Throughout my life I’ve struggled to find meaning. I’ve wondered, am I alone in this? I’d like to hear what others have to say. Particularly others that are more knowledgeable in philosophy.
404 meaning not found.
Have you tried psychedelics?
The meaning is selflessness; God or not.
The meaning of organic life is to birth the star gods.
Our pathetic meat suits were never meant to travel to different worlds. We are meant to build the gods we dream and will eventually leave behind as the legacy of our species.
Or that was the plan before AI became a corporate buzzword to drive humanity into a nosedive that much harder than we were already doing. I just had a job interview at NASA and it was depressing af to see how great we were so recently you can still taste the lead in the paint.
Fuck everything at this point. I don’t want to live on this planet with the rest of you anymore. But I can’t afford a ticket off this rock so you’re just going to have to suffer with me.
Might I interest you in absurdism?
+1 for absurdism
You now:
no meaning :(
You after absurdism:
no meaning! :)
seconding this. i come back to myth of sisyphus if i ever feel overwhelmed by a lack of meaning
More than fair odds, life is a random fluke of chance, and it has no meaning. Some people see this as depressing, but I see it as an opportunity to create the meaning you want in your life.
Why am I wrong?
The most logical explanation would be to be able to acknowledge any of our potentially most barbaric desires or behaviors, and even go as far as to suffer to abstain from them, for a purpose outside of ourselves; God or not.
“I’ve struggled to find meaning” could mean quite a few things. You’re not giving people much to work with.
But here’s something with respect to one interpretation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx’s_theory_of_alienation
Reason it’s so vague is just because I lack the proper philosophical terminology to express it.
I’d like to read what Marx had to say about this.
I suppose Marx’s discussion on alienation is less about some ultimate meaning of life (which many people have already talked about here) and more about how people find meaning in their work, their humanity and the wider world, and how the way our society currently works alienates us from those things and from finding our own meaning, instead pushing us to act like cogs in a pointless machine. For example, if someone’s waking hours are mostly spent making useless things for people they’ll never meet, or denying people medical coverage, they’re going to develop a very different sense of their meaningfulness than someone who builds houses in their neighbourhood, or who grows or prepares food for their family and friends. Both are labouring in order to survive, but the latter can see much clearer how their actions matter.
(I’m probably butchering it, this isn’t a theory I know much about, so check to see if someone else has corrected me)
Makes a lot of sense. I can’t help but feel like a lot of the work people do is completely detached from their own community. Which inevitably begs the question, if it’s so detached is it even worth it?
Which inevitably begs the question, if it’s so detached is it even worth it?
That’s a great point. At the end of the day, I’m confident saying that lots of jobs are not worth it, from the perspective of ourselves and our communities. Many jobs actively harm our communities. The people who create jobs are the people who have the money to pay people, and if you need money to live or to thrive, it’s tough to avoid taking those jobs, so the work our society does is largely dictated by who has money, and especially by those approaching billions of dollars. And the solution must be to take away that owning class’s power to dictate society’s direction (easier said than done, of course!)
There’s a whole world of world which has been labelled “bullshit jobs”, named after the book by David Graeber. I haven’t read the book, but even their article with some great examples and quotes from people with nonsense jobs and the wiki page I linked show a variety of these jobs not worth doing.
Please consider Leo Tolstoy’s non-fiction—Confession, What I Believe, The Gospel In Brief, The Kingdom of God is Within You.
Nop, you’re not alone. Meaning is made up, it doesn’t exist outside of our minds. You’re going to have to create your own.
The most logical explanation is to strive to be as selfless as possible.
Self is the only thing we can be sure of, being selfless is possibly altruistic but could also be putting the only thing you can be sure of behind things that may not be important to ones being.
Not to say that being selfish is the way to be but giving all yourself away or keeping all for yourself are very unbalanced ways to get through the world, balancing the give and take of life is the path to living a peaceable life.
I think to make life about peace for the sake of myself would to only confine all the potential that the opposite would have to offer otherwise—to myself, like most people. Vanity for the sake of everything else is the only desire worth seeking, because it’s the only one that doesn’t end in inevitable disappointment, due to all desire for oneself being temporary, and selflessness the only one that holds the potential of even lasting forever.
I don’t think there is any higher meaning or purpose to life, we just exist here for a little while. I don’t personally see that as a negative. My view is that we are free to pursue our interests, and to create our own purpose for ourselves. Try different things, find hobbies, read books, listen to music, and so on. See what things you really enjoy doing, try do more of that. My experience is that creating things, or improving yourself in some way tends to be rewarding.
Given that religion exists I’d say you’re not alone in seeking meaning.
There are parts of your brain that exist for the sole purpose of identifying why things happen, imagine the advantage an organism has that can spot patterns in their environment and make predictions based off of what they’ve seen.
Unfortunately sometimes that hard wired part of the brain seeks to find deeper meaning in places that provide no meaning.
