The point of life/living

[inthedarkness]

It come to me today when I was thinking about meaning and reasons for doing something and eventually I got stuck.

It got me thinking about why we do what we do when there is no grand importance to it all. Because you enjoy doing it? Why do you enjoy it? I don’t know I just do. So if you just do then does that just mean you some zombie acting on orders you don’t know or understand?

Or if someone wants to get better at something, why? Because it feels good and it’s fun? Why? I don’t know it just is.

I just feel like if you as “Why” enough you eventually get to the point where meaning and purpose are nullified and you’re left grasping for some justification for existing, at least that’s what it’s like to me. It’s been something I’ve never been able to shake, not for lack of trying. I feel like not thinking about it is ignoring the problem and not a real solution and in trying to find an answer I don’t have one.

I feel like some things I do are meaningful or enjoyable and I like them. But the minute I start asking why I do I can feel all that slipping away as I don’t have a solid answer to that.

Is there any way out of the regress?

[write4u]

@inthedarkness

Is there any way out of the regress?

Instead of wallowing in doubt and despair, why not just wallow in the joy of living.

[inthedarkness]

@write4u

Instead of wallowing in doubt and despair, why not just wallow in the joy of living.

Already explained why that’s not true.

[write4u]

@inthedarkness

Already explained why that’s not true.

It’s true for me and I am probably the oldest person on this forum.
My life has been a Michener’s novel and I have no regrets.

[morgankane01]

Why do we live ? Because we have been born .

Why do we gon on leaving ?

Because it is the easiest to do, because sometimes, we enjoy it.

Why do we act ?

Because we need it, because it pleases us, because we are bored, Sometimes, just not to do some other things …

[lausten]

@inthedarkness

It got me thinking about why we do what we do when there is no grand importance to it all.

So, are you going to keep doing this? We have been over these questions for months now. You have acknowledged some of the excellent points made by members here, then you open up a new thread, as if none of that happened… You reject every suggestion. If we say Buddhism, you say you read it, if we say therapy, you say you tried, and none of it worked. I stopped talking about the meaning problem and we had a nice discussion about how your obsession might be a better place to look. You agreed, but you just hit the reset again.

“Grand importance” is something no one has ever found. People who say they found it can’t describe it or pass it on. Unless you count living a life that embraces the absurd meaningless, finding love and laughter along the way, and looking back one day and feeling a connection and realizing it wasn’t so bad after all. But, you have to DO that, there isn’t a formula. Each of us has to find our own way to it.

@inthedarkness

I just feel like if you as “Why” enough you eventually get to the point where meaning and purpose are nullified

If you are seeking meaning in the question, then yes. If your goal is to live to the next moment, and then you do, then the question is answered and you can choose to live the next moment. It’s easy for me because my needs are met and I have memories and I’ve met many goals, and if I forget I have people to remind me. One reason I have people like that around me is that I quit telling them that nothing means anything and there is no point to it all.

But, it’s hard to remember how it was decades ago before I saw babies born, struggle with these questions, get married and find happiness in the eyes of a special person. You have to live the cycle, and see the cycle, and if you’re lucky have some time to reflect on it. I can’t speak as well to it, but people who have very little in terms of material wealth report the same thing, so it’s not about having stuff, it’s about experiencing the experience of being alive.

Before I met some of those life milestones I used drugs to tamp down the fear of not succeeding and of never finding calm in my mind or comfort in my heart. So I applaud your effort and willingness to face this without that. It was a poor choice and only slowed my journey. I think your biggest obstacle is just beginning the journey. You want to see the end, or be at the end, before you begin. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

The forum AI pointed me to a conversation from four years ago. It started just before Covid and has some good stuff in it, since we all had some time on our hands. The member “Snowcity” started it, he is also referred to as “Xian”. Everyone eventually got annoyed with him because he wouldn’t engage anything seriously, just kept saying he “couldn’t shake the feeling”. Hmm, sound familiar?

This is one of my favorites

I also love this short story of someone getting insight from the mere fact that a beam of light took a journey from a distant star to his eye.

Science Saved My Soul.

[lausten]

This is that conversation from 2020

Nihilism

So it’s no secret that I’ve been stuck on this for years and I haven’t been able to shake it. It’s caused me to spiral deeper and deeper and sap much of my joy in life. I’m at the point where I don’t want to feel this way anymore, where I’m tired of waking up each day an feeling like nothing matters anymore. Tired of living feeling like a chore or slogging through the day waiting to die. Tired of every new thing I want to do ending in “why bother”. But my own attempts have ended in failure. My …

[inthedarkness]

@morgankane01

Because it is the easiest to do, because sometimes, we enjoy it.

