I mean, there is no meaning in nature, it was man who invented it, and often it appeared because of a scarcity, for example, the point is in a beautiful woman, because you are unlikely to find another one as beautiful, right?, or can you find a person who will support you and accept you as you are, like your loved ones? The examples are not the best, but I hope you get the idea.
In addition, I will say that about a year ago I watched the film “The Seventh Seal”, and now sometimes I feel in the place of a character named Antonius Block. I dismissed the inevitable by refraining from suicide as a teenager, thinking I could find the meaning of life, but what was to be expected, nothing worked out. But especially now, how shall I put it… in the age of AI, it is impossible to escape the truth, self-deception no longer works, at least for me personally.
Chess Game with Death:
Meaning is whatever you want it to be. You have the free will to create your own meaning in your life.
That being said, reading your post, I mean no disrespect, but please seek professional help. This goes beyond “finding your own meaning” and dives into “something is wrong”.
I agree with this.
The general surface level answer to your question is, we have the opportunity to invent our own meaning and purpose in life, and fulfill it the way we wish.
But the real response to your question is, please talk to a professional about this, you need help.
And can we not consider that each of us can so arrange his own particular life so as to make it meaningful to himself and to those he influences? And in that case does not all of life and all the Universe come to have meaning to him?
Surely it is those who find their own lives essentially meaningless who most strive to impose meaning on the Universe as a way of making up for the personal lack.
–Isaac Asimov, Knock Plastic!, 1989
I see a lot of responses mentioning optimistic /absurdistic nihilism, so I’d like to share the egg.
Fun fact: the author also wrote “The Martian”
Why does life in and of itself need to have meaning (beyond the obvious “survival”? Why can’t you, with your abilities of thinking and reason, assign your own meaning to it?
Subjects grant meanings, objects are assigned meaning. I create meaning for myself because I am a thinking agent, setting goals and tasks for myself to accomplish based on my own values and decisions. Just because an event ends doesn’t undermine it’s importance or meaning while it’s occurring.
And even if there could be some object or set of circumstances that assigns meaning, being assigned some universal or objective meaning would be oppressive, undermining my own subjective meanings to be replaced with some forced or necessary objective. Just because some of us have an intuitive desire to be assigned an objective meaning due to a desire for our lives to follow a narrative structure with closure like fiction doesn’t mean otherwise there is no meaning. If anything the meaning is more important if it comes from you and isn’t assigned to you.
“Here’s squire Jöns. He grins at Death, scoff at the Lord, laughs at himself, and leers at the girls. His world exists only for himself. Absurd to all, even to himself. Meaningless to heaven, and of no interest to hell.”
I think the problem is, is people trying to bring meaning to life in general while ignoring what purpose they could bring in their life. Every single life that’s been lived, has been tunneled through the eyes of just one life, per person. Some people’s scope via influence, has brought purpose and meaning to the lives of others. Other times, it comes down to what you do with yourself, that brings its own meaning.
And people are leaning on all sorts of things to bring some sort of meaning to their life. Religion is a large part, because everyone fears as to where they’ll go after death, they don’t truly know where they’re going or whether there is even an afterlife, so why not believe in a God or another deity that has all these versions of hells and heavens? It brings a level of comfort knowing that there is some purpose.
But still, I think people just miss the mark on finding purpose in the general sense of life, than focusing on finding their own purpose by making it as they go.
I aspire to live to see a future much more futuristic than science could have predicted
Corollary-- that doofus, cool-kid guy on the right is probably going to do something stoopid, likely to bust his own argument…
Well, there’s different degrees of “matters”. Obviously if he causes harm to himself or others there will be consequences that matter! This is specifically referring to anything intrinsically mattering on some sort of cosmic scale.
Hmm…
Please feel free to go on, Samus…Sir Pterry put it better than I ever could:
“All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
I guess this all kind of takes me back to when we arguably got too smart for our own good. That our intelligent fear of the unknown became so outsized that we started to try to bend nature to our own will, create gods & religion, becoming a race of headcases searching for ever more elaborate solutions to problems of our own making.
~12Kyrs or so we first jumped down that rabbit hole, and now the ground is rising up rapidly to show us how that all works in the end.
We tend to anthropomorphize everything and think that everything works like our minds do, including reality itself.
There is meaning in life. It’s what you make it. The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
I would like to reply with a meme, but I can’t find a suitable one. Although…
Bear VS Man
The new Tekken looks good.
My life has meaning. It has meaning for no other reason than I say it does, and no one gets to decide that for me. I do not purport to speak for your life, or the lives of those I care about, or my cat’s life, or my neighbors, the birds, trees, grass, germs, or any other living thing. I do not assign meaning to society, civilizations large or small, or things that have been built to benefit me. I can only speak for my life. And I say that my life has meaning. Nothing that has happened to me, nothing that has been said, done, built or destroyed, can take that meaning away from my life without my permission.
A life has no meaning in the same way that a blank piece of paper has no meaning. I give that piece of paper meaning by writing, sketching, coloring, folding, tearing…and perhaps ultimately destroying. Now that piece of paper has a unique history imprinted on it. It can be shared, displayed, hidden, or thrown away. But the whole reason I did anything to the paper at all was because it was meaningful in the moment for me to do so.
Optimistic nihilism is the way to go. We make our own meaning.
Invent your own meaning. Don’t listen to people who assert you should live life a certain way to fit their meaning.
Step 1: find your gifts
Step 2: share them with the world
Might I also suggest DMT
I’m glad there isn’t a meaning to life. If there was a meaning, then I’d have to be doing that thing or be failing at existence. If no act matters, then I’m equally valid for doing my goofy nonsense as I am working hard or whatever.
WDYM? The meaning of life is to cuddle dogs. 🤷♂️
cats*
Murderous birds*
What? Oh… More for me then!
Nice try doggo, but I was warned about this.
On the Internet you never know if someone is really a dog…
