of your mind has successfully established control over all the other purposes and agents in your society of mind. Obviously this is necessary to accomplish anything, but it's also limiting and unstable.
    • Taoists

      • Other people are bright; I alone am dark. Other people are sharper; I alone am dull. Other people have a purpose; I alone don’t know. I drift like a wave on the ocean, I blow as aimless as the wind. I am different from ordinary people. I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.
        • -- Lao Tzu 21 (tr Stephen Mitchell)
      • The Taoist term Wu Wei (無爲) means roughly "action without intention".
        • I have a Lisp library Wu Wei (Lisp) that I named for no very good reason, but I do think there is a deep relationship between wu-wei and the characterization of hackers as "lazy engineers" by Stewart Brand (see deep laziness)
    • Buddhists

      • Chögyam Trungpa, Meditation in Action has an interesting passage which suggests, not exactly opposition to purpose, but questioning it at least:
        • Q: Would you care to sum up the purpose of meditation? A: Well, meditation is dealing with purpose itself. It is not that meditation is for something, but it is dealing with the aim. Generally we have a purpose for whatever we do: something is going to happen in the future, therefore what I am doing now is important — everything is related to that. But the whole idea of meditation is to develop an entirely different way of dealing with things, where you have no purpose at all. In fact, meditation is dealing with the question of whether or not there is such a thing as purpose, And when one learns a different way of dealing with the situation, one no longer has to have a purpose. One is not on the way to somewhere. Or rather, one is on the way and one is also at the destination at the same time. That is really what meditation is for. (p 83)
        • The Three Terrible Oaths of Dorje Tröllö

          • Whatever happens; may it happen! Whichever way it goes; may it go that way! There is no purpose!
          • There is no purpose, means that there is no one overriding, overarching, all inclusive – ‘purpose’. God is not working ‘His’ purpose out. There is no such ‘God’ and no such ‘purpose’. Reality is simply the dance of emptiness and form and compassion is the recognition that everything is its own purpose of itself. Each moment of reality is perfect as it is.
      • Shunryo Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
        • There are several poor ways of practice that you should understand. Usually when you practice zazen, you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But, as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal. So long as your practice is based on a gaining idea, and you practice zazen in an idealistic way, you will have to time actually to attain your ideal. Moreover, you will be sacrificing the meat of your practice. (p57)
    • Krishnamurti

      • A great scientist has no objective in his research; if he were merely seeking a result, then he would cease to be a great scientist
      • Belief is based on the idea of acquisition, and the desire to obtain results through action. You are seeking gain; you are being moulded by sets of beliefs based on the idea of gain, on the search for reward, and your action is the result of that search. If you were in the movement of thought, not seeking an end, a goal, a reward, then there would be results, but you would not be concerned with them.
    • Obliquity, by John Kay
      • A book with the thesis that goals are best achieved indirectly. The author has a business background and a lot of the stories are about how companies with core real-world values often outperform those that are more explicitly motivated by profit.
    • How to Do Nothing, by Jenny Odell
      • Not really about purposelessness, more like resisting the imposed purposes of capitalism and technology. Countercultures are made up of people who have rejected the purposes of the mainstream, but they find their own.
    • Bartleby the Scrivener
      • "I prefer not to"
    • EM Cioran
      • Sarvakarmaphalatyâga . . . Years ago, having written this spellbinding word in capital letters on a sheet of paper, I had tacked it to the wall of my room so I could stare at it throughout the day. It remained there for months, until I finally took it down because I realized I was becoming more and more attached to its magic and less and less to its content. Yet what it signifies: detachment from the fruit of action, is of such importance that anyone who had truly possessed himself of it would have nothing more to accomplish, since he would have reached the one valid end, the real truth that annihilates all the others and exposes their emptiness, being empty itself, moreover—but this emptiness is conscious of itself. Imagine a greater awareness, a further step toward awakening, and he who takes it will be no more than a ghost, a phantom.
    • I Ching
      • 25, Wu Wang / Innocence
        • When, in accord with this, movement follows the law of heaven, man is innocent and without guile. His mind is natural and true, unshadowed by reflection or ulterior design. For wherever conscious prupose is to be seen, there the truth and innocence of nature have been lost.
        • INNOCENCE. Supreme Success. Perseverance furthers. If someone is not as he should be He has misfortune, And it does not further him To undertake anything.