Not really, it’s easier to die.

@morgankane01

Because we need it, because it pleases us, because we are bored, Sometimes, just not to do some other things …

I already explained why that line of reasoning doesn’t work.

[inthedarkness]

@lausten

“Grand importance” is something no one has ever found. People who say they found it can’t describe it or pass it on. Unless you count living a life that embraces the absurd meaningless, finding love and laughter along the way, and looking back one day and feeling a connection and realizing it wasn’t so bad after all. But, you have to DO that, there isn’t a formula. Each of us has to find our own way to it.

But then that falls to the infinite regress of asking “Why” until you can’t justify it anymore. IT’s like I said if you ask “why” enough eventually you’ll see it’s nonsense and empty.

I thought everyone had good responses to it until I asked “why is that” until I found that they all came up empty in the end.

@lausten

I think your biggest obstacle is just beginning the journey. You want to see the end, or be at the end, before you begin. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

But why do any of that to begin with if you don’t see the point of it all or find that you can’t really ultimately justify why you do what you do. Almost like you’re living a fantasy to cope with no greater meaning. Help society? Help people? Why? There’s no objective goal to doing so, to what end are we doing this? To just keep going when there is no ultimate reason to?

Why do we keep this whole show running, upkeeping society and facing global problems, to what end? Why not just let it all fall, what’s the point? It just seems like we’re on a treadmill hoping to get to some end only to see there never is one, but we hope that if we keep running we’ll find it.

Why bother with any of it at all?

@lausten

I also love this short story of someone getting insight from the mere fact that a beam of light took a journey from a distant star to his eye.

That short story is wrong, he’s not connecting with the star or anything that’s there. That star could in all likelihood not exist anymore, so you are bonding with a fantasy, nothing real.

He didn’t get insight, he deluded himself with a story, a fantasy.

[lausten]

@inthedarkness

Not really, it’s easier to die.

Except for the finality of it. So, it’s a difficult decision. Currently, the world is moving toward supporting people who have a diagnosis that says they will for 6 months. Especially if there is a lot of physical pain. Insurance will cover your hospice nursing and pain medication. But, I digress.

@inthedarkness

I already explained why that line of reasoning doesn’t work.

Or, have we explained why it does work, based on centuries of science, that supports philosophy, and even crosses over into some religious worldviews? yes, yes we did. The way to interrupt that reasoning is to have the premise that events in your life, or your life as a whole, or some cosmic sense of belonging to a family of humans, or something MUST have a larger meaning, a point that goes beyond the blue dot point of life that we are in the night sky if you take a space ship and fly out only halfway across our tiny solar system. If you are trying to explain why this point of light has some kind of significance that is different from all the other points that have life on them, then, yes, the reasoning gets complicated and maybe doesn’t “work” in some definition of “working” that you have never explained.

So, define your terms. You say you can’t work “it” out. What is “it”?

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot OFFICIAL

I mentioned life on other planets, something we haven’t found. We know how long it takes to get to the nearest star, look it up. We keep finding planets, look it up. But none of them have sent ships. None of them left a beacon. Not even a scrap of space junk has floated by. So, tell me we’re not special? Tell me the universe doesn’t care and tell me why we evolved to have a language with the word “care”. Tell me the drive to survive means nothing and explain why hydrogen formed into stars that formed elements that exploded and reformed and became water and carbon became proto-life that created oxygen, and, well, I’m hoping you know the rest. Why? Why did that happen? Why didn’t that slime mold just give up and die?

[lausten]

@inthedarkness

He didn’t get insight, he deluded himself with a story, a fantasy.

The story is the reason. If I was a rock, I would be pretty excited if one day I could think up a fantasy.

[write4u]

@inthedarkness

I thought everyone had good responses to it until I asked “why is that” until I found that they all came up empty in the end.

No one can answer the “why” because there may not be a why at all.

Inventing a God does not answer a why, Even if we can fashion a scientific TOE, it may leave that question unanswered.

We have no information of the causality before the BB and the beginning of the evolutionary process, which in itself does not answer the question, other than Chaos Theory and “emergence”.

@lausten

The story is the reason. If I was a rock, I would be pretty excited if one day I could think up a fantasy.

Why does a rock remain a rock where other things fall or fly apart? Knowledge!

