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Bebelle wrote:Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless? That no matter how great you are at something you will never be truly important, and that's when you are good at something, because most of the time you are just average. So why should we live if our existence has no importance, if it is not going to make any difference in the world? No big changes, you are just one more person like many others.Looking back at the more nihilistic periods of my life, I don't think that even then everything was meaningless. There was a high unbalance, perhaps, between what was not worth living for and the little rewards.
Count Lucanor wrote: Looking back at the more nihilistic periods of my life, I don't think that even then everything was meaningless. There was a high unbalance, perhaps, between what was not worth living for and the little rewards.I like how you put that. Like a chick breaking out of its shell... & the psychologically heretical positive disintegration. Depression and similar ideally serve purposes of getting our attention that something isn’t right so there’s a disintegration of that in order to regroup in better ways.
So you're deep down in a hole and what do you do? A Spanish philosopher said that once you find yourself lost, you have begun to find the way. Your mission is to climb up and leave the damn hole. The strength you gain in doing so will help you make the difference.
Bebelle wrote:Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless? That no matter how great you are at something you will never be truly important, and that's when you are good at something, because most of the time you are just average. So why should we live if our existence has no importance, if it is not going to make any difference in the world? No big changes, you are just one more person like many others.When one has the thought 'life is meaningless', then one is one of those small percentile of people who are caught in a eddy [a circular movement of wind, fog, or smoke.] of turbulence of life forces in premature sense.
Bebelle wrote:Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless?Yes I have and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Greta wrote:Then again, while we rely on society to survive, our sense of self worth need have nothing whatsoever to do with our societal interactions or dynamics. Walk in nature - just be a living thing amongst other living things, drawing in the same air, absorbing the same solar radiation as part of this extraordinary edifice of life on Earth.
Rather than feeling pointless, you can feel glad and privileged to part of these extraordinary things - the body of humanity, the biosphere, the Earth, the solar system. You are ultimately a tiny part of the expression of each of these entities. The nice aspect of this is that, since you (like me) are apparently not especially good at anything or capable of making much of a needed contribution to the world, we can sit back and enjoy watching it unfold without undue pressure of responsibility. Personal and local level assistance rendered to others is always an option and often happens naturally through the usual interactions of life anyway.
Being a major influence, mover or shaker is only for the few. Many prefer, or at least settle for, a pleasant life that only includes little victories. The beauty is that one may be thoroughly mediocre - say, only gaining fame by twerking on reality TV - and still be one of the most complex and extraordinary things in the galaxy for trillions of kms, and still be part of this incredible evolving biosphere.
Enjoy the show
Bebelle wrote:But if being a major influence is only for the few and you and me are only gonna be spectators our whole lives, than what is this all for? Even if we are part of this big universe, if you don't have a purpose it is almost the same as being dead, since you will be living a life without meaning being lived just because that is the way it is supposed to be. Going to school, and then to college, starting in a job, getting a girlfriend/boyfriend, getting married, having kids, getting a divorce, and then finally dying. All this "journey" and we will go back to the same place that we came from: The earth. So, if in all your life you didn't do anything to leave a mark or to make a change, living a ordinary life like many others, then you basically lived to die, to go back to the same place from where you came. Wouldn't it be easier if we weren't born at all?Certainly we are very small in the realm where the main discourses, such as environment and political policies, take place. Institutions are like steamrollers and we are like rats scuttling away from the roller.
Bebelle wrote:Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless? That no matter how great you are at something you will never be truly important, and that's when you are good at something, because most of the time you are just average. So why should we live if our existence has no importance, if it is not going to make any difference in the world? No big changes, you are just one more person like many others.No importance to who? Important people? If so I think one should then ask themselves why one deems the important people important and whether these so-deemed important people must also notice one's own importance in order to self-deem one's importance.
Albert Tatlock wrote:Yeah I've noticed that about you too. Good nickname and pic though.Bebelle wrote:Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless?Yes I have and it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
But if being a major influence is only for the few and you and me are only gonna be spectators our whole lives, than what is this all for?A major influence on what? Spectators of what? As others have already pointed out, the answers to these questions are entirely dependant on scale. At some scales we're all (even the most influential people in the world) "just" spectators. At other scales, you and I are both major influences.
Count Lucanor wrote: So you're deep down in a hole and what do you do? A Spanish philosopher said that once you find yourself lost, you have begun to find the way. Your mission is to climb up and leave the damn hole. The strength you gain in doing so will help you make the difference.For a scientifically-minded observer, watching you climb up, he will decide this is merely chains of cause-and-effect leading back to the big bang. There is no "agency" involved. Do you agree or disagree?
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