We spend our days bound by endless obligations. Yet, even with loneliness, failed relationships, and soul-draining work, people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?
There is no inherent goal or point in life. You get to decide. You get to give your life meaning.
It can be hard. Sometimes, material conditions like poverty, working conditions or social pressure make it hard to find meaning. Sometimes, you can loose the meaning, like when you loose a loved one. A good society should help empower all people to give themselves meaning. Sadly this is not the direction many countries are taking nowadays.
But despite everything: You are ultimately empowered to create meaning for yourself. Nobody can truly take that away from you.
The meaning of life is to have a life full of meaning.
I find meaning by doing drugs and hooking up with randoms from growlr.
Whatever you want. Find something that brings you joy and try to do more of that. If it’s important to you to leave a legacy, try to connect to others and be in their lives. Try to make good, meaningful changes to the world, even if they’re small. Our existences are only so long, and worth enjoying.
What do we owe to each other? For coexistence without inherent meaning in an afterlife, is the only source of moral good the social contract that we’ve made with each other to coexist peacefully? What are the bounds of that contract? What are the terms of our coexistence?
If that’s the case, a Buddhist would have nothing to worry about! And a Christian would be in shambles I guess.
Well, that’s kinda the point.
If you assume that all we get is what we have while we’re alive, then that life becomes the point
A lot of people that reach the conclusions you have, opt out. They move into a commune, they go vagabond, they may choose to just flit between jobs and find whatever fun is in them.
Or, they may decide to become focused on finding purpose within the world that is, the societal structures as they exist. Some of those devote themselves to service, or find jobs that they believe make life better for others.
Some stay in the framework of things, but do the bare minimum and focus on their off time their purpose.
The point of it, from that point of view where this is all we get, is to find what makes staying alive worth it.
It isn’t like the certainty of no afterlife removes your ability to live and love and do good things. It can make it harder to bear the bad things of life as well, but that’s anything really.
The point is what you decide it is.
Well written!
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Time, and how you use it, becomes more important once you understand that it’s finite.
Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s going to die. Come watch tv.
Its something for us to decide. It may very well be meaningless but in the end I would rather exist than not exist overall although I would not mind existence being over as it will be someday. Hope if does before it becomes to awful.
It’s a sandbox survival game. So, the first step is to survive to the point where you can start making choices, the next step is to figure out what you want your goals to be. Then, the hard part. How will you achieve those goals?
If nothing we do matters, the only thing that matters is what we do.
Life sucks, the world is a bad place. Leave it just a little bit better than you found it and you’ve lived life’s purpose in my book. We are generational garbage collectors, picking up the pieces of societal trash our forebearers left behind. So do your part. Pick up the trash. Leave the world just a little bit better than you found it.
Genuinely thanks for that first line. I’ve held that idea for a long time without the correct words for it to explain how I feel to other people.
I feel like it also compliments the philosophy of “why not?” As in, “if nothing we do matters, why not be kind? Why not love people? Why not help people present and future?” If good and evil are equal utility, why not be a good person?
I guess everybody will come up with different answers to that.
To me, saying “there is nothing after death” is a simplified model. It asks you to live in the here-and-now, to live in the moment, because that makes you productive today.
Of course, the world won’t end when you die. You will leave an impact on the world, kind of a track. Like, when water flows over a landscape long enough, it leaves a river bed. That will stay, even after the water subsides.
So in some sense, death might be your end, but it’s not the end. I don’t know whether that helped you.
The point is to pass on your genes.
Lol I got sterilised at the age of 23. Guess I have nothing left to live for 🤷♀️ /s
That absolutely is not the point I have made and determined for my run at existence lol
Hell yeah!
I have procreated and passed off my genes, but it’s bullshit to tell other people that’s the point of being alive.
You gotta do what you feel is right. If nothing feels worthwhile, make the best of the ride!
For real, my genes suck, will happily keep them to myself
l duno
