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?
If a movie is going to end is it worth watching?
Why does there need to be a point?
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.
Something doesn’t have to exist forever to have meaning, that seems like a holdover from utopic afterlife religious indoctrination.
We can enjoy a movie or a lunch knowing it will end, I can pursue meaning and find multiple purposes throughout a lifetime.
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.
Enjoy the ride.
There is no point. The point is that you experienced life at all, the most rarest thing in this universe perhaps. Most people don’t even stop to think how amazing that is. Going outside and smelling fresh air, drinking water, laughing, crying.
Worms entered the chat
I like laughing and having sex (which I definitely have a lot of all the time I swear)
Somehow I’m not able to believe it.
I fuck trust me
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.
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.
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
Or another way, the process is the point
There is no point, you make it yourself. And plenty of people manage to catch a glimpse of happiness because there’s plenty to be happy about.
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.
There is no point, we don’t exist for a reason, we’re just a thing that happened in the universe by random chance.
That’s not an inherently bad thing though, heck, the concept of “bad” isn’t even “real”, it’s just an invention we came up with.
But I digress. We must find out own purpose and meaning in life, it won’t be handed to us. Think of the journey as a fun ride with no rules, there are no gods, the universe doesn’t judge you, you are unique and weird and amazing and can interact with the universe in ways no gigantic star or powerful black hole ever could.
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.
