Post date: May 28, 2020 2:52:10 AM
interesting:
"The meaning maintenance model was first proposed by three psychologists – Steven Heine, Travis Proulx and Kathleen Vohs – in 2006. They were inspired by the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, who argued that the human mind continuously attempts to construct a view of reality as a single, coherent whole – an urge he described in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) as ‘nostalgia for unity’.
Heine and his team proposed that our mental representation of the world is like a delicate web of interconnected beliefs, documenting the relations between ourselves and the people, places and objects around us. When we are confronted with an apparently inexplicable event that appears to break that framework, we feel profound uncertainty – the ‘feeling of the absurd’.
... a phenomenon that the psychologists described as ‘fluid compensation’. This involves ‘retreating to a safe place where the world makes sense again’, Heine told me.
... At a neural level, the discomfort prompted by the absurd appears to share the same processing as physical pain. In another experiment, Heine and his collaborators gave volunteers the painkiller acetaminophen or a placebo before either watching a clip from Lynch’s surreal film Rabbits (2002) or writing a short essay about death. In both cases, the volunteers who took the painkiller showed reduced fluid compensation afterwards, compared with those who took a placebo."
(more @ psyche.co)
in any event, i highly recommend Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus. it will change the way you look at life.