Venting Is existence pointless

[Darkover]

Everyone is aware of their own mortality and the fact that not long from now, no one will know you existed. But I'd like to hear what other people think about the subject.

I have been giving more thought to the futility of life recently. No matter what we do, all will be lost at the moment of death. All the knowledge, skills and lessons learnt throughout life are all wasted upon death.

You may be a person who makes a considerable difference to later generations (for better or worse) and you may be remembered for these things by the following generations. But given a long enough timeline all your actions and those that remember them will be forgotten (taken to the extreme - when earth is incinerated by the sun once it has used all of it's fuel). Even if the effects of your actions in life are still felt by those that have no idea who you were, or what you did, does that really matter? as far as I can see it doesn't.

Some aspects of their lives may have been influenced by you, but what sort of achievement is that? not much of one in the face of all that was lost when you died and the fact that the people you have influenced are just existing themselves without any real ultimate direction or goal. Is the goal here to somehow have a tangible effect on following generations? it seems quite a hollow and pointless aim.

There will be no record of most of us in a short amount of time, no one will ever know we existed or what we did. Does it not follow then that life is quite futile? no matter what you do, even if it is relatively significant, it will still not really matter.

I suppose to continue the discussion one has to ask what would be a potential goal or purpose to existence? and I have no answer for that. Perhaps that means that there is simply no purpose, life and existence really is pointless and futile. So I wonder why it is that we thought there should be a purpose at all?

It is at this point that I think existence/life takes on less of a special place in the hierarchy of natural phenomena and the universe. It would appear we exist merely to continue to exist. There is no goal or purpose, we just continue living for the sake of living.

Some will undoubtedly reply to this with "The purpose should be to improve the quality of others' lives" or something to that affect. But this rings hollow in light of the above. It is just life perpetuating life for the sake of it. No truly worthy reason or goal.

What are everyone's thoughts?

 

[Forever Sleep]

What difference will it make to you- when you're dead- how many lives you impacted? Depends entirely on what you believe I suppose. Whether you believe that we can experience anything after death to even know. Plus- whether that is what life is supposed to be about anyway.

I think everything is so individual. Some people desperately want to achieve in life and become famous/infamous. Others are perfectly happy to live modest, quiet lives. The only time they're going to be unhappy is when they don't achieve their aim. Either someone who desperately wanted recognition didn't get it. Didn't do Van Gogh much good to be so highly praised after his death. On the other hand, there have been cases where people have been catapulted into the lime light because of something random and, they hated the experience.

But no, personally, I don't think it matters. My Mum was a relative nobody. She had an average job and an average life. She died when I was 3. That still matters to me. It will continue to matter to me and likely, all the people that still remember her until we all die off. It would be simply bizarre though if the entire world mourned her or anyone else forever more.

Maybe a handful of people will be eternal. Through their work/legacy/documented history- Elvis for example. That's kind of rare though and, it's not exactly personal. It's maybe limerence in a way- adoration/obsession of a person from afar that we only think we know.

Really though, the experience of life is going on individually billions of times over. What and who is important to you doesn't matter at all to someone else. Do we need to all agree for that person to actually be important? Surely not. It's nice if maybe a handful of people value us or, what we've done but, anything more is kind of unrealistic to hope for for a lot of us.

Plus, does our self worth rely entirely on what other people think of us? Both while we're alive and after? Sadly, to a greater extent, maybe it does. We need people to value what we do at work in order to pay us and not sack us and fame relies on having fans. I still think it's largely down to what bothers the individual though. Only they can actually answer whether their life feels meaningful to them- regardless of how other people see it.

Really though. I think this all boils down to- does it matter what you think and feel? What any of us think and feel? I'd say- yes. That's why we have things like laws to prevent people really hurting one another. Because, our own experiences of life matter to us while we're alive and we have to recognise that right for other people. Whenever they lived and, whoever was important to them. It's more the feeling itself- rather than what the feeling is about. We have a developed sense of being able to remember and appreciate other people and their achievements.

Plus, even if no one actually remembers who created the first wheel, we all benefit from their ingenuity. Maybe we can't all be that clever and revolutionary but, heigh-ho.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Life / existence is pointless .

Nothing matters .

We will all die anyway .

And the older people know the decades fly by so it will be soon

Life is meaningless for many reasons on top of reasons.

What that we do today will matter in 130 years? 10,000 years? A trillion years? Nothing.

