The problem I run into, more than any is an understanding of how futile specific paths are. I know I’m not going to chase a career to meaning, or a relationship, or even having kids. I feel like those are the big ones that most ordinary people go for.
but it keeps going, the litany of pointless destinations. I’m not going to chase a religious philosophy to meaning, and in fact all of religion is created to give a sense of grasping towards meaning, without actually providing any destination. You’ll run that treadmill for as long as you believe that there’s something at the end of it. Relatively young, I found there was nothing.
So then you often end up running into the empowerment self help type. I feel uniquely qualified on this, because I’ve been described as one of the most self aware persons most people meet. The empowerment type of self help makes the case that if you just get in tune with yourself, with what you need and want, that somehow that is a path to meaning.
Again, I think we’re dealing with that faith thing, as long as you think you’re on a path to meaning you can endure any amount of time or pain waiting for it.
I know myself really well, is the point. I know how to meditate, as well as a few other lifestyle hacks that end up being called coping skills. I know, in certain specific ways, what I want. What I struggle with is getting them, specifically because I’m different and stand out in knowing all the above techniques are nonsense. So is what is within me, because the secret to toppling the empire of mediocrity doesn’t lie within. It doesn’t lie anywhere, it has yet to be invented.
Which is where I’m at; everything as far as the eye can see is either pointless, meaningless, or futile. There are things to want out there, but there are so many false paths and dead ends it is functionally pointless to try.
It’s all nonsense, every bit of it from top to bottom of human scientific achievement, religion, philosophy and any other attempt to justify being here. It’s imaginative nonsense, and for many years I was able to distract myself with that imaginative element, but at the end of the road there isn’t anything. It’s not even a subpar reward, there is no reward, and so human behavior which relies heavily on some reward is unable to cope with the world we live in.
So the best advice I have, and the advice I don’t know how to take is this; find a lie that’s really convincing. I believed in self actualization for a time, just as I believed in science and religion for a time. Absent my own desire for it to mean something, it doesn’t. If meaning is something you have to imbue an item with to make it meaningful, then it’s shifting the blame onto the individual for everything being fucking pointless.
It isn’t my fault. I’ve tried every lead offered so far, when I say it’s nonsense it’s because I’ve worked so hard to try and make it not be nonsense.
2 comments
To an extent, I think everyone here and everywhere else struggles with finding meaning it. For the longest time I’ve always struggled with it, more so when I was a kid than now. Now I try to achieve my goals regardless if the fact that it’s meaningless. So lately I find my sadness comes from falling short there rather than how pointless it is. I don’t know you just seem to know where everything stands. I hope you are able to find something that gives you peace and give you meaning, even if you believe it to be pointless
Yep every path to happiness is ultimately pointless. No matter what you may acquire or achieve, it leads nowhere because we are infinitesimal. Elon Musk with all his kajillions will face the same grim reaper as a homeless dude under a bridge. Same goes for philosophers and idiots. I think that’s why religion was invented: a convenient catch-all that tells us, Yeah this life is pointless but uh…. umm…. there’s ANOTHER life where you get the prize!
fuck that, man. Honestly of all the religions and philosophies ever conceived I think the only one that came close was the part where Jesus says the point of life is to be a servant. afaik that’s the only time a major religion spelled it out: “fuck your selfish happiness, you’re here to do a job”
that I can get behind.
But the key is to dump all selfish needs and that’s a tall order. Our instinct is selfishness, that’s the root of survival. So only very very very few rare exceptional people are able to divest themselves of the self and apply themselves 100% to service. Hell even Mother Teresa had grave misgivings at the end of her life when she began to question if there really was ‘a prize’ in the next life. That was her failure, there is no prize, there is no next life. Either you believe in your work here & now, or just accept the pointlessness of it all.
(or the 3rd option of numbing yourself to the point that you don’t care)