Your most fundamental motivations are inherently irrational/instinctual, but once you know what they are you can pursue them more deliberately. Nobody can decide for you what the meaning of your life is, you have to discover it through experience and introspection.
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
You've got to outlive your enemies
The point is there is no point. No higher order. We're an accident of physics.
There is no inherent goal or point in life. You get to decide. You get to give your life meaning.
It can be hard. Sometimes, material conditions like poverty, working conditions or social pressure make it hard to find meaning. Sometimes, you can loose the meaning, like when you loose a loved one. A good society should help empower all people to give themselves meaning. Sadly this is not the direction many countries are taking nowadays.
But despite everything: You are ultimately empowered to create meaning for yourself. Nobody can truly take that away from you.
It's the everyday drudgery, miseries and annoyances that make the good times worthwhile. Just like you never appreciate the sun more than in a place that gets very little of it.
I currently live in a country that enjoys a very high standard of living and where people really do enjoy the good life. Yet weirdly enough, a lot of the locals are depressed and keep complaining. Why? Because they don't realize what they have, because it's their everyday normal.
As for what's the point of living, if you don't want to fall into the easy fallacies of religion, I suggest you simply enjoy your life while you can. You were born with a finite number of hours on this dirtball and they're ticking away, so make sure you spend as many as you can with your loved ones having a good time. Because when the clock stops ticking, it's over.
Enjoy the ride.
There is no point. The point is that you experienced life at all, the most rarest thing in this universe perhaps. Most people donβt even stop to think how amazing that is. Going outside and smelling fresh air, drinking water, laughing, crying.
Try playing disco elysium
Live your life its the point of living. not working all day in the best days of your life.
Your time its all you have. don't waste it.
...or do ! but knowingly !
what else can you do? we are because we am
What do we owe to each other? For coexistence without inherent meaning in an afterlife, is the only source of moral good the social contract that we've made with each other to coexist peacefully? What are the bounds of that contract? What are the terms of our coexistence?
In my book, it doesn't have a purpose, everything only matters for a brief moment in your life. "This too shall pass", for better and for good.
Worms entered the chat
Learn. Evolve. Improve one's mind. Understand more of the universe. Gain a greater understanding of one's place in the universe. Grow beyond what we understand and comprehend existence at this point.
There is no point. This life is what you get. It's up to you to make something of it.
First existential crisis? There's isn't one. Once you make peace with that fact then you can overcome the existential dread of oblivion and move on content in the understanding that nothing you do matters in the long run, and focus your energy on something else.
If a movie is going to end is it worth watching?
There is no point, you make it yourself. And plenty of people manage to catch a glimpse of happiness because there's plenty to be happy about.
If there's no point, why not have fun?
To make evil men and women powerful.
Plenty happens after you die. You're just not there for it.
It's up to you to create your own purpose in life.
In my view, connection with others and the happiness and joy we can find in that is the reason for living.
It's what makes the world so terrifying that there are so many broken people who just want to hurt and dominate others and have no care for depth of connection. Because they are wasting their lives on accumulation of power and are painfully obviously deeply sad and broken people.
Sam Altman has his own issues, but he's dead-on when talking about someone like Elon Musk:
βProbably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy,β Altman said. βI donβt think heβs, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.β
So find people, find connections with them, make your life about your connection with others. That's my suggestion. Love is scary, but also freeing. Will that be a struggle with the obligations we face? Sure, but not impossible, especially if you do your best to set clear boundaries and focus on your family and friends as opposed to the soul crushing job you work to be able to take care of yourself.
One of my favorite films is Dead Man. It's a "buddy movie" about the importance of friendship and the unlikely places we find it. Two men who have been rejected by their respective societies find friendship, trust, and kinship in each other. I think this may be worth a watch for you.
If something happens after we die, whatβs the point of it all?
No matter if anything happens after death or not, or what happens, we can not know and we donβt seem to be able to comprehend it either way. So we can not know if what we have got is comparatively good or bad. The only thing left is to make the best of it. Because why not?
I prefer not having a meaning of life.
Imagine having a real purpose. Then the question would still be "why", but you'd also have that obligation to do.
Whatever you decide to make of it, which is an incredibly beautiful thing.
The point is to pass on your genes.
Lol I got sterilised at the age of 23. Guess I have nothing left to live for π€·ββοΈ /s
That absolutely is not the point I have made and determined for my run at existence lol
Hell yeah!
I have procreated and passed off my genes, but it's bullshit to tell other people that's the point of being alive.
You gotta do what you feel is right. If nothing feels worthwhile, make the best of the ride!