Asklemmy

Maybe the point is to find your own meaning of life.
Like my reason to continue may be different than yours (once found)

For me it’s succeeding in ways that are important to me. For instance for me it was getting sober from drugs and stable from bipolar. And then using my experience to help others do the same. The point is to help others have a life that is stable.

There is no point, no purpose, self replicating cells appeared and evolution led to where we are now.

I like to recall some wise words of Christmas in these dark times:

Here’s the deal, newbie. You can stuff your stocking with shiny little toys from now until you grow some testicles, but until that stocking is filled with friendship, loyalty, love and devotion, well.. it’s just plumb empty.

And no, you can’t purchase those things at Laura Ashley. And no, you can’t win them in the red book giveaway extravaganza. And, gee, I’m sure if these aren’t things that you can wind up and watch spin for eight hours.

Let me make this exceptionally clear. Christmas is about love. You can’t live without other people’s love. Not during Christmas, not ever.

So go spend this time with your friends and family. And if they laugh at you, laugh with them. And if they laugh at you again, hit them and go find some new friends. But for the love of god, jesus, Mary, and Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat, don’t ever ever forget this, newbie. You have to give love to get love. So start giving. Now.

you are the worst splinter cell agent i have ever seen OP

The meaning of life is to give life meaning

It has same meaning as summer breeze, or warm rays of sunshine. We make things to be more complicated than they really are. Enjoy experiences you are given, live thru pain, be a human. Existence is a weird, yup.

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.

Essentially I think you're right, we are amusing ourselves. The point is that we seem to be built to do that - we come with a nice set of compulsions that give us happy feelings when we do certain things, and if those feelings are an illusion so what? They feel real.

Point? Like most gifts, there is no point. You just got it.

Thats how I treat my life: as a gift. Because what makes me me, existed as matter for eons. Inert. And by an insane oddity it got "infused" with life, thought, wonder but only for an extremely short while. And after that short period it will go back into that inert state. So i do nice things which are within my reach. Things that makes me feel good. And modern (western) society gives us a lot of time to do that. I know it doesn't always feel like that but if you look at it historically we have the most off time ever.

Nice things can be anything. Maybe meaningless on the Grand scale of things, but I like making my family happy. I love cuddling my stinky old dog(well, not that old), I hate gardening but love the outcome of it. And yes, I love wasting time on movies, reading, gaming, theater. Or hikes. Or travel in general. The smell of the sea. The feeling of being in a forest. That first time you played "The last of us". that one specific movie. Or read that one fantastic book. That feeling when you finished it. Or when you went to that insanely funny comedian. Or just hanged out drinking beers (or whatever )with friends or colleagues. Its all fantastic.

And most of the times I like my job and try to forward my little society with it. (I work for a municipality) Within my own little means.

So... meaning? Of life? Experience shit. Make up your own mind.

And please: don't use big tech socials. They're made so you don't feel good, get addicted to them. Get you hooked. It and it's goals (sell ads!) are evil.

I've been inert for eternity. I will not waste that little time I have. Experience something. Anything.

To explore this existence.

You have total free will. You can choose to follow or break the laws, you can go do drugs or be a hobo somewhere if that's the life you want to live.

Life is just your will to do something. And if you lose the freedom and will to do anything, you're, in my mind, already dead.

"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone's gonna die....come watch TV"

You get to create your own meaning. It becomes challenging when your meaning isn’t the default societal milestones, in the western world it’s - college, promotion, marriage/kids, house, retirement, death. If that progress doesn’t resonate, then it means that you have to connect to yourself on a deeper level to figure out your purpose/your life theme.

My purpose is organizing my internal world for self alignment, I do it through self expression using art, language and diagrams. I live for self expression.

Whatever you want it to be. If that's nothing, cool. Trying to find some external thing to bestow a meaning upon you is religion.

Absurdists unite!

That's the fun part! It's meaningless! All of it. It means you can do anything you want to do!

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).

Why do you believe life has meaning?

I personally don't believe life has any meaning, other than the one you choose for your own life. It's rather terrifying and freeing at the same time. If there is no meaning, and if there is nothing else, no higher power, then this is it. You get the time you get, running around as self aware stardust, and then it ends. Everything that is "you" flips off one day and there is nothing but oblivion as the stardust you were slow seeps away. But, that also means that you don't have to live up to anyone else's idea of what your life should be. You can make your own path, your own meaning, and fuck the people in funny hats who try to tell you otherwise. You are you and no one else gets to define what that is.

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?

If this is all there is, if oblivion is on the other side of the door, I'll scrabble for every day existing that I can get, thank you very much. Sure, I have my own beliefs and things I would willingly accept oblivion for. But, if those aren't on the table, I'm gonna keep on existing as long as I can. It's one of the few things I'm pretty good at.

