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By accepting the fact that life is inherently meaningless, and that the best attribute of being a human is the ability to create and find our own meaning in life.
We give ourselves the meaningfulness in our lives - friends, family, love, duty, creativity, politics, faith, hobbies… anything that we find fulfilling and making life worth living. Even the smallest and seemingly shallow purposes can be just as powerful as the biggest and grandest purposes - it’s all up to us to find out the ones that keep us going and happy. It’s not easy, it never ends, but the struggle to improve and live life happily is a beautiful thing.
friends, family, love, duty, creativity, politics, faith, hobbies…
Half of these things are not something I can give myself. I am not finding friends or love while stuck questioning meaning or purpose. I feel really stuck, like, I am never going to have any deep social interaction until I am like really dedicated to and sharing the results of a hobby or career. And be in the right place, at the right time, too.
Some comments say “you can’t find meaning, create it” - it sounds like a two step process. Create meaning, and then find even more meaning. Oof.
But half of those things are something you can give yourself. Some things might be harder to come by, yes, but it’s the effort that matters. As the saying goes: “it is better to have loved and lost, then to have never not loved at all.” That can be applied to a lot of things because, at least to me, the message is it’s better to have tried and failed than not have tried at all.
To be clear, I was rattling off a list of examples rather than a list of things you need for purpose.
Thank you.
I imagine Sisyphus happy
Every moment of your life spent trying to create meaning, knowing you cannot, is an act of absurd heroism.
We cannot be defeated if we do not admit defeat.
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Partake in sexual intercourse and ingest mind altering substances
If life had A meaning, there would be objectively one good thing to do. Maybe it’d be different for each one or thing, but it’d be ONE thing.
If life has no meaning, we’re literally free to do whatever the fuck we want, for whatever reason we want.
Freeing ourselves from meaning is the final frontier on the self, to true freedom and individuation.
What do you think about utilitarianism?
Easy path to fascism lol
There are far more important things than utility.
That’s not the utilitarianism I mean
I see that it is freeing and I get the appeal, but I find it far more enticing to rage against the dying of the light. Life’s meaning can for example be to help humanity thrive and at least try to work against everything that hinders us as humanity from achieving our goals, science shows the path here. Sorry for the pathos and obviously not everyone’s cup of tea.
I mean, I love humanity deeply. So I feel for me to be happy I have to do something to help humanity.
But that’s literally just because I want to be happy.
Like Stirner said, paraphrasing here, “because I’m an egoist I want to help those around me. Their happiness is mine, and their suffering as well. I help them only to help me”. Truly conscious egoism is to serve humanity. It’s our burden as humans. We were born intrinsically linked to a whole universe of people.
By welcoming it, if there is no absolute meaning, then that also means that there is no wrong answer. Relax if you wanna relax, go for a thrill if you wanna go for a thrill, none of it is failing
Looking for meaning is fraught with error. Creating meaning on the other hand is a more fulfilling goal
Life does not have 8nherent meaning, that doesn’t mean has no personal meaning.
Life is not an idea independent of thought and reason, it is what we make of it.
I find it freeing. If there was an absolute meaning. Something we were supposed to do. For example multiply. There is our “free will” (another concept for another topic) for no use.
So you can do whatever you want, wherever you want and however you want it (with some obvious constraints and consequences).
You can do as much “good” (in your definition) as possible or bad as possible. You can just carpe diem whole life, or you can do something you feel is more interesting/important.
Rebel against the meaninglessness of life.
Why is this so difficult for people?!!
I don’t. But somehow think life would be worse if meaning were prescribed
You don’t. Why do you need to cope with it? All these existentialists saying to create your own meaning but that’s just flawed. Inherently they all believe in and refute Nihilism by their own logic.
More absurd to me than anything. Anyways, is life actually inherently meaningless? It’s like asking if God exists. The only thing we know to be wrong today is to absolutely say one way or the other whether they do or not.
If life was meaningless, then what? If it wasn’t, then what? Which one do you want to live for? Based on the answer to that question, do you want to live at all?
Many people will say no. That makes sense in a world as fucked up as humans have made it. At that point what is the point?
I’d argue that the point is to make choosing to live as easy as choosing to die so that we can answer that question sincerely instead of being coerced into the path of least resistance which is a very animalistic response.
To simplify: if we choose life is worth living, then the goal is to make it worth living for all. If we choose life is not worth living, then NOTHING matters. No more complaining.
Make your choice…
I usually interpret that line of thought as “Life is meaningless, because anything you do does not change the outcome, which is inevitably death.”. Depressing, and I like it.
