Tattoos are an interesting phenomenon; both secretive and demanding of attention. They're a response to the predominance of nihilism in today's world.
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So this requested video comes from Scott C., who asked me to talk about an observation of his, a theory of his, my response to it, regarding the nature of tattoos, why people get them, what sort of messages they're conveying, what sort of meaning they are identifying in themselves,
what's going on on the deeper philosophical level when somebody gets a tattoo.
And he started with the observation that a lot of people will get a tattoo to mark some significant event in their own life, and yet the tattoo itself will be very cryptic in nature.
The sort of thing to draw attention and cause people to ask them, well, what does that tattoo mean?
At which point they can explain the significant event.
It's easy enough just to write that off as trying to be special or attention-seeking or what have you.
And maybe it is to some degree, but I think that is really missing out on the depth of what's going on with all of this.
And this is something I've observed as well.
It's a lot of people, well, everybody that gets a tattoo wants to be asked about it.
There's usually some sort of meaning behind it, and often it does involve a significant personal event, an event in their own lives.
So let's consider the tattoo itself.
You know, what is a tattoo?
What is the nature of a tattoo?
Well, at the very base, a tattoo is painful.
It involves suffering.
Suffering for really no end, if you think about it.
There's no reason to get a tattoo in and of itself, and it is painful.
And in our present society, where we constantly pursue pleasure and luxury and easier ways of doing things, going out of your way to get a tattoo is somewhat striking.
There's a bit of a contradiction there.
The next thing about a tattoo, the next contradiction that's built into it, is the fact that tattoos, on the one hand, they are permanent.
A tattoo is absolutely permanent, you know, short of very expensive laser surgery, you are going to have that for the rest of your life.
Whether or not you still like it in 10 years, whether or not it still looks good in 30 years, you're still going to have that ink in your lower layers of skin.
Well, at the same time, at the same time, a tattoo is temporary.
It only exists as long as you exist.
A painting is permanent, or at the very least, it will outlive the painter.
Same thing with a novel or a film or even a building.
These things are not temporary.
They outlive you.
And yet, this tattoo that's permanent, and yet it disappears when you disappear.
Then there's the contradiction that a tattoo is public.
It's a public statement that you are making to everybody else, and yet at the same time, it's a very, very private thing.
Tattoos are almost always, if not always, so personal in nature that the individual needs to explain what the tattoo means.
Even if it's a face, which is fairly self-explanatory, it's more than just the face.
You need to explain who this face is, why this face matters to you, why you elevated this face to the point of being worthy of permanently marking yourself with it.
So, yes, the core of the tattoo is a very contradictory sort of a thing to get this permanent memory etched upon yourself.
And yet, in many ways, it's such an arbitrary memory.
It's not a significant national holiday or historical event.
It's a personal event that you are marking on your skin when that event, whether it was the death of a loved one or an accident, a car accident, say, that you were in, or something of that nature, or even just a loved one, or a heart that says, mom.
You're turning yourself into a cenotaph when the fact that that event was so significant shaped your personality, shaped your outlook on things.
So it's the last thing you need to be reminded of.
Nobody gets a grocery list tattooed on their arm.
Aside from the guy from Memento, of course.
So what's going on with all of this?
are people doing i think i think this is a a response they said This is a form of Camus absurdism.
Now, Camus, the whole premise of absurdism is that humans crave meaning, not just crave meaning to our lives.
We need meaning to our lives.
Without meaning, we become nihilists.
We self-destruct.
We commit suicide directly or indirectly through hedonism.
We require meaning as human beings.
And yet the universe seems to be working against us.
There is no meaning.
Everything crumbles over time.
There is no purpose.
Eventually, the universe just winds down.
And if you try and distract yourself with meaning in sports ball or meaning in politics or meaning in romantic love, each one of these things, in and of itself, left to itself, will ultimately disappoint you.
So what are we supposed to do about this?
There's this absurdity that we require meaning and yet there is no meaning.
Well, Camus argues that we must constantly seek and invent meaning for ourselves.
And I think this is what we see these people with tattoos doing.
That the date when my mother died, or the date when I met my spouse, or what have you, these are, in a certain sense, there's no meaning to it.
There's nothing special about that date.
It's not that the stars aligned and three wise men came and knocked on your door.
No, it's just the date that that happened.
Particularly with death or accidents.
It's no surprise that your grandmother died.
You know, that's been the one fate of everybody since Adam and Eve.
And yet it is meaningful at the same time.
And so to take this completely predictable, arbitrary, meaningless event and imbue it with so much meaning that you decide to suffer to commemorate it on your skin, even though that is not a permanent cenotaph.
That's not a permanent record either.
That is just as absurd as the event itself.
Getting into a car accident?
Absurd.
Creating a permanent record on your own body?
Absurd.
And yet it's this quest for meaning, this adventure in manufacturing meaning.
But you know, if we're going to talk about the absurd, I'd like to also talk about the sublime, because I think this is a significant bit.
This is worth considering as well.
Now, the sublime, as described by Kant and Schopenhauer, the sublime is that which transcends beauty.
See, because in the modern world we've built for ourselves, we're surrounded by prettiness, by surface beauty all over the place.
And yet we're also regularly confronted with horrors, with the existential terror of the universe having no meaning, of eventually going nowhere, and the daily horrors of the 24-7 news cycle.
So much ugliness and so much prettiness, but nothing that sublime.
You see, the sublime is when you encounter something that, well, it puts you in your place.
It's when you look at a vast desert or an ice field or you study extraplanetary bodies like Jupiter, Saturn, these terrifying, enormous, beautiful things that have nothing to do with us whatsoever.
They don't care about us.
Our smallness, our irrelevance is suddenly thrust upon us.
Our ego is stripped away by this beautiful, terrifying, awful thing.
This force of nature that is so much grander, infinitely grander, than us.
And I think if there's anything missing from that tattoo of the significant event, you know, on your arm or on your shoulder, if there's anything missing, it's the sublime.
Because your grandmother dying is, it's profound.
It speaks to this greater thing than all of us, this specter of death that is so much bigger than us.
Everything dies.
Animals die.
Eventually the sun's going to die.
Machines die.
It's not just humans who experience death.
Everything experiences death.
Death is so much bigger than us.
But there's no beauty in it.
The same thing with the car accident.
The car accident, often there will be this flash of awareness that the accident's going to happen, that the skid has started, that it's going out of control, that there is nothing that you can do about it, and that you are mortal.
But again, there's no beauty.
Where's the sublime?
Looking up at the night sky, really looking up at the night sky, not in the city, but out in the desert, where it is terrifyingly infinite, where you get vertico just from looking at it.
That's the sublime.
And the sublime has its own meaning.
Irrespective of us, irrespective of what we do, what we find meaning in, what we try and find meaning in, the sublime exists.
and that is meaning enough for the sublime.
I think tattoos are a way of trying to escape the prettiness and ugliness of this perfect world that we've built for ourselves because it's not enough.
Prettiness and ugliness are not enough.
We need something grander.
And the sublime can be a part of that.
Definitely an interesting theory that Scott came up with on tattoos.
And I got to say, I think he's right about the whole thing.