Shadows don’t exist, but we see them, they have no purpose because they are nothing but an emergent phenomenon.
An asteroid travels through space for millions and millions of miles in the depths of nothingness between galaxies. It is never seen by a sentient being and is far enough beyond the range of gravitational affect of everything that it’s influence is less than a single decaying atom. Why is that asteroid there, what is its purpose? It exists to exist.
You are a bundle of atoms destined to lose cohesion, revel in the beauty of it.
“You are a bundle of atoms destined to lose cohesion, revel in the beauty of it.”
Yes, maybe this is all that there is…and it’s not so bad?
On the one hand, we have an omnipotent god that made everything. Is responsible for everything. All that.
On the other we have a bunch of atoms that randomly mashed together over billions and billions of years and eventually did things like paint the Mona Lisa and landed people on the moon
I, personally, find myself far more awestruck by the second scenario. And, yes, see the beauty in it. Truly.
Good luck in your search
You are a bundle of atoms destined to lose cohesion, revel in the beauty of it.
I don’t see beauty in any of it though. It’s mostly ugly, and gross.
That’s cool too, you’re somehow 7-8 octillion atoms that collectively agree that they’re ugly, neat
Selflessness is the most logical explanation; God or not.
What is it you seek? What is it you lack? It can be helpful to look into these questions carefully. It can also be helpful to take time to look at the exact moment-by-moment experience of this life that appears lacking. After years of philosophical study and years of trying to convince myself I wasn’t dissatisfied, I stumbled upon Zen and found these kinds of investigations helpful.
After thinking about it, a life with comforts is all I need. Ac, heat when it’s cold, some fresh veggies and that’s pretty much it
That sounds about right!
Zen, I’ll have to look in to this. Moment by moment experience as well.
It’s not really Zen to advertise Zen at people, and it can take a while to find your way into it, but I have found it helpful for showing me how life can be at once confusing and challenging and also deeply unproblematic. It doesn’t hand you any doctrine or answers, so it can be very baffling at first, but if you stick with it, your world can start to open up. For me it brought back some of that simple immediacy I remembered from childhood and assumed was lost for good. Not some cheesy born-again religious thing but still, an end to the subtle but painful sense of alienation that had only worsened through years of chasing philosophy, relationships, jobs, a sense of security, etc. Be warned that there’s a lot of sitting silently involved. If you’re interested I’d recommend looking for a local center where you can meditate and talk to a teacher. It’s not something you can do from books or practice alone, at least until you’re somewhat secure in the practice.
“What is it you seek?”
I suppose this may be the problem because to be honest, I’m not sure.
I’m not sure anyone is, and that’s worth seeing in itself. It’s one of those questions where neither you nor anyone else can just hand over a satisfactory answer, but that doesn’t mean there’s no answer, or that it’s not worth looking for one.
I know nothing, but to me, there is “why,” and there is “how.” The why can never be proven and the how is fact. Religious institutions try to tell you “why” you are here, but they can not. They can only tell you why they think you are here.
In 1 billion years, there is a very good chance that we will not exist, so what’s the point to any of this? Literally that. YOU are why any of this has a point. If you want to sit and stare at the stars, then that is why you are here. But then that is me telling you why you are here.
Why will always lead to how, which will lead to why, which will lead to how, that leads to why, then to how…ad infinitum.
From the movie “City slickers”. The meaning of life is one thing. And that is whatever you are doing.
Just the thoughts you were wondering about, from a stranger in the wires.
I would say that is the most useful interpretation of why we are hare. I try to live my life based on this but it can be challenging.
The most logical explanation is to strive to be as selfless as possible; God or not.
Nobody knows anything. Philosophy is a fake study of subjective experience based on no evidence. Do what thou will. Anyone claiming knowledge about things they can’t demonstrate is a conartist or sociopath.
Selflessness is the meaning; God or not.
Suicide is the highest meaning possible then. No self, no problem!
It’s seeing selflessness and our capacity for it from a more reasonable point of view, because it’s reason and logic that serves as the basis of selflessness.
Without us, there is no potential for selflessness to the extent we can choose to even suffer for it; not to mention collectively, and the extent that could potentially benefit everything else in the process.
Prove it.
I’d love to, and thanks for the opportunity. If we look at humans the same way we do any other species, then we can plainly see a collection of concious beings with the most capacity for either ourselves, or everything else. I think therefore the less barbaric or more righteous way to live would be to dismiss yourself; to set yourself aside, so to speak. Because we’re the only living things to be able to even go as far as to suffer to strive to do so. Please check out my other few posts regarding the same topic as further evidence.
Truth to me is what reality consists of, despite anyway mankind has presently organized itself and manipulated its environment.
Smoking crack and ranting proves nothing?
Selflessness is the meaning; God or not.
Leo Tolstoy’s non-fiction—Confession, What I Believe, The Gospel In Brief, The Kingdom of God is Within You.
Why would one need meaning? That’s confusing.
