What is the point in life if....?

[thetwilightzone]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

 

[CentreMid]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

There are more reasons out there, but one of them is that people believe they can make a positive change in the world. Sure, some can I guess, but for the most part it's really cringey to watch ourselves aim for goals that we'll never reach.

 

[RM5998]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

We're told to dream big when we're starting out, and then later we're told to accept that life won't live up to that ideal. Complacency with mediocrity carries the masses through. Ironic that adults appreciate media that glorifies mediocre normalcy as endearing - probably because it makes accepting their own hollow mediocrity easier.

 

[weedoge]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

Really I think life is pointless and meaningless but there are still some things I love about it. Is it really important to have a fulfilling conscious experience? The things I find beautiful will continue to exist far longer than any of us and I think humans are one of the least beautiful things i m sorry to say, myself included. Its our natural condition to be awful...

Um bit of a tangent but anyway, some people genuinely really enjoy life, they tend to be the ones who are "healthily" selfish and know when to turn their backs on people like you and me for their own sake. People who know what they enjoy and gets the brain chemicals pumping.

If you have no friends or real life then yes naturally you will have an awful life usually but for those who manage to scrape some wages together and a stable place to live often find some things they're happy to live for, travelling and exploring nature is a pretty worthwhile venture IMO, many creative things are pretty much the only beauty I see in people but if I had the opportunity to travel the natural world with no financial issues I think I'd wait around a little longer.

Im so tired I didn't answer as good as I'd have liked but I think the "point" of life is something very different and personal for each individual.

 

[Miss clefable]

Really I think life is pointless and meaningless but there are still some things I love about it. Is it really important to have a fulfilling conscious experience? The things I find beautiful will continue to exist far longer than any of us and I think humans are one of the least beautiful things i m sorry to say, myself included. Its our natural condition to be awful...

Um bit of a tangent but anyway, some people genuinely really enjoy life, they tend to be the ones who are "healthily" selfish and know when to turn their backs on people like you and me for their own sake. People who know what they enjoy and gets the brain chemicals pumping.

If you have no friends or real life then yes naturally you will have an awful life usually but for those who manage to scrape some wages together and a stable place to live often find some things they're happy to live for, travelling and exploring nature is a pretty worthwhile venture IMO, many creative things are pretty much the only beauty I see in people but if I had the opportunity to travel the natural world with no financial issues I think I'd wait around a little longer.

Im so tired I didn't answer as good as I'd have liked but I think the "point" of life is something very different and personal for each individual.

:)

 

[Miss clefable]

Death is under appreciated and life is taken for granted

 

[weedoge]

Death is under appreciated and life is taken for granted

Hah I like that actually. I understand the fear of romanticising suicide and death, but also its something people shouldn't be so afraid to think about. It'd our ultimate and eternal fate, we truly are dust. Dust arranged in such a special way that it feels as though we can feel and we think we can think.

 

[QueenEtna]

Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

I have no family or friends and i still say dont do drugs. Lifes already fucked why fuck it up more?

 

[weedoge]

I have no family or friends and i still say dont do drugs. Lifes already fucked why fuck it up more?

I was strictly against drugs, my auntie died from heroin of when I was young. As a young teen I learnt that "weed isn't harmful" straight from my family... Then when I was living in communal places for vulnerable people I got offered some stuff. It takes one single moment of emotional weakness and seeing the euphoria they were experiencing compared to my misery and knowing I might have had nowhere to live in 30 days. It was an extremely fast fall from everything I thought I knew.

 

[Slacker]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living.

Why do you care? It's your life. What works for others doesn't automatically work for you.

If this helps you.
Realizing that this equation is true on so many levels helped me a lot

Happiness equals reality minus expectations

Changing reality is sometimes just fuckin impossible. Sometimes it is possible but you need a lot of energy, hope, sweat, tears and time to change something in your life.
It is soooo much easier to just lower your expactasions. I wrote down what I expected from life, what my dream life was and realized that it was just naiv thinking and most things would unlikely ever happen. I just lowered everything to a minimum. Didn't expect that I would reach any of my goals. And now a few months later I really changed. Little things make me happy again. Whenever i can clean up a room in my flat, do the dishes or the laundry I'm just happy about it.

