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?
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.
The point is whatever we choose for ourselves. Just because we eventually die doesn’t mean living isn’t worth it. I don’t care that one day I’ll eventually die, I enjoy living now.
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?
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.
life’s like minecraft. you set your own goals and then you pursue them.
Also punching trees is a lot of fun.
There’s no meaning, no purpose. We’re random life on a random planet. Try to have a happy life and try not to inhibit the happiness of others. That’s it.
There’s no meaning, no purpose.
… That you don’t provide yourself, and it could be anything.
Anything?
Whatever’s important to you.
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.
Why does there have to be a point? I have no legacy, I’ll never pass anything to the next generation, I have and will not ever make anything that changes the course of humankind, the world will probably not be a better place after I am gone. But I still feel happiness when I see a beautiful sunset, I laugh when my dog does something goofy and I smile when I see others expressing real joy. I don’t have to have a direction to still enjoy life while I am here to enjoy it.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no point, and that’s beautiful. Go live your life the way you want to — nothing will happen after you die
the worst advice ever given to Ted Bundy
There are two types of thinking about it:
- There is no point in living. We are doomed to get into the grave, and eventually be forgotten forever.
- There is no point in living. No higher order, no higher purpose, no higher authority. We are free to live our lives, to explore, to insert any meaning whatsoever into it. We are forging our own destiny.
I welcome you to study Islaam to know the purpose of life. https://ia800202.us.archive.org/14/items/SacredFreedom.WesternLiberalistIdeologiesInTheLightOfIslamByHaneef/Sacred-Freedom.pdf
Or “Bend over for authority”.
Works with protestantism, catolicism and some others.
Huh? what’s your point?
Oh so you edited your post, how clever.
It was basically a basic call for joining Islaam.
It still is a call to study and join Islaam. I haven’t edited anything.
“Study” and “Islaam” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Anyone studying what islam is, or for that matter any other authoritarian religion is unlikely to “join” it.
So, you are just an ignorant idiot who forms opinions on things without studying it? Good for you.
Hey now, isn’t your religion all peace and niceties?
Cults are for simpler people that are tired of asking “why” and just want to be spoon-fed some light “answers”. Islam is for those of them who also feel threatened by women and girls or just simply despise them. Or both.
Do you know the core foundations of Islaam? Oh wait! You don’t. You come from Western so-called civilisation which has been ravaging the world for the last 400-500 years.
I just don’t care for your opinion, you don’t have your own anyway.
Yeah. That’s why you are so afraid of the spread of Islaam.
Afraid? No, I’m male.
Disgusted by so much backwards dullness? Totally.
Baffled by the amount of people believing in imaginary sky-daddies because they’re too weak to handle reality on their own? All the time.
Weak? Dull? Peasant? Give me a break. In your “reality”, your life holds as much value as that of a lump of dog excrement. And you have the nerve to call people “weak”. No wonder, atheists never created any civilisation. After all, what’s the meaning of life, when it is all a giant accident?
Just for the sake of the thought you’d actually be willing to talk about this (which i highly doubt, as your nick already hints at): YOU assume life has no meaning because it’s an accident. Why does it even HAVE to have a meaning? Why can’t it just be? So your brain can make “sense” of it all? Also no one’s life holds any intrinsic value at all. And only because you joined some cult and follow some abitrary rules (that the next cult of the same flavour does totally different, so who’s “right” to begin with?) doesn’t give your life value. To this planet you’re as valuable as a leaf or said excrement. Which is, in fact, way more useful for nature than YOU are or ever will be.
Weak? Yeah of course. How else would you call it when someone needs someone else to tell them what to think, do or believe? If that’s not the weakest form someone could assume, then I have no idea what “weak” even is.
Also, I’m no atheist, but thanks for assuming :-)
PS: I find it really funny, that you use the word “reality” while you also believe in tons of unproovable fairy-tales from times long gone. Even with a mythical creator of all and everything that actually cares about wether you (and millions of others) pray or abuse your wife correctly. Exactly what every omnipotent being would totally love to.
Anyhow, more than likely i’m wasting my time here. Luckily I have so much of it :-)
Pedophile marriages IIRC. So modern.
The point is petting dogs and the warmth of their smile, crying and laughing at movies and books and music and art of all forms, its supporting your fellow being, its finally cracking some problem that you’ve been trying to solve for ages.
As others have said, if nothing we do matters then the only thing that matters is what we do. Be kind, seek joy, seek experiences, punch fascists, pet animals. Be kind.
Does there need to be a point? We eat because we’re hungry, sleep because we’re tired, live because we’re instinctively apposed to death.
