I mean, there is no meaning in nature, it was man who invented it, and often it appeared because of a scarcity, for example, the point is in a beautiful woman, because you are unlikely to find another one as beautiful, right?, or can you find a person who will support you and accept you as you are, like your loved ones? The examples are not the best, but I hope you get the idea.
In addition, I will say that about a year ago I watched the film “The Seventh Seal”, and now sometimes I feel in the place of a character named Antonius Block. I dismissed the inevitable by refraining from suicide as a teenager, thinking I could find the meaning of life, but what was to be expected, nothing worked out. But especially now, how shall I put it… in the age of AI, it is impossible to escape the truth, self-deception no longer works, at least for me personally.
Chess Game with Death:
Corollary-- that doofus, cool-kid guy on the right is probably going to do something stoopid, likely to bust his own argument…
Well, there’s different degrees of “matters”. Obviously if he causes harm to himself or others there will be consequences that matter! This is specifically referring to anything intrinsically mattering on some sort of cosmic scale.
Hmm…
Please feel free to go on, Samus…Sir Pterry put it better than I ever could:
“All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
I guess this all kind of takes me back to when we arguably got too smart for our own good. That our intelligent fear of the unknown became so outsized that we started to try to bend nature to our own will, create gods & religion, becoming a race of headcases searching for ever more elaborate solutions to problems of our own making.
~12Kyrs or so we first jumped down that rabbit hole, and now the ground is rising up rapidly to show us how that all works in the end.
We tend to anthropomorphize everything and think that everything works like our minds do, including reality itself.
There is meaning in life. It’s what you make it. The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
I would like to reply with a meme, but I can’t find a suitable one. Although…
Bear VS Man
The new Tekken looks good.
My life has meaning. It has meaning for no other reason than I say it does, and no one gets to decide that for me. I do not purport to speak for your life, or the lives of those I care about, or my cat’s life, or my neighbors, the birds, trees, grass, germs, or any other living thing. I do not assign meaning to society, civilizations large or small, or things that have been built to benefit me. I can only speak for my life. And I say that my life has meaning. Nothing that has happened to me, nothing that has been said, done, built or destroyed, can take that meaning away from my life without my permission.
A life has no meaning in the same way that a blank piece of paper has no meaning. I give that piece of paper meaning by writing, sketching, coloring, folding, tearing…and perhaps ultimately destroying. Now that piece of paper has a unique history imprinted on it. It can be shared, displayed, hidden, or thrown away. But the whole reason I did anything to the paper at all was because it was meaningful in the moment for me to do so.
Optimistic nihilism is the way to go. We make our own meaning.
Invent your own meaning. Don’t listen to people who assert you should live life a certain way to fit their meaning.
I’m glad there isn’t a meaning to life. If there was a meaning, then I’d have to be doing that thing or be failing at existence. If no act matters, then I’m equally valid for doing my goofy nonsense as I am working hard or whatever.
WDYM? The meaning of life is to cuddle dogs. 🤷♂️
cats*
Murderous birds*
What? Oh… More for me then!
Nice try doggo, but I was warned about this.
On the Internet you never know if someone is really a dog…
There’s a song about this, at the end of Life of Brian.
You come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing. What have you lost?
Nothing!
Just because there is no pre-planned, external meaning doesn’t mean your life has no meaning.
Many people find meaning in family, friends, careers, projects, experiences, or just general enjoyment of life.
Sounds like you’re in the Pessimistic Nihilist stage, you just need to process things and then progress yourself to either Absurdist Nihilist or Optimistic Nihilist
Myth of Sisyphus is a great book if you want to lean into the absurdism
I’m an absurdist so I just hope the punchline is good
I’m an absurdist laughing at the fact that there’s probably no punchline coming.
Honestly that would be pretty funny
The same way you do, I would imagine, by occupying our mind with stuff that keeps us from thinking about it too much.
I’ve never even quite understood what it is that people are thinking about when they refer to “the meaning of life.” I mean - I know the definition - I know what the phrase is intended to communicate. I just don’t get what it is that people actually expect.
I don’t think I ever even considered the idea of life having some sort of intrinsic meaning until I was old enough to start getting into philosophy and discovered that not only do people believe that life has some intrinsic meaning, but that it’s such a common belief that there’s a sort of reflexive negative view of anyone who doesn’t share that belief.
In spite of that, I saw and still see no reason to believe that life has intrinsic meaning (either empirically, logically or even psychologically) and more than enough reason to believe that it does not.
Now none of that’s to say that my life is meaningless. It’s stuffed full of meaning. It’s just that all of that meaning is things I’ve found and adopted - none of it’s intrinsic, nor does it need to be.
And I still don’t really understand why anyone believes that it does need to be intrinsic. How is all of the meaning they’re free to find and adopt not enough?
For whatever any of that’s worth…
It is a blessing that life has no meaning. You can give it any meaning you want without having to delude yourself from the “right” meaning.
Your life meaning could be charity, attempting to reach the pinnacle of your hobby, teaching and empowering others, success, dismantling tyrrany, competition (like that in sports and other hobbies), creation and building, etc. Find one that you believe in, and help others to find theirs
You can choose multiple, but many is too great of a burden to carry.
I think everyone goes through this… well, most people, anyway. Such is the burden of intelligent awareness--you know other animals don’t worry about this shit. And, therein lies a clue.
Such is the burden of intelligent awareness–you know other animals don’t worry about this shit. And, therein lies a clue.
I’m not completely sure about this.
The lack of meaning isn’t really a problem unless you make it one
And what if this problem, as a living being, comes to you against your will?
As in you’re bothered by the lack of meaning? Figure out why it’s so important to you to have a purpose, and then choose a purpose for yourself. It’s quite freeing in my opinion, you can’t really mess up your life in a wider philosophical sense. You succeed just by doing things that make you happy (and depending on your morals, don’t make anyone else’s life worse).
The real meaning of life is to reproduce. We are here because some funny molecules have a tendency to replicate themselves, that’s really all there is to it.