I know it sounds really stupid but for me it worked.

I stoped trying to find the sense in life and just accepted it's Senselessness and the absurdity of human being.

Do you really think that people who seems to be happy really are? Personally I don't know anyone who has absolutely no problems in life. Sometimes we remember childhood as something beautiful because we just forget how tough and rough it sonetimes was. All the pain and fear of being alone without parents and friends... forgotten. Generalized memories.

We see rich people in television and think that they are happy. But most of them are not. They ctb too. Kings had to deal with depression, politicans, actors etc.

I started to talk to people who seemed to be really happy. One guy at my work lost his mother, his father is an alcoholic with high debts, his realtionship to his wife is suboptimal and getting worse. Before I knew all of this I just thought "why the fuck does people like him have so much luck in life" he earns more money than me but his contract is running out. There are just so many problems all this "happy people" have.

But I think they are happy because they are just resilient.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

This is the holy grail. I think if I can rise up my resilience somehow, it just doesn't matter anymore what else will happen in my life. I'm starting to stop beeing afraid of my future but without giving a shit about everything. I just concentrate on not messing everything up. Just don't do big mistakes. Everything else what happens around me I just can't influence. And I concentrate on the little things I can influence. Going outside, doing sports, talking to others, building up relationships slowly to people I like, just going out the way of people I don't like as far as I can, going to therapy, trying to make my life as nice as i can without trying to change it completly. Accepting the things I just can't change and forget them because they burden me to much and rob the little energy there's left.

I accept that thinking about ctb will always be with me and I am happy when it gets less. And it does.

Sorry for the long post

Maybe someone finds this helpful.
If not... just ignore me :)

 

[bigj75]

There is no point in life without some of those things. A lot of stuff you need as prerequisites to be even able to survive let alone lessen the chance of depression.

Most the people who grow up without those things you listed good friends, good family , etc can still grow up and be ok. But alot of them are fucked up people (in jail), homeless , etc.

On average you need a functionally sound family, you need good health , you need friends, etc to reach your full potential as a human being. With each one of those you don't have your % of survival diminishes.

 

[406blue]

Really I think life is pointless and meaningless but there are still some things I love about it. Is it really important to have a fulfilling conscious experience? The things I find beautiful will continue to exist far longer than any of us and I think humans are one of the least beautiful things i m sorry to say, myself included. Its our natural condition to be awful...

Um bit of a tangent but anyway, some people genuinely really enjoy life, they tend to be the ones who are "healthily" selfish and know when to turn their backs on people like you and me for their own sake. People who know what they enjoy and gets the brain chemicals pumping.

If you have no friends or real life then yes naturally you will have an awful life usually but for those who manage to scrape some wages together and a stable place to live often find some things they're happy to live for, travelling and exploring nature is a pretty worthwhile venture IMO, many creative things are pretty much the only beauty I see in people but if I had the opportunity to travel the natural world with no financial issues I think I'd wait around a little longer.

Im so tired I didn't answer as good as I'd have liked but I think the "point" of life is something very different and personal for each individual.

The philosophy of the existentialists, in fact most philosophy about the 'human condition' tend to make for pretty bleak reading. Great and deeply thoughtful minds have posed the question 'what is the point' for centuries and have failed to come up with a decent reason. For the ancients it was about doing your duty. Camus asked the question, why should a person not commit suicide, what is needed to prevent it. It seems that a construction of a certain reality is necessary, which doesn't involve asking too many questions. You can get into the idea of existential loneliness, what are your genuine relationships with other people, are they all based on ego. No matter how shitty our physical lives might be, people i believe survive by feeling connected or by feeling shitty together and feeling each others pain. I hope this forum helps some of us with the latter issue at least. I'm depressed not because i read schopenhauer or sartre. i am led there because i feel in the company of friends.