A rock knows it is a rock by the forces that hold it together and the greater the complexity that holds a pattern together, the greater the emergent knowledge (inherent potential) that pattern has acquired.

Why that is so is moot. The acquisition of Order, relational knowledge (satisfaction) of the combining forces is the why.

This equation explains the properties of “why”, but does not satisfy the “why”

Consider the Law of “necessity and sufficiency”, where both conditions seek satisfaction at both ends.

a) “Necessity” seeks satisfaction from the presence of a sufficiency.
b) “Sufficiency” seeks satisfaction from the presence of a necessity.

[morgankane01]

@write4u

No one can answer the “why” because there may not be a why at all.

Absolutely !!!

Why should there be a because?

[write4u]

@morgankane01

Why should there be a because?

Anthropomorphization.
It is the first question children ask, “daddy, why is this?”

Proof of why living is an extraordinary experience lies in those examples where a sensory impaired person experiences the full range of sensory experience.

Watch these color blind people who experience the full splendor of color for the first time.

Tears almost block teen's first look at color | Humankind

When he says, “those colors are not the same”, colors acquired meaning to the beholder.

and just a few more examples

COLORBLIND PEOPLE SEE COLOR FOR THE FIRST TIME | EMOTIONAL REACTIONS

IMO, cognition gives meaning to observation.

[mriana]

@inthedarkness

Is there any way out of the regress?

dude, have you spoke with a professional psychologist? Maybe they can help you find the answers you seek.

[inthedarkness]

@lausten

The story is the reason. If I was a rock, I would be pretty excited if one day I could think up a fantasy.

Not really, the story isn’t the reason, it’s based on a lot of misinfo about how the universe works.

@lausten

Or, have we explained why it does work, based on centuries of science, that supports philosophy, and even crosses over into some religious worldviews? yes, yes we did.

You didn’t, in fact the science says a lot of it is the opposite. That was are just collections of matter living under the illusion that we are any more than that.

Sex And The Illusion Of Physical Form

@lausten

I mentioned life on other planets, something we haven’t found. We know how long it takes to get to the nearest star, look it up. We keep finding planets, look it up. But none of them have sent ships. None of them left a beacon. Not even a scrap of space junk has floated by. So, tell me we’re not special? Tell me the universe doesn’t care and tell me why we evolved to have a language with the word “care”. Tell me the drive to survive means nothing and explain why hydrogen formed into stars that formed elements that exploded and reformed and became water and carbon became proto-life that created oxygen, and, well, I’m hoping you know the rest. Why? Why did that happen? Why didn’t that slime mold just give up and die?

You’re asking the wrong questions, the main point to all that is “why does any of it even matter”. You still assuming any of the matters or is valid. I don’t know why the slime mold didn’t give up and it doesn’t matter.

[inthedarkness]

@mriana

dude, have you spoke with a professional psychologist? Maybe they can help you find the answers you seek.

I have and they have nothing. They don’t really think too hard about any of this stuff so I makes it hard to make any progress with it. They still assume life has value.

@write4u

Watch these color blind people who experience the full splendor of color for the first time.

Again, who cares? Why is seeing in color so meaningful? They don’t know. You can’t cite the experiences of these people who likely haven’t given their lives a second thought.

[mriana]

@inthedarkness

They still assume life has value.

Maybe it’s not so much what gives life value to them, but what gives life value to you.

[lausten]

@write4u

Why does a rock remain a rock where other things fall or fly apart? Knowledge!

I thought that was Mike Yohe for a second.

[inthedarkness]

@mriana

Maybe it’s not so much what gives life value to them, but what gives life value to you.

It’s still based on the faulty assumption that it’s worth it to keep going and they won’t accept any other answer because apparently to think otherwise is the “Wrong” one.

Things don’t give life value, it’s like that thread I started earlier, things don’t make you feel. They don’t beam emotions to you. The same with value, it’s an imaginary metric, it’s not real. Nothing is worth the measure we give it.

“Nothing is worth the measure we give it, because worth doesn’t really exist. It is a figment of our judging minds, an imaginary yardstick to measure the imaginary value of imaginary distinctions, and one more way we withhold ourselves from the whole enchilada of life that lies before us.”

Do Dishes, Rake Leaves: The Wisdom of the Ancient Homemakers | Lion’s Roar

Though she then contradicts herself with “engaging with the marvel of your being” which is still worth and value. She was almost there.

I think life has value is delusional, because there is nothing intrinsically valuable about it.