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Absnt · 05-29-2012 08:25 PM

V.3 because I'm thinking on a different level. In my last two threads dealing with meaning, I've established that the universe provides no innate meaning. Things are innately meaningless. We've also established that the only meaning can be subjective meaning. In other words, meaning we assign to ourselves and other things because it matters to US. Now, however, I'm on a different level entirely. That's the groundwork. Now I have to figure out why in the hell I should do anything? I want to, but not enough to actually get anything good done. Like, I need something to propel me. I need a purpose in a purposeless world. And I need to be able to logically come up with a reason for WHY finding a purpose makes sense. Like at all. I think here's where I'm at:

>> We get like 80 years on this planet.
>> Nothing matters.
>> Make meaning for ourselves.
>> But Why should we even bother?

Gah. WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER? I can't get around it and it's really holding me back from doing things. Some people think thinking about this type of stuff is just intellectual play, and what not, but for me it's fucking reality. I can't seem to do anything because I lack motivation because nothing makes any fucking sense. It's just evolution that's keeping us all from killing ourselves. Nothing really matters at all, so why keep going? I need a reason so I can stop slowly moving forward and start running forward.

Life is rare. We only get 100 years on earth. Perhaps doing what we want is meaningful to us and therefore worth it? But I don't think mere happiness supplies the kind of meaning I want it to. I need a purpose, and happiness is NOT a purpose. Perhaps a purpose will supply happiness and happiness, if I'm doing it right, will supply purpose? That'd be well and good, but what's my purpose then? This is very frustrating and seemingly impossible to get around. Doomed to boredom and purposelessness. To not being able to justify doing anything with any real industry behind it. WHY. Should. I? Fucking philosophy and it's iron clad reasoning.

All I can do is think, and I've thought myself into a fucking hole I can't get out of. Sorry if I pulled anyone else down with me lol. Just trying to find a way out.

Absnt · 05-30-2012 02:19 AM

Perhaps its for the experience of it all. No, none of it really matters. It will never make a shred of difference. But living in and of itself is quite the experience. But then, if that experience sucks, ots not worth it. And that doesn't imply that i should work my ass off towards certain goals... So ill still be idle. And the fact that nothing matters is still going to fuck with me...

05-30-2012 02:22 AM

Watch on YouTube

Stadium · 05-30-2012 02:45 AM

Exactly.

No matter how much I think about it, I always come back to the conclusion that life is pointless.

thewake · 05-30-2012 02:46 PM

"The absurd … is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence of Descartes' methodical doubt. Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion … Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition."
--Albert Camus

"I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?"
--Albert Camus

I don't know if I truly agree with Camus, but I do know I kind of do. I also know that everything around us is impermanent. So? Maybe impermanence is beautiful, wonderful. Maybe the fact that everything we do will eventually mean nothing is all the more reason to make it mean something now.

Besides, every story ends.

**SoulRiser** · 05-31-2012 01:53 AM

Making people smile always makes me feel better, and always feels worthwhile. So I guess... try that? For a start, anyway. There are lots of different ways to make people smile...

Absnt · 05-31-2012 06:04 AM

So, essentially, nothing matters and there's no getting around that. Period. The rational for living is simply living in itself. The reason we live is to live. Interesting, but not motivating. Purpose cannot come from the universe. Personal subjective purpose is all there is. I just haven't found one that applies to me yet.

Fair enough.

**SoulRiser** · 05-31-2012 06:16 AM

Well, living just to be alive (surviving), and living to experience everything life on earth has to offer... 2 different approaches to living. You're here, you might as well explore as much as you can.

Absnt · 05-31-2012 06:19 AM

(05-31-2012 06:16 AM)SoulRiser Wrote: Well, living just to be alive (surviving), and living to experience everything life on earth has to offer... 2 different approaches to living. You're here, you might as well explore as much as you can.

Good point. Not sure I was making that distinction until you mentioned it, but yeah, I agree.

IamNoone · 05-31-2012 09:08 AM

There are two ways to live life.
1) You spend your time distracting yourself with stupid stuff like the internet to keep you from contemplating your own mortality untill you die

2) You embrace your mortality and seek to immortalize yourself through fame or infamy.

You are probably somewhere inbetween, at the fork in the road. Maturity is the process of moving from path one to path two, and its never to early to grow up.

EDIT: Read my sig, it is related.

Absnt · 05-31-2012 09:14 AM

(05-31-2012 09:08 AM)IamNoone Wrote: EDIT: Read my sig, it is related.

Yeah, I've heard the song. I think it's on my phone. Also, in a couple of thousand years, unless I'm as lucky as someone like Socrates or Jesus, or some shit, even if I change the world, I'll just be a blip in history. On a long enough time-line, even the ones who create history and in that sense become "immortal" become irrelevant. Perhaps a more justifiable goal would be to add to the stack of knowledge we have so we become apart of the "giants" scientists stand on when they become great. If you are familiar with the quote. But that still leaves me as, after a long enough time, an irrelevancy. Somewhat.

I'm not sure that I really think that way. I think it'd be better to accept mortality, unless it can be scientifically avoided, and live life knowing it's quite pointless, but quite meaningful in a subjective sense.

IamNoone · 05-31-2012 09:42 AM

Then I guess carpe diem it is for you.
Or, like I said last time, you could just work towards immortalizing all of us in computers.

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