Procreation and survival. That's what all living beings have as an instinct and that's the only meaning behind it. It's merely a mechanism to prevail and improve.

The sad part of existence is not having the choice. I literally wouldn't cared if I died tomorrow. I just don't want my friends and family to be sad. That's literally the only thing keeping me here.

Life has no meaning. People will tell you it does, to give it meaning or to follow a religion, but it's all in service to deal with the fear of death.

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.

I am the universe, and therefore the universe has a purpose in giving me consciousness for a lifetime. We get a lottery for what life-form we get created in (whether we're a human or a fish or a leaf) and most of that life will go just chasing the continuity of life (consuming energy, burning energy, reproducing), the rest is all made up rules of engagement in society (school, work, career, politics), all of which is "Leela" - a very believable illusion, like a game of monopoly or a very engaging play or a movie - believable, but not absolute truth. So back to the universe and why it gave me consciousness in the first place? It's just so that I can experience the universe, and see the beauty and oneness of all universe - not just the stars and the planets, but also the living forms of it - the flowers, the bugs, the pets, the wildlife, and all of the other humans on this planet, each one a unique fucking marvellous magical version of the same universe.

The “meaning of life” is dependent on the scale.

On an intergalactic scale, practically nothing, unless you’re someone involved in some way in intergalactic travel (like Musk, potentially). On a planetary scale, your life as a political or corporate leader or humanitarian could impact generations of others. If you’re a doctor or lawyer, your life may impact tens of thousands or even generations of people. These are scales based mostly on space.

You could also look at a scale based on time. If / when the planet explodes, maybe someone like a Musk will be the only one alive today who genuinely has an impact on the human race long into the future. If you want to look at the time span of a country’s existence, someone like a Julius Cesar, a George Washington, or Adolf Hitler will have certain meaning for hundreds of years.

Your life’s meaning may yet to be realized. The point is to live your life day to day in a manner that has a positive impact on the lives that surround you. If you don’t have the impact of someone like political or corporate leader or someone like a Greta Thunberg, maybe the point of your life is to be a supporting player for someone else.

It gets difficult to find meaning if you live an isolated life. Without a family of your own, a fulfilling career, without traveling to engage with others outside your regular week’s schedule, it’s easy to say your life is meaningless. Because you haven’t made an attempt to give it meaning.

Your life doesn’t have to have meaning. But if you’re asking this kind of question and expecting someone to tell you there’s some inherit “meaning” bestowed upon you at birth, you’re not going to get a hopeful answer. That’s not to say you need to go out and look for it. It’s to say that “meaning” comes from the impact have on something, by choice or otherwise.

It doesn't have a meaning. "Meaning" is just a concept we made up to forever have something to chase after. You can endlessly ask "why" so it's like chasing one's own tail. It's the motor of the mind, fueled by the desire to finally be still.

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.

are we just amusing ourselves until death?

IMO, yes. But just calling it "entertainment" is a bit reductionist, I think.

But yeah. And I don't see anything is wrong with that. Having a cat is cool, video games are fun, and good company is fulfilling in a powerful, indescribable, way.

To experience that kind of stuff, and for others to do the same, as much and as often as possible, is what I live for.

Yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff in the world. But I'm able to make my corner of it quite liveable. And not just for myself, but for friends and family.

I can't save the world, but I can decide to make the sliver of it that I'll interact with throughout my life, a little bit nicer.

The part I struggle with, is finding a way to make living, that makes things better, not worse. Jobs that don't contribute towards people having less and less time for the things that make life worth living, are non-existent.

Understand that most of the answers you’re going to get on Lemmy are self righteous. “There is no meaning of life.” As if they can also know there isn’t. I encourage you to look at the philosophy of this question over the ages and how others have answered it. You won’t find many other thoughts on it here since they believe that if you can’t see it, it’s not true. We know so little in all of existence that it’s incredibly arrogant to think we can answer this with any certainty.

Why exert effort just to be here longer when you didn't have a reason?

gosh i dunno perhaps dying is fucking terrifying?

the bad news: there is no inherent meaning. the good news: this means you get to create your own. each of us do! the harsh reality is we exist against our will. nobody chose to be here and the "purpose" appears purposeless. if you ask me, there is no such thing as destiny and there is no afterlife for a soul to ascend to, so the existence you are experiencing here on Earth is profoundly unique and should be treated as your one and only. you might spend your entire life searching for a grand meaning, but the saerch is part of the discovery, because along the way you are progressing as a person, and aging and maturing through life, so you're not remaining stagnant and unchanging. it's okay if you never truly "know" who you are or where you're going--just keep doing it. you'll end up somewhere, you'll become someone.

This is the first post I've ever seen that's gotten twitter-style ratio'd. There are more comments than votes.

No meaning to life besides try to live your best one. We’re all just earthlings floating on a space rock sitting in a giant void surrounded by more exploding stars