 

[couldntthinkofaname]

We're told to dream big when we're starting out, and then later we're told to accept that life won't live up to that ideal. Complacency with mediocrity carries the masses through. Ironic that adults appreciate media that glorifies mediocre normalcy as endearing - probably because it makes accepting their own hollow mediocrity easier.

so much on point

 

[Ben]

The question is completely subjective, and given the audience here, there will be a majority narrative.

Some people enjoy life, some people don't. People here don't, so people here are unlikely to defend why life is worth living.

I certainly could debate on the side of life for the heck of it, but I would have to use research, not experience, for my arguments lol.

 

[RM5998]

The philosophy of the existentialists, in fact most philosophy about the 'human condition' tend to make for pretty bleak reading. Great and deeply thoughtful minds have posed the question 'what is the point' for centuries and have failed to come up with a decent reason. For the ancients it was about doing your duty. Camus asked the question, why should a person not commit suicide, what is needed to prevent it. It seems that a construction of a certain reality is necessary, which doesn't involve asking too many questions. You can get into the idea of existential loneliness, what are your genuine relationships with other people, are they all based on ego. No matter how shitty our physical lives might be, people i believe survive by feeling connected or by feeling shitty together and feeling each others pain. I hope this forum helps some of us with the latter issue at least. I'm depressed not because i read schopenhauer or sartre. i am led there because i feel in the company of friends.

The ironic part is that a large segment of Camus' absurdism is derived from his portrayal of Sisyphus, who cannot die.

Existentialism is depressing by nature - there's a reason why 'man is condemned to be free'. Surpisingly, a lot of the philosophy surrounding existentialism tends to view suicide as a cheap escape as well. I don't really get why.

 

[weedoge]

The question is completely subjective, and given the audience here, so there is a majority narrative.

Some people enjoy life, some people don't. People here don't, so people here are unlikely to defend why life is worth living.

I certainly could debate on the side of life for the heck of it, but I would have to use research, not experience, for my arguments lol.

I think ibprefer the middle ground personally, my beliefs summed up are that life is a random occurence and an individual can choose whether it is positive or negative for them. As you said I don't really think there's an objective answer.

 

[406blue]

The ironic part is that a large segment of Camus' absurdism is derived from his portrayal of Sisyphus, who cannot die.

Existentialism is depressing by nature - there's a reason why 'man is condemned to be free'. Surpisingly, a lot of the philosophy surrounding existentialism tends to view suicide as a cheap escape as well. I don't really get why.

I totally get why it's a cheap escape, because of a lack of courage to face life as it really is. Dostoyevsky was an early existentialist as you probably know, and decided however that it is the final life enhancing dignity of man to choose his own destiny, his final freedom as a condemned man.

 

[RM5998]

I totally get why it's a cheap escape, because of a lack of courage to face life as it really is. Dostoyevsky was an early existentialist as you probably know, and decided however that it is the final life enhancing dignity of man to choose his own destiny, his final freedom as a condemned man.

I don't really get the cheap part. Maybe it's because I'm an existential nihilist, but the idea of cheapness seems to imply an arbitrary value standard. As Sartre says, existence precedes essence, so why maintain that empty value judgement?

 

[Ben]

I think ibprefer the middle ground personally, my beliefs summed up are that life is a random occurence and an individual can choose whether it is positive or negative for them. As you said I don't really think there's an objective answer.

Yes I agree, your life circumstances are completely out of your control. You can develop a negative, but completely justified, attitude on life based on the hand it dealt you. Some people can go all in with a royal flush, while others are forced to fold.

 

[wanttodie]

I think life is pointless i hate my life and want to end it

 

[406blue]

I don't really get the cheap part. Maybe it's because I'm an existential nihilist, but the idea of cheapness seems to imply an arbitrary value standard. As Sartre says, existence precedes essence, so why maintain that empty value judgement?

My philosophy bullshit seems to have been exposed, to the point where i no longer have an answer. I just know that reading 'la nausea' was enlightening and seemed to describe my essence, as it has become since my existence. I tried to read being and nothingness. If you have and understood it you're a better man than me, my friend. I wish you well, sincerely.

