meaninglessness

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by birch, Nov 30, 2015.

  1. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    Have you noticed life is actually meaningless or pointless? It doesn't matter if the species is perpetuated or not. For what?

    Nothing really means anything. The only things that keep us going is a ploy of nature of survival and seeking answers of when, how, what, who, where and why which is just a dangling carrot. Even with answers there are further questions. We fill the rest of the time with things we make up to occupy us.

    Even with answers, nothing really changes.

    Take evolution, its just for survival. We've beaten competitors to reach the top of the food chain but we're still chained by our nature. How the heck is a bunch of homo sapiens taking selfies all day better or worth more than an amoeba? Its a joke and circular. All that a more developed forebrain does is assist in better manipulation and cunning for survival. It doesn't make us more moral, sane, nicer, righteous etc. Actually, it just amplifies the worst qualities of base instincts even worse with the 'creative' abilities able to pervert further.

    What higher purpose? What higher meaning? That would only be possible if we could literally separate or make a leap from our roots and truly not one iota of that has happened no matter the appearance.

    Even our pathetic, blind ego thinks we are lucky or better to have vanquished literally other tribes out of the gene pool when, in fact, you can only use, dominate or enslave those who exist. Yeah, that would be you and me. Duh.

    We think we are so fortunate that the dead can tell no tales, so to speak. Yet all the work falls on the living while still alone and trying to figure out our behind from a hole in the wall. We don't know what we are, where we are (truly), what we're really doing or why or what our goals are. We're fumbling around blindly wondering just the same.

    I would think if one were to devise a prank or sentence where you could use the aspect of survival against itself. Well, it would be this. Not only would this programming coerce it to act in accordance while convincing it that is what it wants or is. There are clues that we are not in control and definitely more like a host or pawn of its own parasitic driving agenda but this delusion goes on. These little clues show in extreme cases of self-destructive tendencies such as an addict who is strongly propelled to an action against its own well-being, that it literally becomes a visceral conscious conflict. But just because this is usually in 'unison', doesn't mean 'you', what you think you are, want or driven toward is of your making or necessarily for your ultimate good. Or so you hope or think. Heh heh.

    There is a huge price to survival. Its precarious; we are literally in the dark as to literally everything fundamental (how, what, why) and even may be ultimately striving toward futility.

    Its just a ride or literally programmed to be taken for a ride.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2015
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  3. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Really I haven't, since I'm not dead yet. But thereby even if I was I would still be unable to savor piercing this or another so-called illusion on the flip-side of appearances. Functioning conscious life instead seems to be the only thing that isn't pointless. Since the alternative to being alive / sentient is the absence of all conceptions, empirical entities, and changes presented in the flux of thought, perception, and bodily sensation. IOW, that non-biotic and non-aware state of the cosmos abroad, at least as the anti-panpsychism materialist deems the metaphysical situation to be.

    Humans or their equivalents engender the very idea of this "life has significance" and "life has no significance" dyad, and its fuzzy-less judgment of either one or the other being the case. It's when the individual dies or the whole group of such cognitive creatures perishes that existence becomes devoid of not only that but experiential and intellectual evidence of itself (which it vicariously enjoyed via them, in a figurative sense). Compared to the overall total loss of everything, singling-out the issue of "meaning" from the rest would border on being a trivial observation. Facetiously, a new resident of Oblivion commenting upon arrival: "Why, in death there aren't any rocks and trees and goats and weather patterns exhibiting themselves anymore. In addition to those endless evaluations of life being either meaningful or meaningless having disappeared. Non-conscious organizations of matter are really quite boring as what they are normally like to themselves."

    To refer to significance in terms of final ends, etc. Since countless reference works are a testament to the futility of just about anything trying to elude at least some degree of human classification and understanding (THAT kind of pedestrian meaning). While systematic public outrages and social consequences attach abundant varieties of importance to people, animals, enterprises, objects, circumstances, actions, routines, performances, events, products, art, etc.

    A psycho-social disposition which is indeed hardly confined to sacred or religious traditions. The [generic] objectivist's MOL belief, for instance, seems grounded in an unprocessed or non-represented [mind-less] version of the world. Much as the one of anti-panpsychic materialism, it exists without the assorted properties of consciousness rather than as the familiar phenomenal cosmos which is satisfied at just behaving independently of anyone's will. A metaphysically unrestrained brand which goes beyond objectivity as just cautious inter-subjectivity. A realm wherein there abides "inherently worthwhile or ultimately valuable conditions which bestow value in general to people's lives". [The objectivist's supposed non-contingent and non-varying universals which substantiate life's meaning, common to everyone regardless of personal idiosyncrasies, cultural contexts, etc]

    But if this topic / thread merely rejects the global brand of an importance to life, final-end "meaning", etc.... This would not affect the rival view of a species of subjectivism that considers the objectivist's view to be a vestigial reflex of keeping some lingering services of outdated divine authority around in a non-personhood form. [Most if not all kinds of subjectivism about MOL should probably be unperturbed by such declarations, via their very nature of having discarded a universal or invariable significance for life.]
     
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  5. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

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    Does this make you sad? If so, what are you sad about, the certainty or the uncertainty, the freedom or the lack thereof?

    Arcadia

    Septimus: “When we have found all of the mysteries and lost all of the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.”

    Thomasina: “Then we will dance.”

    I am life, and there is none else.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Yup.
     
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  8. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    It does seem pretty hopeless and pointless from your perspective.
    What is your world view?

    jan.
     
  9. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    That's because the real meaning is in the questions.
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I reject that ultimate meaning or hope are even necessary, I think it's a harmful legacy of religion. It's certainly an interesting question how this all came about, but we don't need to know, it probably won't change anything, we still have to live our lives. And personal hope and meaning are still all around us.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Er...42?
     
