Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

…was made even better when analyzed by a philosopher?

I long ago blogged the “shaggy guru life is a fountain” story, including a re-telling by philosopher Robert Nozick in his book Philosophical Explanations.

Today I made the sad discovery that my source-link for the Nozick quote now goes to a dead page. Fortunately, I long ago copied what I found there, at least what interested me, so I’m going to add here a different Nozick story version and his comments on it:

A person travels for many days to the Himalayas to seek the word of an Indian holy man meditating in an isolated cave. Tired from his journey, but eager and expectant that his quest is about to reach fulfillment, he asks the sage, “What is the meaning of life?” After a long pause, the sage opens his eyes and says, “Life is a fountain.” “What do you mean life is a fountain?” barks the questioner. “I have just traveled thousands of miles to hear your words, and all you have to tell me is that? That’s ridiculous.” The sage then looks up from the floor of the cave and says, “You mean it’s not a fountain?” In a variant of the story, he replies, “So it’s not a fountain.”

The sage feels none of the angst that led the seeker to the cave. So, who’s missing something: sage or seeker? The story suggests a contrast of attitudes. I’ll call them Existentialist and Zen, meaning only to gesture at the traditions these names evoke. The Existentialist attitude is that life’s meaning, or lack thereof, is of momentous import. We seek meaning. If we don’t get it, we choose between stoicism and despair. The Zen attitude is that meaning isn’t something to be sought. Meaning comes to us, or not. If it comes, we accept it. If not, we accept that too. To some degree, we choose how much meaning we need. Perhaps the sage achieves peace by learning not to need meaning. Perhaps that’s what we’re meant to learn from the sage’s seemingly meaningless remark that life is a fountain.

Wow, so the alternatives here are stoicism, despair, or a bland Zen acceptance of “whatever”? I don’t think so. My advice, Mr. Nozick, is stay off those mountaintops. Eat fruit, make new friends, ride a bike, and do things you care about. Oh, and read The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde or Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal. Since you like that fountain joke, you should like their books too.