 

[thetwilightzone]

I have no family or friends and i still say dont do drugs. Lifes already fucked why fuck it up more?

Because for me at least drugs make things more tolerable. I have absolutely no job, no money and no social support. There's nothing much I can do to relive myself.

If I get addicted to heroin, I'll overdose intentionally.

 

[406blue]

I have no family or friends and i still say dont do drugs. Lifes already fucked why fuck it up more?

Why not, you might also say. Unless you can fuck it up less. Some people can't exist with the status quo, it comes from the desire to act, to change the scenery that moves before our eyes in this theatre.

 

[itsallover]

My life is shit so I self medicate. It's the only way I can get by and stay sane. I have a college education and had a career I want to get back to. Only thing standing in my way is my chronic condition. My work was my life and I couldn't care less for socializing. It's a waste of time and would rather spend my time on hobbies that I've lost interest in since getting sick.

 

[406blue]

so much on point

I expect most people who come here are damaged from childhood and /or genetic disposition compounded and reinforced by experience. What to do about it all? As weedoge said, it might be a question of getting the best out of it given the options. We are dust waiting to happen.

 

[406blue]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

Someone here gave me a pointer that no other cbt therapist has managed. Narcissism. Rejection from childhood can make one unreceptive to love and isolate ourselves from people to the point of misanthropy when we perceive rejection, and become self absorbed. It's a bit of a lose lose situation. I suspect that many people suffer from this kind of thing here and struggle to maintain strong connections with others. There may be other reasons. The drugs dull our sensitivity to this existential solitude and after several decades it becomes rather futile to keep up the pretense.

 

[Trashcan]

Life is quite pointless for a lot of people. Only people who were lucky enough to have no mental disorders or physical disorders can have a fulfilling life.

I also don't think you come across as self-pitying and even if you were, no one on here is going to judge you for that.

 

[RM5998]

My philosophy bullshit seems to have been exposed, to the point where i no longer have an answer. I just know that reading 'la nausea' was enlightening and seemed to describe my essence, as it has become since my existence. I tried to read being and nothingness. If you have and understood it you're a better man than me, my friend. I wish you well, sincerely.

Being and Nothingness was a strange read. I agreed with a large portion of it, but was troubled by how it took living itself for granted. While Sartre does talk about how suicide is an act of establishing meaning in a meaningless world, he doesn't go much further.

Camus himself posits living a meaningless life, but these days I don't subscribe to doing that - laughing at the joke's way too hard.

 

[406blue]

Being and Nothingness was a strange read. I agreed with a large portion of it, but was troubled by how it took living itself for granted. While Sartre does talk about how suicide is an act of establishing meaning in a meaningless world, he doesn't go much further.

Camus himself posits living a meaningless life, but these days I don't subscribe to doing that - laughing at the joke's way too hard.

I think if you have the intellect of camus it might be easier to talk of a meaningless life and living it. He died in a car crash and so i wonder how he would have ended up otherwise. My favourite of his is the one where he talks about his childhood. Probably the most beautiful book i have read, The First Man. When i first read camus it was like when i first heard the piano works of schumann, i instinctively felt a connection with a kindred spirit. This might provoke another thread... who do you feel are your kindred spirits, for another time...

 

[406blue]

I'm trying to find out what people find interesting about living. My mother said to me "All I know about living a good life is, avoiding drugs, don't commit crime, and get a good education". I agree with 1 out of those 3.

Really, for some people, what' is the point in life if you don't have friends, shitty family, no drugs to do, don't have a part time job, school is shit, etc...? What is the point in that? Almost all the people who say "don't do drugs" shit have families and friends.

This can come across as self-pity but I seriously wonder if anyone else is in this situation. I'm honestly surprised that the suicide rate isn't higher. I just find this utterly pointless.

Suicide isn't higher perhaps because most poeple are rather brainwashed and don't go into things too deeply. That's what society does. Once you begin asking questions, reading books that suggest alternative ways of approaching reality and looking at how human relationships work, it can become more tricky and eventually rather pointless, as you say.