There’s no such thing like a purpose or a meaning in life, in fact the whole universe exists without a special reason or purpose. People invented the notion of “purpose in life” so they could cope better with other people’s mistakes, selfishness, cruelty, or because they envy other people’s realisations and thereby they feel less worthy to society and need something to make them go on. It’s a form of self defense, I think. So why is it bad to want to stop carrying traumatic,bad memories or incurable diseases with you? Because other people would suffer from losing you?
We are conditioned to think we have value, so people should suffer from losing someone. In reality you’re just a cocktail of genes, a random combination of patterns and habits every human can have but it just happens you have them and it just happens for others to be around you.
You are a number. They say “five people died in a car accident”(for example), who cares what they were, monsters or angels, suffering or happy, they matter because they were pieces of a greater puzzle who now should rearrange itself to fill the void. And the void fills itself, one way or another. No need for a drama, humans,unless you are selfish and need that person for your selfish needs (like it’s the only one that could..), or unless you feel guilty. And of course you feel guilty, you should have done this, you should have done that…Don’t you?…
Thousand of people die every day, it happens that you know of them because of the media or friends and you feel compassion for their suffering, but do they matter to you? Like you couldn’t live without them?
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You might be interested in ‘The specter of the absurd: sources and criticisms of modern nihilism’ by Donald A Crosby
What can I say? Perception is reality. Everything is just a meaningless bunch of atoms in objective reality, sure. But we can’t perceive objective reality, only subjective reality, where weird stuff like pain and pleasure and feelings of purpose really do exist and matter.
“The moments follow each other;
nothing lends them the illusion of a content or the appearance of a meaning;
they pass;
their course is not ours;
we contemplate that passage,
prisoners of stupid perception.
The heart’s void confronting times’s:
two mirrors, reflecting each other’s absences, one and the same image of nullity… “
EM Cioran
@restlessmindseeks
Since the philosophical death of God philosophy has been trying to come to terms with the philosophical nihilism that followed.
If we can’t objectively know reality what is reality?
Are we doomed to always be pissing in the wind and chasing our tails?
Yes and Yes. so what?
Meaning and value when observed will allways become illusion.
But what does that change? Why should that realization influence our lives in a any way?
Can a person live happily without appeal to hope and meaning and could living that way create a contented life?
Instead of aiming for a meaningful life ought we aim for a contented one?
Would it surprise anyone that those who experience traumatic events in their life like cancer are statistically happier? That those that are diagnosed with a terminal illness tend to embracing the life they have left and live them happier?
The terminal illness or traumatic event actually allowing them to experience meaning!
(Begs the question of what the role of having a story that is accepted as qualifying as a story has with regards to happiness and meaning.)
We know meaning can only be an illusion, but we also know that knowing is not possible so meaning is neither real nor illusion it is something else.
For those that expeirence meaning was it they experience?
What we experienced when attempting to ansewer and understand this meaning is that this something is a something that articulation and measurement kills and negates.
Why do we measure meaning the way we do, must we measure it at all?
Happiness, altruism, Love also have the nature of this something; they all disappear when we grasp and attempt to understand and measure them.
We might conclude that they don’t exist so why bother, that desire is suffering, the best we can do is surrender and become slaves.
But what if it’s our grasping that is suffering? Can we still aim for what we want without suffering?
What would life be like if we learn to fall with grace, that when those something’s are experienced, we experience them, that no matter what happens we keep the door open to be surprised?
Even our attempt to understand, even as it negates itself, could be a joy?
The process of learning better to do better can that be enough for a contented life?
@restlessmindseeks
I definitely understand your post, I believe. It all seems so inconsequential when you really think about it, every feeling and emotional response now appear as selfish or petty. What I want to tell you is that this more of an immortal paradox of a mortal existence, that is to say if it is true there is no meaning to anything and our value is little more than a grain of sand on a beach, that is all the more reason for us to enjoy our short torment in this form. We are bound by nothing, have no responsibility nor worth, and may be dictated by our primal urges that logically, as with all social animals, will lead to a society. (I do not say “bad” or “good” society because after all, there is no such thing, there is only what is) This of course frees you from any kind of guilt or anger, but unfortunately I feel as though it also eliminates happiness just as blindly. I’de love to have an answer for you my friends, I really would, but alas I struggle with the very same question. Instead, I ask you to try something for me, as I do not feel I am capable myself: Believe you are inherently worthy, that your mortal emotions and petty squabbles are not the cruel torments that you must suffer before the ultimate freedom of death but are instead a righteous chord of life resonating within you. No one is a number, the death of five thousand people is not inconsequential, just as your death is not inconsequential; instead, we, the animals, the rocks, everything are all part of the same energy (whether that takes the form of matter or not) and when a human dies, it is just another part of the cycle. It is not said, nor is that human lost forever, just as you will not be. None of us are ever lost or alone because we are all just energy, floating through the universe, whether we take the form of energy or matter, it matters not; we are all together and one. I hope that didn’t sound too hippy-ish or religious (not that there is anything wrong in those beliefs, just not my view), I just think it is, by extension, the next logical statement to your post.