To me the only thing that matters is avoiding constant unbearable pain, extreme suffering or extreme torture



Nobody is taught any thing real . Wouldn't it make sense for people to be taught what am I , what is life , how does the brain and memory work?

Imo every time I talked to humans in the Internet or IRL people have no clue of any of this for example how memory works. I don't get it why people are not curious enough how the brain works to read a book in that or several . The information is out there for now.

For example memory is not what people think it is .most think it's like a video recording and that everything is there .

Reconstructive Memory | Encyclopedia.com

RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORYSubjectively, memory feels like a camera that faithfully records and replays details of our past. In fact, memory is a reconstructive process prone to systematic biases and errors—reliable at times, and unreliable at others. Memories are a combination of new and old...

www.encyclopedia.com

 

[nihilistic_dragon]

Life has no meaning. Even when I was religious, no one gave me any good explanation as to what the meaning of life is. Now I dig nihilism.

 

[sancta-simplicitas]

I believe that existance in itself is fundamentally meaningless. Every member of a species exists for the evolutionary purpose of survival and procreation, which is also meaningless because the only outcome procreation leads to is another individual that exists for no other reason than survival and procreation. That being said, I believe that humans have the ability to create meaning from where there is none. After all we were the ones who invented the concept of meaning in the first place. I personally tend to find meaning in creating things with my hands, nurturing other humans (or animals) and engaging in various forms of art. On a universal level, these things are fundamentally meaningless, on an individual level they aren't, because I myself have assigned meaning to them.

Regarding the part where all your knowledge and skills just cease to exist in the moment of your death, I don't think that's fully true. Humans share their thoughts and skills all the time, sometimes without being consciously aware of it. I like to believe that those things spread. A tiny, little thing can have a ripple effect beyond our immediate comprehension. For example, in 1982 an American guy figured out that :) looks like a smiling face if you tilt your head to the left. Fast forward 42 years and humanity has collectively created a whole new language for the second time in our collective history, what makes it even more interesting is that it's universal. That has never happened before (at least to my knowledge) and it all started with just one person. So there really is no waste to acquiring knowledge and skills in my opinion. You never know how it's going to affect the world. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But it is likely to spread beyond you.

 

[chester]

I think I've used this analogy in another thread, but I like to go bring it up.

Video games are pointless. You don't achieve anything that's worth anything in real life (I'm not talking about professional gamers who make money). You spend time and effort on practicing skills, solving puzzles and fighting opponents for absolutely nothing. Technically speaking, not only do you not gain anything, you sacrifice your most valuable resource - time. Not to mention that many good games are quite expensive.
And yet, hundreds of millions of people worldwide play video games. Why? Because they like the experience and the satisfaction it brings. They don't mind that playing a video game is objectively pointless, who cares? Games can be difficult, they can make you frustrated, but it's the satisfaction of overcoming these difficulties which pays off in the end when you see the end credits.

That's precisely why I used to love my life. It didn't matter that there was no point. I wanted to live it. Now I feel I've done my part, the credits rolled, there's no more game I'd like to play. I'm done.

I don't believe having an impact matters a lot. I mean it may matter to humanity, but it won't matter to the person who dies. As Woody Allen said:

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.​

And I would agree with him, if I still considered my life worth living. But I've reached a point in which irreversible damage has been done and the suffering will never be outweighed by anything that could possibly happen.

I think the bottom line is: yes, existence is pointless. But when your life is good, it doesn't matter. It only matters, when your suffering makes you want to quit. If there was a point to life, then maybe it would still be worth to grit your teeth and wait for natural death. Otherwise, I don't see a point in prolonging the suffering.

 

[davidtorez]

I don't believe there is any cosmic meaning to existence or human life . At most, people can find certain things meaningful to them on a purely subjective level. So like the original poster said, i also believe existence is ultimately pointless, noone will remember us in the next few decades/centuries. Most of our lives are spent ameliorating our suffering. We eat to avoid the effects of being hungry and starvation, we have hobbies to avoid being bored . We drink to avoid being parched. We have romantic partners so we don't suffer loneliness . All of life is about avoiding suffering and fighting entropy. Definitely better not to exist in the first place if you ask me.

