Even if I rot in hell, that doesn’t mean life has meaning. It just means that some deity is a fucked up bastard. The only meaning is created, and the only one I care about is my own 😊
Never could be. That said, there is a function to life that is very similar to a meaning, but it’s somehow even less satisfying.
Life is a sequence of self perpetuating chemical processes that occurred by pure chance and were allowed to build in complexity over time. The processes that were able to self perpetuate the best would be the ones to continue, leading to the iterative feedback loop that defines evolution. As they grew in complexity, the replicators not only trended towards mechanisms to respond to challenges to their own existence, they also became better at iterating and improving as quickly as possible. At this point, the first lifeforms would actively improve their own chances, shaping randomness in their favor beyond what pure luck would provide.
Coming back to us humans, we’re effectively driven in the same way as all life: work to exist with the goal of continuing to exist. We exist to replicate and endless sequence of chemical reactions. We work because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to work anymore. It’s not a meaning, but a simple fact. It’s a circular argument that only needed enough lucky dice rolls to start.
This is the closest to objective meaning, but like I said before, I don’t give a shit about living by it. Evolution is a cruel process that designs suffering and death into our lives to maximize that objective goal. Everything we want and desire evolved to point us to action, so there’s no real way to work against it. We’ll just end up at a dead end, or actually help the process advance, so we might as well just do what we find best. I personally favor maximizing human well being over the well being of any larger construct.
Even if I rot in hell, that doesn’t mean life has meaning. It just means that some deity is a fucked up bastard. The only meaning is created, and the only one I care about is my own 😊
These are unironically the two possibile conclusions for the question “what is the meaning of life?”
There’s no objective or purpose, so there will never be an answer.
Never could be. That said, there is a function to life that is very similar to a meaning, but it’s somehow even less satisfying.
Life is a sequence of self perpetuating chemical processes that occurred by pure chance and were allowed to build in complexity over time. The processes that were able to self perpetuate the best would be the ones to continue, leading to the iterative feedback loop that defines evolution. As they grew in complexity, the replicators not only trended towards mechanisms to respond to challenges to their own existence, they also became better at iterating and improving as quickly as possible. At this point, the first lifeforms would actively improve their own chances, shaping randomness in their favor beyond what pure luck would provide.
Coming back to us humans, we’re effectively driven in the same way as all life: work to exist with the goal of continuing to exist. We exist to replicate and endless sequence of chemical reactions. We work because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to work anymore. It’s not a meaning, but a simple fact. It’s a circular argument that only needed enough lucky dice rolls to start.
This is the closest to objective meaning, but like I said before, I don’t give a shit about living by it. Evolution is a cruel process that designs suffering and death into our lives to maximize that objective goal. Everything we want and desire evolved to point us to action, so there’s no real way to work against it. We’ll just end up at a dead end, or actually help the process advance, so we might as well just do what we find best. I personally favor maximizing human well being over the well being of any larger construct.