My people are all the people. I do my best to expand my 'identity circle' to include all humans and even the whole biosphere. It seems to me that outgroup stigmatization is one of the more insidious causes of strife and abuse in the world. I say this because it stems from trying to come together, which on it's face seems like a compassionate course of action.
"If nothing ever matters, we might as well commit suicide..."
I'm quite nihilistic and I've heard heard basically this before. Every time it seems like a non-sequitur to me.
Life taken to be without meaning or value seems to me to be life considered honestly and without delusion rather than a reason to kill yourself.
"Not because of a piece of knowledge (because all knowledge of the subjective is bound to capriciousness)..."
I take a similar, though more nihilistic stance. It seems to me that the fundamental uncertainty and mystery in the world have shown to be utterly indelible. We struggle so passionately to explain the most direct and elementary aspect of existence, our consciousness. Though some of the greatest minds in history have leveled every weapon against the hard problem of consciousness it's proven invincible and we've no greater insight than we ever had into how internal experience springs forth from physics.
We've no idea what "breathes fire into the equations" as the late Stephen Hawking put it. I don't see that changing, at least not any time soon. My reaction is epistemological nihilism.
"In the end, no one is wrong, and no one is right."
Couldn't agree more.
Interesting post.
I made a continuation that I had planned. Coincidentally, it answers some of your questions. I will try to address some of your points, though I agree with what you say in part.
I've reached that point of decision-making. I saw myself as nothing more than a floating bit of reality, irrelevant, accidentally placed here. There was so little, and I was so frustrated, that I asked myself "what am I doing in this place suffering when I could just leave by killing myself? It's not like there's some absolute morality tying me to life". But then I realised that it's not only that there is nothing tying me to life, but there is also nothing implying that the only way out is by killing myself. In fact, in the absence of the absolute, I realised, I am the absolute, and I have desires.
By my own hand, I became God, and my desires became law to the world around me. To myself, they are ever-changing like my perception, but given that nothing ties me to anything else, I might as well follow that impulse, which is very pleasant anyway. Curiously, the impulse takes me to make meaning where there is none; it's the most entertaining thing out there that is balanced enough not to saturate my senses.
Personally, I see consciousness as a secondary effect of having a brain. If the brain has to perceive in a certain way that is what we describe as consciousness, then it simply does. There is nothing stopping a brain from having a consciousness except the lack of conscious activity (synapses and all). I don't see anything mysterious to it; I just find it curious that people generally attach divine charges to it when it's so mundane.
Given the lack of an absolute, even though I agree with you that creating separation is an insidious cause of strife and abuse, there is no foreign morality to impose a halt on my desire to benefit whom I perceive as my own (primarily me and mine), and there is nothing to stop my desire from fulfilling itself as reality. I also see no value in compassion short of self-satisfaction. Designing identity separations is by intent domineering, since that is what I find entertaining.