I mean, there is no meaning in nature, it was man who invented it, and often it appeared because of a scarcity, for example, the point is in a beautiful woman, because you are unlikely to find another one as beautiful, right?, or can you find a person who will support you and accept you as you are, like your loved ones? The examples are not the best, but I hope you get the idea.
In addition, I will say that about a year ago I watched the film “The Seventh Seal”, and now sometimes I feel in the place of a character named Antonius Block. I dismissed the inevitable by refraining from suicide as a teenager, thinking I could find the meaning of life, but what was to be expected, nothing worked out. But especially now, how shall I put it… in the age of AI, it is impossible to escape the truth, self-deception no longer works, at least for me personally.
Chess Game with Death:
And can we not consider that each of us can so arrange his own particular life so as to make it meaningful to himself and to those he influences? And in that case does not all of life and all the Universe come to have meaning to him?
Surely it is those who find their own lives essentially meaningless who most strive to impose meaning on the Universe as a way of making up for the personal lack.
–Isaac Asimov, Knock Plastic!, 1989
I see a lot of responses mentioning optimistic /absurdistic nihilism, so I’d like to share the egg.
Fun fact: the author also wrote “The Martian”
Meaning is whatever you want it to be. You have the free will to create your own meaning in your life.
That being said, reading your post, I mean no disrespect, but please seek professional help. This goes beyond “finding your own meaning” and dives into “something is wrong”.
Why does life in and of itself need to have meaning (beyond the obvious “survival”? Why can’t you, with your abilities of thinking and reason, assign your own meaning to it?
Subjects grant meanings, objects are assigned meaning. I create meaning for myself because I am a thinking agent, setting goals and tasks for myself to accomplish based on my own values and decisions. Just because an event ends doesn’t undermine it’s importance or meaning while it’s occurring.
And even if there could be some object or set of circumstances that assigns meaning, being assigned some universal or objective meaning would be oppressive, undermining my own subjective meanings to be replaced with some forced or necessary objective. Just because some of us have an intuitive desire to be assigned an objective meaning due to a desire for our lives to follow a narrative structure with closure like fiction doesn’t mean otherwise there is no meaning. If anything the meaning is more important if it comes from you and isn’t assigned to you.
“Here’s squire Jöns. He grins at Death, scoff at the Lord, laughs at himself, and leers at the girls. His world exists only for himself. Absurd to all, even to himself. Meaningless to heaven, and of no interest to hell.”
I think the key is to find something you are passionate about. You can think about the meaning of life all you want, but in the mean time, that little life time we have will pass by. And I think is the key is in connecting and caring about people. That’s one of the quite few thing you can excel in. No other person in the planet can fill the position you are in with your family and friends. :)
You can make your own meaning, an act that is also inherently meaningless but often satisfying, or you can just relax and enjoy the things that are possible to enjoy.
I used to try and explain it in more detail, but I’ve failed to get the point across often enough that I wonder if it really can be explained. I think people just have to sit down and think about it until it snaps into focus for you.
To some degree, what is important, enjoyable, and satisfying to each of us is determined by something immutable, but if we apply ourselves many of us can examine, reason, and understand things to a degree that we have broad control over what we let matter to us.
Focusing on what we choose to let matter to us is key to living without meaning. We embrace the other parts of life, because without them, the things we believe matter most would lose their meaning.
Without the contrast of suffering, we would struggle to understand joy. I think that’s the hardest thing to accept for most.
I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.
My life has meaning. It has meaning for no other reason than I say it does, and no one gets to decide that for me. I do not purport to speak for your life, or the lives of those I care about, or my cat’s life, or my neighbors, the birds, trees, grass, germs, or any other living thing. I do not assign meaning to society, civilizations large or small, or things that have been built to benefit me. I can only speak for my life. And I say that my life has meaning. Nothing that has happened to me, nothing that has been said, done, built or destroyed, can take that meaning away from my life without my permission.
A life has no meaning in the same way that a blank piece of paper has no meaning. I give that piece of paper meaning by writing, sketching, coloring, folding, tearing…and perhaps ultimately destroying. Now that piece of paper has a unique history imprinted on it. It can be shared, displayed, hidden, or thrown away. But the whole reason I did anything to the paper at all was because it was meaningful in the moment for me to do so.
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they want you thinking this way so you give up and succumb to the altman overlords and pay a subscription for knowledge. Fuck that. Its not ai. Its llm slop, and its hyped up bullshit. We are old enough to know bs hype when we see it. Its unsustainable. Will it stick around, unfortunately yes but in a far smaller capacity.
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Go do things away from tech. Stop reading the news. It will help you. The world is not “ai” (again, ai doesn’t exist, its a marketing term). The world is humans and community and how you process it.
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I agree. Theres no point to life. So do what you want and can do (legally or morally), and fuck the rest.
Existential crises are far older than the AI boom, but I’d agree that capitalist parasites do like to take advantage of isolation and despair for their own gain.
Part of the “cure” (at least from my experience) is definitely touching grass and remembering that at the end of the day we’re a group of talking monkeys on a rock with a bunch of other living things and this line of thinking goes beyond what our little brains are meant to do. Abstract thought in excess short circuits us in a bad way.
It’s okay to chill out and dumb down a bit. We don’t owe anyone “meaning,” and enjoying life where you can, however small, is a balm.
Yep very true !
This is probably the most prolific constant battering of propaganda though since “cloud” or even the dot com boom. (Side note, funny how every advancement in tech is just “someone else’s computer”. they really hate that we own anything). Its very tiring knowing most humans will fall for it completely while we fight to preserve what’s left of the internet and human creativity. It will all fall to slop in a decade though, then I’ll just get rid of using the internet for anything except work and email, ha.
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Is that chess scene from The Seventh Seal? Always enjoyed seeing that clip pop up.
In terms of finding meaning; try out as many hobbies and practical skills as you can. When you find one that makes you lose track of time, run with it.
Make it your goal to improve that skill as far as you can, and allow that to provide you a meaning to the regular day to day life.
Love.
… And being ok with a bittersweet life.
Create your own meaning.
