I’m not depressed (at the moment, well maybe a little), just feeling philosophical.
Edit: the idea of this came to me because I was pondering why people fight so hard to beat diseases and live a few more years. What are they planning to do? Why exert effort just to be here longer when you don’t have a reason?
Just why?
Life has the meaning you choose to give it.
Killing landlords and slave owners.
There’s no meaning to life. We are an accidental self sustaining chemical reaction that has lasted for billions of years. There’s no creator, no higher power, nothing waiting for us when we die.
We’re also about to go extinct and are way past the window of being able to save ourselves. You and I are among the last humans that will ever exist.
And IMO that’s extremely comforting once you actually internalize it. Focus on making you and the people around you happy in the short time you’re here, don’t worry about the far future because it doesn’t matter.
It’s a bit ridiculous to me why you’d think that we’d be the last humans to exist. Habitable zones will keep existing after climate change kills 99% of the population. Even full-scale nuclear war will leave most dead, but not all.
The remainder will probably keep reproducing and survive. Even 0.001% of our current population would likely mean humanity would continue.
What else do you think would make humanity 100% extinct?
I’m not trying to convince you on this, but this is my personal belief:
There are runaway reactions already being triggered in the atmosphere that will make the planet hotter and hotter without stopping or slowing down for millions of years. Where are you going to live when the minimum temperature is 60C or higher? A difference of 30C or so is enough to make life impossible for us but isn’t even a rounding error compared to the temperature range of a planet. Look at Mars.
Will it happen in the next few centuries or even millennia? No. But those timescales are miniscule compared to the life of the Earth or the lifecycle of an entire species.
We will be the cause of not just climate “change”, but pretty much a life reset. Like the asteroid. EVERY animal larger than 10 or so cm will die. There’s no way out of it. This is the great filter.
TBH, yeah, that’s what I consider the point of my life - amusing myself until death. Whatever I do will not matter in 100, 1000 or 1000000 years which is all just a blip in the scale of the universe. So basically, I’m just trying to have fun and help other people have fun. Of course I realize that I’m incredibly privileged to live a life where I don’t have to worry about too much and I can think about fun and not surviving. I experienced difficult periods in my life and the answer to this question was much, much harder back then.
Rational hedonism rocks.
Why exert effort just to be here longer when you didn’t have a reason?
gosh i dunno perhaps dying is fucking terrifying?
This is the first post I’ve ever seen that’s gotten twitter-style ratio’d. There are more comments than votes.
Yeah, interesting, isn’t it?
Being a good friend, finding what makes me happy while in some way better off, and trying to do those things.
Failing that, doing very bad things to very bad people.
it’s your life, you decide. You can also decide not to give it meaning.
Philosophically, I think the pursuit of truth and the exercise of compassion are worthwhile endeavors.
But when that’s too abstract, I remind myself that I have people who rely on me and benefit from my presence in their life. I work to make the world around me better than it was before, so that others can immediately, and in the future, have better lives.
Life is what you make of it. Which is why we are leftists, we’d like more people to be able to have lives that are actually fulfilling to them.
On a fundamental level there is absolutely no meaning to life, it happened randomly over great great spans of time.
On a human level the meaning of life is enjoying it to the best of your ability.
That’s the beauty. Given that there is no goal, you are able to define your own.
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are we just amusing ourselves until death?
Yes. That’s arguably neither a good nor bad thing; a life with a prescribed meaning or prescribed expectations would be scary in a different way.
There’s been philosophers that got famous arguing it’s actually great and we should be excited, even, but “your mileage may vary”.
he idea of this came to me because I was pondering why people fight so hard to beat diseases and live a few more years. What are they planning to do? Why exert effort just to be here longer when you don’t have a reason?
There is a thing called quality-adjusted life years. To make decisions about certain things like transplants, and to measure the effectiveness of health policy, they absolutely will factor in how much time you’ll get from treatment and how much it’s worth living.
Nations like mine will also help you peace out gracefully.
are we just amusing ourselves until death?
Yes, exactly that. There is nothing afterwards, and the fact that we’re clinging to the surface of a rock flying through an infinite universe where we could be wiped out any second and never be able to do anything about it does rather make everything seem rather pointless.
And whilst you could be depressed about that, there’s still a lot of pretty awesome things to do that amusing with. Nature is beautiful. The world and its geology is beautiful. Evolution is beautiful. Science is beautiful. Maths is beautiful (if you have the sort of mind that appreciates it). Learning about these things and experiencing them is beautiful. And so on. Even most people all over the world are pretty good most of the time, despite what some other people want you to believe.
And honestly, accepting there’s no greater purpose is remarkably freeing. When something happens, it’s just bad luck. It’s not some greater power punishing you, it’s not because you did something wrong (within reason - getting hit by a bus because you crossed the road without looking is really pushing the concept).
