The unexpected futility of life

[A human]

Hi. It's been several years since I realized I had lost the hope to find out what would the life had in stock for me, which new faces it would present before me, the hope to discover a beautiful excuse to make me forget about the bad stuff and the futility that I'm carrying along. I don't pretend to tell my story here, but rather throw a question in the air, in case anyone wants to debate about it. My question starts, this I do want to explain, from a pessimist vision of the human raze, but also of life in general, a God-excludent vision. We need to look at ourselves from space, out from time -quite a difficult task, because we are so absorbed by society and we don't get to realize that we humans have built an artificial mental and physical architecture that is just orthopedic-.
We are nothing, our existence means nothing, if we ignore the promises of religion. However, we feed ourselves with the lie that each one of us is special and different. We affirm exhaustively that life is pretty, that we are free, that work dignifies, that our country is the best (each one, his own). What's the point? I don't know where we go when we die, but the thing is that we dissappear from here. We dissappear and the most we can do is be remembered by our following generations in the family, but our image and memory will eventually fade away. Even if we have done somethiing important for society, if we have given something to change the world, something that will make us appear in history books, or we have contributed with something to the arts, it won't matter. History is forgiven throgh the centuries, altough students read it at school. Furthermore, the lifetime of the human raze in this planet is the blink of an eye from the perspective of the whole universe.
My point is, having all of this in mind, how can you even pretend to make your life matter, at least to you? The only reasonable thing to do would be enjoy all the pleasures that the world offers you, and even if you try the rest of the imbeciles of this planet will try to censor you and prevent you from doing it. I don't know if suicide is a solution, I personally don't have the intention to do it. I've already passed that phase of my life, quite some time ago. However, I can't help thinking that I would prefer everything to end as soon as possible. I don't want to provoke it, I just would be glad to see it happen soon. Recently, the most important person in the world for me passed away; the person who made me forget all those facts I just listed. That's why I bring you this question. Can we make our life matter? Should we care? Is death and lack of existence better than this?

 

[Caerula]

It is lots of fun reading your post!

I 100% agree with everything you said but can't help noticing the contradiction that you "personally don't have the intention to do it" yet "can't help thinking that [you] would prefer everything to end as soon as possible".

Before I attempt to answer the 3 questions I would like to say I do not know if life has a purpose and I am more inclined to think that it in fact has none. However more often than not there isn't a single truth for everyone, so I will attempt to generalize what I think others might think:

- Can we make our life matter?
Maybe. No one can predict what will happen in the future. Anything can happen. But is it worth the wait is your third question.

- Should we care?
I assume you are asking if we should care if life has a purpose. If we are just asking this question out of scholarly interests, we have every reason to care. But unfortunately, I think we are asking this question because we do not derive enough satisfaction from life. Living itself is enough reason to live for many people, but we need more than that. Therefore at this point it doesn't matter if we should care... Are you able to prevent yourself from contemplating your purpose?

- Is death and lack of existence better than this?
When we ask this question we are basically weighing the pros and cons of what will happen if we live and what will happen if we die. The problems are we don't know what will happen for sure and what will happen to each person is different. I have to admit I don't know if death is better. Ultimately it is up to each person to decide for him/herself because only him/herself is and should be responsible for and has and should have control over his/her life (sorry that it sounds confusing).

Reading what I wrote makes me feel guilty because I really didn't answer any question at all...... Sorry.......

 

[FullFat]

Hi. It's been several years since I realized I had lost the hope to find out what would the life had in stock for me, which new faces it would present before me, the hope to discover a beautiful excuse to make me forget about the bad stuff and the futility that I'm carrying along. I don't pretend to tell my story here, but rather throw a question in the air, in case anyone wants to debate about it. My question starts, this I do want to explain, from a pessimist vision of the human raze, but also of life in general, a God-excludent vision. We need to look at ourselves from space, out from time -quite a difficult task, because we are so absorbed by society and we don't get to realize that we humans have built an artificial mental and physical architecture that is just orthopedic-.
We are nothing, our existence means nothing, if we ignore the promises of religion. However, we feed ourselves with the lie that each one of us is special and different. We affirm exhaustively that life is pretty, that we are free, that work dignifies, that our country is the best (each one, his own). What's the point? I don't know where we go when we die, but the thing is that we dissappear from here. We dissappear and the most we can do is be remembered by our following generations in the family, but our image and memory will eventually fade away. Even if we have done somethiing important for society, if we have given something to change the world, something that will make us appear in history books, or we have contributed with something to the arts, it won't matter. History is forgiven throgh the centuries, altough students read it at school. Furthermore, the lifetime of the human raze in this planet is the blink of an eye from the perspective of the whole universe.
My point is, having all of this in mind, how can you even pretend to make your life matter, at least to you? The only reasonable thing to do would be enjoy all the pleasures that the world offers you, and even if you try the rest of the imbeciles of this planet will try to censor you and prevent you from doing it. I don't know if suicide is a solution, I personally don't have the intention to do it. I've already passed that phase of my life, quite some time ago. However, I can't help thinking that I would prefer everything to end as soon as possible. I don't want to provoke it, I just would be glad to see it happen soon. Recently, the most important person in the world for me passed away; the person who made me forget all those facts I just listed. That's why I bring you this question. Can we make our life matter? Should we care? Is death and lack of existence better than this?

Whether our lives matter is a judgment call, so it's completely subjective. We may think we did important shit, but everybody else disagrees and the history books skip over us. Conversely, we can perceive little meaning in our lives while our families and society thinks we're amazing. Our actions are seen as wonderful or terrible and people talk about us for years to come. Even in that fantastical scenario, after people forget you and stop reading records of your life, what is left? Our lives do not matter in any permanent sense. We can only ask WHEN our lives matter and TO WHOM, not IF.

As for whether we should care about this, I would have to say the same thing. It feels like a cop out but it's still true for the same reason. You only care about whether your life matters if mattering is important to you. Personally, I don't care anymore, and I don't know why or how I would go about convincing someone to care about theirs. d

The same thing goes for whether life > death or death > life . Unlike some people here, I don't think happy people are lying or deluded. For them, life is definitely better than the alternative. Since I'm not happy and will not be happy anytime soon, death *may* be the better alternative. Either way, none of us can know with certainty because nobody knows what comes after death. It is hard to imagine how one would continue on in any recognizable way after their brain does and decomposes, but there is no data after that point.