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?
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’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.
it could be anything.
But you have to actually believe it. So the trick is to find your purpose, as much as it is to make it up. There’s something in you that wants to come out… or maybe not!
Anything?
Whatever’s important to you.
It’s important to me that I have no goal or purpose, and I will focus on making that come true no matter that.
I promise that I will die. Even if it takes the rest of my life!
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?
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
life’s like minecraft. you set your own goals and then you pursue them.
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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.
Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s going to die. Come watch tv.
Morty?
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.
But you are here now, so live a good life and enjoy it while you can. Maybe try to help others do the same. This is all we get, so use it to the fullest.
This. “It is a cheap generosity that promises the future as compensation for the present.”
Why does there need to be a point?
“There’s no point living, so you may as well die” is so last decade. “There’s no point dying, so you may as well live” is where it’s at
“We’re all going to die someday. Might as well do what you love doing” - Alex Honnald. Free Solo (or something like that)
There’s no point in living, but make sure you take a couple of the bastards with you when you go down.
Life is the point, this one
Why do you need reward in a second life for the first one to matter?
Wait, there is nothing after second life? What is the point of second life without third life to give it meaning? /s
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.
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.
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.
there is no point. simply try to enjoy it
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