 

[glossble]

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life, the meaning of life is that which we choose to give it
Of course, if we look at it from an evolutionary perspective, the purpose of human life is survival of the species and reproduction, to pass on genetic material to the next generation, which is boring af

I agree with Ethical Hedonism claim that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth. So maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain is the ultimate goal of life. Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain for oneself or others are the ultimate expressions of ethical good. Suffering is more negative than pleasure is positive, suffering is the stronger of the two values. So if there's no pleasure or more suffering than pleasure in life, life isn't worth living anymore ┐(⇀‸↼‶)┌

After all, life is what you make of it, this may sound depressing, but it also gives you the freedom to decide for yourself and come up with your own meaning

 

[zaxxy1810]

It is clear that from the perspective of this dimension, existence itself is absolutely meaningless with all the listed arguments. If we accept that there can be some other (perhaps immaterial dimensions) of existence, things are quite different. Therefore, if the death of the physical body represents the absolute completion of existence, it is completely meaningless .In the event that existence continues in some way even after that, either in another dimension, or by rebirth, the purpose of existence here would be to gain experience for the sake of perfecting and maturing the permanent self that continues existence even after the death of the physical body.

 

[Darkover]

the purpose of existence here would be to gain experience for the sake of perfecting and maturing the permanent self that continues existence even after the death of the physical body.

there is no process of developing or moving gradually towards a more advanced state after death it's the end of you for all time

 

[zaxxy1810]

I stated it as a possibility and assumption, I respect your decisive position, but you have to understand that there are simply no decisive answers to questions of this type, because possible factual facts are currently not verifiable for us. approach.

 

[derpyderpins]

Mine isn't. Sure I'll die someday and be forgotten and the world will keep spinning but every day I spend experiencing this life - especially with my wife - has some sort of point to it.

I'd say it's up to the individual, although people can accidentally have a "point" to their existence outside their own perception. Plenty of people on here who claim their existence is pointless have had a positive impact on my existence - which is not pointless - therefore giving their existence at least some incidental "point". (Not saying I'm all important, they likely impact others in a similar way. This is just my experience.)

 

[Reticent Being]

To me, Life is about creating challenges and surpassing them. Then looking for more challenges to enjoy. Even the act of listening to music follows this pattern. If a song is too simple, no one wants to hear it. If it gets to a point where the challenge is impossible to deal with, it's not fun and life is pointless.

I will add... even the idea of passing down my genes through reproduction doesnt make sense. Eventually, my exact dna composition is going to fade away by like four generations. It'll be 50% random bits of "me" to 25% and so on. Then if i have some horrible condition [that i never planned for], I'll be shamed for having children. Plus, i can be replaced by a robot/technology anytime so my human life cant be that amazing.

 

[sserafim]

To me, Life is about creating challenges and surpassing them. Then looking for more challenges to enjoy. Even the act of listening to music follows this pattern. If a song is too simple, no one wants to hear it. If it gets to a point where the challenge is impossible to deal with, it's not fun and life is pointless.

I will add... even the idea of passing down my genes through reproduction doesnt make sense. Eventually, my exact dna composition is going to fade away by like four generations. It'll be 50% random bits of "me" to 25% and so on. Then if i have some horrible condition [that i never planned for], I'll be shamed for having children. Plus, i can be replaced by a robot/technology anytime so my human life cant be that amazing.

What if you don't want any challenges? I don't enjoy challenges. I just want to LDAR all day and chill. I don't want any stress and I don't understand people who want responsibilities or challenges. I want a nice, stress-free life

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Life is meaningless but acknowledging this is meaningless to me as I never cared about anything in life to begin with. There honestly isn't even a single thing in life that I care about. I don't care about education and knowledge. I don't care about making a difference. I honestly don't understand why normies even expect me to care about these stuff when I was born against my consent. Whilst other people get existential depression over life being meaningless (which it is), I simply just don't care as I never wanted to be alive in the first place. I feel like an alien as everybody seems to care about something to the point where they expect everybody else to care about something too but I simply don't care.

 

[QteStimBnnuy]

I mean, everyone will die. Yeah it's meaningless for what we do, as everyone will die and existence in general is meaningless by default. Though the way our brains and minds work, generally we create our own meanings for ourselves and our lives, so on. Do what we want, nobody has to change the world, not everyone should. Not everyone is gifted with great passion or ambition

But if I can't look into the future and like anything that I see or even enjoy doing anything right now because it's meaningless in that sense, I may as well fade out right now

 

[Pluto]