I’m pro optimistic nihilism. Nothing has any inherent meaning, so I have the privilege of assigning my own meaning to things.
Kinda similar to my epiphany during the comedown from a bad shroom trip.
There is no meaning to life, but there doesn’t need to be one to enjoy it.
100% this, my friend.
And if more people could get their heads to that healthy state, the world would be a better place.
I would think that believing things matter is much more uncomfortable than believing they don’t
The concept of meaning is ill-defined. It’s basically a feeling, and there’s nothing more to it.
What do you mean?
It turns out that finding out there wasn’t any meaning in the world meant a lot to some people.
The universe might not care, but we do, and that’s the important part in my book
We’re part of the universe and we care, therefore the universe cares through us.
“We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.” -Delenn
This reminds me of my own thoughts on the peak year of cinema: 1999. We got:
- the Matrix
- American Beauty
- Office Space
- Fight Club
- Being John Malkovich
The inciting incident to all of these movies is basically, “I’m a bored white guy feeling existential dread.” They’re all great films, but if late-90s cinema is any indication, a huge swathe of Americans had virtually no problems back then.
Or to put it another way: as of 2000, Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over
Fermions matter
Look at a starry sky, see how many stars there are. Each one is a nearly unimaginable number of times larger than the planet you live on. Each one may potentially carry an entire history of civilizations far beyond what humans may ever achieve.
You feel irrelevant? Each star is all of that and yet if you raise your hand to the sky you can completely cover several of them from your point of view. That’s how big you are.
All meaning is defined from within, the fact that there’s no one keeping score is what makes it matter.
If you need a diety or the concept of karmic balance in order to do what you know to be right then I’m not sure you really believe in it.
I was surprised a old coworker went to church one time he mentioned it as he seemed like not the type.
I asked him why he goes and he told me he would probably kill someone if he didn’t go to church and learn what was right or wrong and it was super weird to me that some people have like no morales/empathy built in
“The stars are matter, we’re matter, but it doesn’t matter.”
Catching strays over here
Matches my thoughts on the whole “what if this is all just a simulation?” thing too. Until that has some tangible effect on us, or we find a way out, so what?
And free will. We feel like we have it. That’s all that really matters as far as that debate goes unless you’re the kind of jackass trying to rob someone of their accomplishment or absolve yourself of terrible behavior.
We might not even exist - we could be a simulation or even just the imagination of some higher plane being. The absolute only thing that we can be completely sure of is that something is real somewhere, at some level.
Same sort of thing. Sure, my entire existence could be the product of a delusion of some higher order being merely keeping the results of my senses consistent with what I consider “real life”. All my previous experiences could be complete fabrications done convincingly enough, including previous musings on this.
So fucking what?
Until any of that becomes provable or has direct impact on the experience I have as “real life”, it’s nothing more than extremely boring navel gazing.
Non-falsifiable philosophical wankery dead-ends and a waste of energy to seriously consider. Better ways to spend what I pErCeIvE as time.
The absolute only thing that we can be completely sure of is that something is real somewhere, at some level.
is that a joke?
There is no ultimate purpose in a cosmic sense.
We can define one if we want to, but it will always be subjective to our own opinions.Maybe we are an effort of the Universe to save itself from its ultimate fate that it is dying a slow heat death or ending in the terminal maximum entropy?
The intelligence of life can be determined as its ability to sustain itself. In the same way the intelligence of the universe can be determined as its ability to sustain itself.
IDK, maybe in billions of years some life form will be able to save the universe?
