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?
Why does there need to be a point?
Well, things do happen after you die, just not to you.
Compassion for those who come after us is one possible source of meaning.
One could also consider that having no afterlife makes this life more meaningful than it would be compared to an infinity.
Your body decomposes.
Paraphrasing something I read somewhere “Do we open a book just to close it again?” That for me, it means that it is not merely for doing something that we exist, but to tell stories, to pass on knowledge, to keep rituals alive, to be a vessel for something beyond ourselves. The important part, same as books, is to tell stories. Everything sparks from there.
We’re all just stories in the end.
Your single existence might be ephemeral, but humanity isn’t, your community isn’t, and possibly your family either
Individualism breaks that sense of purpose, and it teaches us that happiness is made by personal enjoyment of often exclusive activities
If we lose trust in our community or in humanity in general, if we imagine the next person to only care about themselves, basivally if we expect individualism from others, we lose hope of feeling a more community-oriented form of happiness! And unfortunately in many places that situation is expected, because people are often indeed individualistic
and what is the point of our collective community/humanity?
Well the further you go on, the more likely it is that you find there is no point in anything, we are but a phenomenon in the universe
But if you look closely you realise many have needs, many have desires, many want to enjoy company and experience many things, they feel a purpose in what they do
There is a cute plot point in my fav anime, Hunter x Hunter. While the main protagonist Gon has a goal, to find his own father that left him as a baby, his best friend Killua is initially pretty nihilistic. He told his feelings about this to Gon, and he replied that, until he finds his purpose, Killua’s goal will just be to be at his side. So, basically, the friendship itself will be his purpose.
I think the general point is that our potential nihilism is part of our personality. We were never supposed to live an individuals and be self-sufficient. Finding a purpose as individuals might not be a solvable problem! We might need another person to get that purpose.
So while “scientifically” we don’t have a purpose, as life itself is a phenomenon and our consciousness is a happy accident of that phenomenon, some people feel a purpose, they feel they want something, and others could simply tag along and find purpose in helping others with theirs.
At least that’s my answer so far 🤌
Good answer.
I forgot how good HxH is. Need to rewatch it again sometime.
Your single existence might be ephemeral, but humanity isn’t, your community isn’t, and possibly your family either
It is though. Life has existed on this planet for just under 4 Billion years and in that time over 99% of all species to have ever come into existence have gone extinct.
Your community & family are no less ephemeral than the life you yourself live, but you won’t get to see any of that.
If we lose trust in our community or in humanity in general
I never had a reason to trust them to begin with, tbh.
I never had a reason to trust them to begin with, tbh.
I’m not sure what the meaning of this statement is. As i see it, you have to trust your community at some point because as a child you’re not self-suffucient on a basic level. You need care from your family, schooling from your community, and if you take higher studies you need institutions to invest in your potential (be it by public funding like in most European countries, or by a loan). And that is just on the first level. Secondarily, the school in your community needs institutions too, and your family needs a job from the community, which probably also rely on institutions. You rely on them, they rely on others, so you rely on those others too.
In order to do all of that, before you even really have real life choices, you have to trust your family, your community and your institutions (thus, your Country).
Once you start having a real choice on what to do, then I can accept you might lose trust even if still having to rely on some of these. And you can work in a job that has very little to do to your community. Which is close to the situation I am living, actually.
So you lost that trust that allowed you to grow up to adulthood, because now you have a choice and you don’t like what you see. Which is fair, we are all caught up in individualism, we know that we need to have a way out of situations by ourselves. That’s why money is so central in our life: if things go wrong in our community, we will need money to convince others to grant us services and goods to cover our needs.
But that has more to do with material needs, not with “purpose”. Nothing really stops us from trusting our community for non-material things, such as a sense of purpose. We just decide not to do it out of habit of being individualistic.
How does something afterwards change the meaning of this in a good way?
Why fight for justice? E.g. the bible says god will judge and that i shouldn’t. So if I just don’t care about anything here but about god, I might have a bad time now but eternal happiness later. How meaningless is now this here? Everything is transactional. The love that you gave is for the sake of getting some much much more valuable later.
Why do people find happiness even in the worst situations? Because it is the only way to deal with it. We are made for survival and survival requires the willingness to survive. It doesn’t matter if you are the strongest fighter, if you don’t even want to fight back. Your desires come from survival needs.
And a little extra bit, there might not be a point in living. It might be meaning less. But I personally want to be happy. I just do. So everyday I work towards being happy. As I personally love my family and friends, I wish them to be happy. I just do. As my friends have family and friends, and their happiness is somewhat linked to their family and friends happiness, I want all of them to be happy too. And so on. As I can relate to the joy of being proud of oneself, I want them to feel that joy. And so on. None of this is objectively meaningful, I just like it that way. And I might be an asshole but I don’t care if you agree with me, I want you feeling happy and fulfilled. Deal with it.
Well put, and I think it’s definitely meaningful.
The journey wasn’t taken from you just because there is no destination
Literally a theme in the video game Journey.
Cat videos.
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?
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?
IIRC, the nihilist position is that there is no point, and the way I’ve chosen to interpret that is that it means we are free to personally define the point at any time, and for any length of time, as we please. The pointlessness lets us custom design life to fit our needs and desires, if we can minimize getting caught up in “you should do this and be that” external mentalities that may be incompatible with our natures. This seems like one of many correct paths to life satisfaction.
Of course, part of the battle is discovering what’s in your(you in general not you specifically) nature to do and be, and then having the courage to see it through no matter what influences around you are saying or doing that may contradict it. The other part being unlearning incompatible mindsets that may have been fed into your mind when you were younger; authority figures anywhere in, and in any stage of, life are in dangerous positions to cause long term harm to impressionable, trusting minds, which is why I personally focus more on the “figure” and less on the “authority” part of “authority figure” when I’m dealing with people in those positions.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” - Aristotle or whoever actually said it.
Absurdism > Nihilism
You can either let the fact that nothing matters trap you, or you can allow it to free you.
From what i’ve observed, people deal with “there’s no higher power” differently.
For some people, that i call right-wing, or authoritarian, having some higher power that tells them what to do, is the meaning of life. If they lose that something, then they become depressed and stop living, in any sense, a joyful life.
On the other hand, there are people, which i am comfortable to call left-wing, or hippies, or communitarian, who don’t need that higher power to tell them what to do, in fact, it rather obstructs them. They are joyful even in the absence of a higher, guiding power, because they can find their own meaning in life.
IMO the need for a higher authority is both because of fear of death, and to be lazy and not think about what is right and wrong. So either excuse yourself (ex. catolicism, ask oardon from god not the victim) or just believe “your” religion gives you the right to do as you please.
So stop living in fear and embrace the absurd that we, simple 100 years tops organic blobs live in a billion years universe.
Your most fundamental motivations are inherently irrational/instinctual, but once you know what they are you can pursue them more deliberately. Nobody can decide for you what the meaning of your life is, you have to discover it through experience and introspection.
can you tell us about yours? what is the meaning of your life? I know we may not resonate with it and think it’s worthless but to you it has a meaning
Curiosity.
…or do ! but knowingly !
life’s like minecraft. you set your own goals and then you pursue them.
Also punching trees is a lot of fun.
the number of trees I’ve punched in life is more than zero.
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a game-o-sopher. when life gives you shitty loot, change the difficulty settings.
I’m just hoping we help each other to achieve our goals before we go
