If you fundamentally despise your own existence, than any and all actions are equally purposeless. It makes no difference to drive your car into this building and die or accept an offer for a great job and marriage proposal. Every action is equally meaningless, because you know all roads will lead back to the emptiness inside you — the bottomless void inside you which you’ve been burdened with filling: handful after pathetic handful of pleasure and hope and commitment, knowing throughout all the toil that it is a fruitless endeavor.
Knowing all the while the only thing keeping you standing is the framework of reasoning your mind has built to justify why the task continues and to justify why within this task you entertain some notion of fairness and commitment.
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This is worthy of pondering for awhile. Thank you for writing this.
Even when you have the things you think you want, you are still confronted with the emptiness inside you that has not been cured as you imagined. And then you are confronted with the reality of time and scale. From their you can only be paralyzed into unemotion or irresistibly excited into hysteria.
“Knowing all the while the only thing keeping you standing is the framework of reasoning your mind has built to justify why the task continues and to justify why within this task you entertain some notion of fairness and commitment.” Is this fairness that of us staying alive or does fairness mean something else in this context?
I just find it interesting that in addition to existing in an absurd world we are additionally expected to abide by whatever arbitrary values surround us.
And bear in mind that these values are demonstrably prejudice
why do we commit ourselves to fleeting world that cares only of a slip opportunity
I like the way you think AgentQ. While most of life might seem pretty pointless-for me the pleasures within it make it worthwhile.
I realize that’s probably superficial to most but that’s all I want. Traveling, the company of beautiful girls, good food, books, movies and so forth are satisfying in themselves.
However, the price I feel I have to pay for that enjoyment is very high. Generating an income (and all that entails), dealing with all the stresses in your life, health issues, getting older, etc.
In my case, I’ve gotten very little pleasure and much more boredom, stress, pain and suffering. If I didn’t have people I cared about in my life I probably would’ve ended it ages ago.
While my life has improved somewhat I still have a long way to go. I’m hoping that I can be in a good place financially in a few years so that I can enjoy the rest of my life (I’m middle-aged).
I would not deride you, Soda. I think it is perfectly natural to want those things. For me personally it is more a matter of not having enough motivation to generate that momentum of life which animates the majority of us human primates to continue to act within our lives and strive for various goals and achievements.
I am such as human that if i do not see the end goal i have no ability to move at all. and only god knows how many thunderstorms cloud my vision and blur my sight from any hope of this live being worth more than a damn
There are people i care about. But i dont know why i care about them. The connections which bind me to other people seem always to be on trial…up for questioning, dubious, uncertain.
I’m intelligent enough to comprehend that it is mostly a maladjustment of life and a missregulation of emotions and inappropriate ascription of cause and effect in my life which leads to my conclusions, but understanding a problem rationally doesn’t not mean anything about solving it if it is a matter wholly in the arena of heart and spirit, and these are things i simply do not have or am not able to admit within myself.
Honestly i think i would just like to die. i am tired and there is really no purpose to this.
Good to know-yes I don’t think there is much else in life to strive for aside from those ‘pleasures’ that humans consider to be desirable.
I am sorry to hear that you lack interest and motivation to go after such pursuits but I suspect that you have intellectually dismissed them out of hand.
Very intelligent people have a tendency to figure it all out in their minds (but then also lose out on the pleasure of simply experiencing it). Therefore it makes it not worth pursuing at all and then you stay in the same place. Hopefully, I’m not too far off the mark.
I also suspect that you can talk yourself into doing anything but it could be your emotional state that holds you back and makes it feel pointless to try anything to change your situation.
If by your “connections being on trial” means that you argue with these people which makes you question your relationships then that is certainly a problem that we all face.
Also many people out don’t act out of rationality, but emotion. Which means they are prone to misunderstanding and also making logical errors which exacerbate the problem further. I can definitely relate there.
However that is something we must be able to navigate within our relationships. If people are acting out of emotion around you then they won’t listen to reason so it’s best if you can give them some time/space and when they’ve cooled down, to logically explain the situation to them.
Also it’s important to be able to admit when one is wrong since sometimes the fault lies with us and not others. Though normally that’s the first thing I make sure to rule out or own up to if I was to blame.
I can’t blame you for how you feel about wanting to die. I think some of us have reached a similar conclusion. I’ve suffered a lot in my life and have decided to no longer endure pointless misery and pain the future.
For now I’m going to keep going for the reasons I mentioned above but if my life gets a lot worse then I’ll also head for the ‘exit.’
This is true, I think. Maybe it’s possible to work past this cycle. I don’t feel capable. Good luck breaking free of your own cycle.
This sounds a bit like the “we’ll all be dead when the sun burns out so why bother doing anything” mindset. There’s some logic to such thoughts, i.e. seeing existence as black or white, all or nothing, but it’s much more complicated.
Instead of going into a long dry philosophical journey, I’ll just drop a quick analogy and let everyone glean what they may.
Prison. Suppose you’re imprisoned for life. You hate the system, you don’t agree with the rules or the rationale behind your incarceration. You “fundamentally despise your own existence.” By your rationale, there would be no point in keeping your cell clean, eating, talking, exercising or even getting out of bed to sh^t.
I would say if that’s truly how you feel, as a prisoner or in life, then you know what to do. Prisoners kill themselves every day with far fewer resources than we have.
But if for some reason you decide to keep living, then to counter your philosophy, I would say the ONLY acts that have any point are those acts which improve the quality of limited life you have. Whether in prison or in life, exercise, read books, paint, write, make friends with the guards even though they are a^^holes because this will improve your quality of life. And that makes sense, unlike willingly laying in a pile of your own feces yet too unresolved to kill yourself.
That was not the meaning of the original post, though i understand it seems this way to you.
You seem intelligent so I assume you know good writing summarizes the thesis point in the first sentence: “If you fundamentally despise your own existence, than any and all actions are equally purposeless.” Then backs up that thesis with anecdotal statements which you did. I’m confused but not enough to care, really. (Not an insult, I just don’t have time for miscommunications)
Thanks for taking time out your busy day to compliment me.