  12. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
    creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
    to the last syllable of recorded time.
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
    Out, out,brief candle!
    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
    that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
    and then is heard no more.
    It is a tale told by an idiot,
    full of sound and fury,
    signifying nothing.

    You are in good company, in your existentialist angst.
     
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    16,600
    We don't know how this journey will end. Many may think it is pointless--a wild goose chase after something that doesn't exist. But maybe the whole point isn't the destination but the journey itself. Maybe it isn't about answers so much as the creation of new possibilities--new realities for consciousness to explore. Do we have any idea what the future will be like a thousand years from now? It may be nothing. Or it may be something beyond our own imagining. I think consciousness emerged for a reason. And we are part of that destiny, however vapid and futile life may seem to us now.

    “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

    William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2015
  14. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Every one of us will ask those questions during our lifetimes . Every one of us will decide something that they can understand and live with. Sometimes life brings us down and we become depressed and give up hope. That doesn't usually last for long and if it does you should seek professional help to bring you out of your funk. Just keep seeking someone who does help and if within a few months they don't move on to a new professional. Just never give up hope. I was lost for a great deal of time but after finding the right medication I'm doing just fine. So I'm living proof that you can overcome serious mental health problems.

    That said many times our thoughts about life will change due to things that affect you from time to time so do not worry about changing what you think or believe for everything changes and even if it doesn't that's cool too as long as your view is positive about your way of seeing things. I've saved many peoples lives including 3 children over my life so far so remember that one day you to could be very helpful to save others. If I thought everything was going to end up wasted I would not have saved all those people that I did. So remember to keep on keeping on to see what lies just around the bend or over the hill.

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  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    A meaningful universe is highly overrated. I lived in one of those for many years when I was religious. Life WAS meaningful, but it also made me a miserable and immature fool. I have since learned to live in a universe where there is no preset plot or purpose, and I am freer and happier than I've ever been. The best meaning of all is the kind we ourselves create in how we live our lives. What more is needed than this?
     
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  16. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed. It's roughly the same situation that the gods themselves would be in: Prescribing their own order and significance, since there would putatively be nothing else nomothetical above them, of higher rank when it came to such legislative capacity. Humankind has been dominated by a non-anthropic agency like Nature, but it's a passionless deity that cares nothing about how humans formulate their "ought" systems. [Apart from any native tendencies evolution might have selectively installed in us.]

    This currently godless, incubating cosmos for potential future archailects even offers a kind of sisyphean immortality for the latter's struggling forebears. In the context of the overall worm-version of our lives never disappearing from the spacetime continuum. As if we're like hoary customer accounts kept in the antiquated paper filing-cabinets of a company basement. [Which is to say, if we're is going accept sub-atomic particles and their curious properties existing, then it's a double standard to deny general relativity passing one test after another for decades. Resorting to the "universe merely acts or responds to experimental interrogation as if _x_ it is case", of instrumentalism offshoots, would apparently open the door to denying anything via the same tactic, such as this solipsistic classic: "The outer appearances of other human bodies simply behave in regulated fashion as if they have their own mental processes, like the characters in the external world of a dream do."]

    Now, there is that aspect of being constricted to the same life over and over. But it's not as if one's experiences literally repeat endlessly (the specious "last time" would really be the specious "next time", since the "flow" itself would be a trick of the cognitive relations of that block-universe version of the brain, anyway). Besides, it should be a welcome enhancement to the misery of some of the "life is meaningless" folk already masochistically enjoying its futility and their extended post-adolescent angst or adult goth-hood. Akin to how that bygone icon of nihilism was intermittently tempted to joyfully embrace the Eternal Return, perhaps because it was mitigated by the amnesia. [Eternal Return being different due to it focus on a global scale and its literal take on time flowing, but nevertheless sharing similarities]:

    What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' --The Gay Science

    "Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. - Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon". --Thus Spoke Zarathustra
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2015
  17. Waiter_2001 Registered Senior Member

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    Meaning is the only reason I continue really. If you cannot change something you can discover a meaning to it which is susceptible to change and debate. Hence good can come from the bad. There cannot be one without the other.

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  18. Sam Poole Registered Member

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    The universe doesn't create meanings but humans do. The universe doesn't need meaning but humans do. Therefore, if there is to be any meaning it will be found within us as the only known source of it in the entire universe. Maybe, if they exist, there are aliens that create meaning as well but that, for my part, would be conjecture. The rich source of purpose and meaning you need is an inherent part of you. The real struggle for me was in dealing with the dissonance that came with facing the fact that I have something very valuable that the universe can't provide and that I alone had to create it for myself. It felt artificial and then I came to understand that I'm very real and not artificial and if I create meaning that meaning is just as real as the heat and light coming off the sun and the ground beneath my feet. This was enough for me in that it settled the matter within me with no open ends but this concept may not satisfy the dissonance of others.
     
  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Yes

    LIFE in any size, shape, dumb, intelligent, alien or not is totally meaningless

    Sure you can make a local meaning

    Looking at the gigantic picture how could you conceive a meaning for something which arose from a random haphazard mix of chemicals

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  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    None.

    I find it comforting to know that I am the master of my own destiny, that the universe is my oyster, and that the meaning the world has is what I give it. And, by extension, everyone else too, if they choose.

    Don't you see how freeing - how empowering that is?

    The whole universe is my plaything - and yours too, if you want it - and it will never - if I live to be a million - run out of things to surprise and delight me.
     
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  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    So why do some get bored?

    And some spend a fair bit of time thinking about and planning for where they want to go to enjoy what has been promised to them when they get there?

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  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well, the universe is a long travel. And mostly it doesn't show up at my door and sit itself down on the couch next to me. So there's that.
     
  23. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Why it does not sit down with you. You are not watching Goggle Box

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