Asklemmy

Hedonic threadmill: it's the hypothesis that we tend to a baseline level of happiness and on average, after some time, people who win the lottery are as happy (or unhappy) as people who go bankrupt.

Look at us, we are apes, barely out of trees. We were fighting predators and cold and diseases that no longer exist. Just by being alive, we are the winners of millions of years of genetic lottery, evolution, fights, love and ingenuity.

We have access to most of human knowledge through devices that fit in our pockets, can visit other countries that were legendary to our forefathers, instead of hunting wild beasts we have satellites that guide us step by step to the nearest McDonald's.

Imagine having a time machine using it to travel a few generation back, imagine describing our life to our grand-grandparents, seeing their eyes grow wide; imagine, at the end, telling them how ennui got to us and we can no longer find meaning in our life.

Everything is meaningless, nothing matters. Therefore whatever you decide is important is all that matters.

You can look up optimistic nihilism if you want

My view is that there is no point, so you make your own point or purpose. I don't believe there's an inherent purpose. I think we're all just here, and that's it.

Purpose? Point? You make it sound like it's something inherently positive. Can you give me an example where it could be inherently positive? Because the purposes I can think of are all negative to me since I have goals of my own and any purpose in life would stand in the way of that. I don't want to be like a spoon (so humans can eat more easily) or a cat (To be human pets), so I'm really glad to have no point or purpose in life, as that means I am the master of my own destiny.

I have goals in life I want to achieve. That's why I want to live longer. And if people can help me achieve my goals, that's all the better.

If you want to find purpose in life, then I'm sure you can find another person in life that can give you one.

Point? Like most gifts, there is no point. You just got it.

Thats how I treat my life: as a gift. Because what makes me me, existed as matter for eons. Inert. And by an insane oddity it got "infused" with life, thought, wonder but only for an extremely short while. And after that short period it will go back into that inert state. So i do nice things which are within my reach. Things that makes me feel good. And modern (western) society gives us a lot of time to do that. I know it doesn't always feel like that but if you look at it historically we have the most off time ever.

Nice things can be anything. Maybe meaningless on the Grand scale of things, but I like making my family happy. I love cuddling my stinky old dog(well, not that old), I hate gardening but love the outcome of it. And yes, I love wasting time on movies, reading, gaming, theater. Or hikes. Or travel in general. The smell of the sea. The feeling of being in a forest. That first time you played "The last of us". that one specific movie. Or read that one fantastic book. That feeling when you finished it. Or when you went to that insanely funny comedian. Or just hanged out drinking beers (or whatever )with friends or colleagues. Its all fantastic.

And most of the times I like my job and try to forward my little society with it. (I work for a municipality) Within my own little means.

So... meaning? Of life? Experience shit. Make up your own mind.

And please: don't use big tech socials. They're made so you don't feel good, get addicted to them. Get you hooked. It and it's goals (sell ads!) are evil.

I've been inert for eternity. I will not waste that little time I have. Experience something. Anything.

It's what you make of it. Some people don't make anything with theirs.

Personally, for me it's to form community and to leave a positive lasting influence on others. Except fascists, they can rot in hell. For others, it might be to learn as much as they can or to impart their wisdom onto their children.

On a fundamental level there is absolutely no meaning to life, it happened randomly over great great spans of time.

On a human level the meaning of life is enjoying it to the best of your ability.

You wont last forever but your actions will

"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone's gonna die....come watch TV"

Philosophically, I think the pursuit of truth and the exercise of compassion are worthwhile endeavors.

But when that's too abstract, I remind myself that I have people who rely on me and benefit from my presence in their life. I work to make the world around me better than it was before, so that others can immediately, and in the future, have better lives.

Everything, and at the same time nothing.

Other people.

Make connections in your little circle/tribe; make people happy. It's our biology, it's what we evolved to do, and it's what you leave behind.

The sad part of existence is not having the choice. I literally wouldn't cared if I died tomorrow. I just don't want my friends and family to be sad. That's literally the only thing keeping me here.

Being a good friend, finding what makes me happy while in some way better off, and trying to do those things.

Failing that, doing very bad things to very bad people.

There's no right answer.

By that, I mean everyone dies with regrets: regrets about living too wildly, regrets about living too conservatively, having kids, not having kids, missing out on an opportunity, or risking too much.

You're going to reach the end of your life and believe it's unfinished, it seems.

I have no advice. Make the best choice at the moment, with all you know at the time, and then forgive yourself for it, I guess.

Why do you believe life has meaning?

I personally don't believe life has any meaning, other than the one you choose for your own life. It's rather terrifying and freeing at the same time. If there is no meaning, and if there is nothing else, no higher power, then this is it. You get the time you get, running around as self aware stardust, and then it ends. Everything that is "you" flips off one day and there is nothing but oblivion as the stardust you were slow seeps away. But, that also means that you don't have to live up to anyone else's idea of what your life should be. You can make your own path, your own meaning, and fuck the people in funny hats who try to tell you otherwise. You are you and no one else gets to define what that is.

I was pondering why people fight so hard to beat diseases and live a few more years. What are they planning to do? Why exert effort just to be here longer when you don’t have a reason?

If this is all there is, if oblivion is on the other side of the door, I'll scrabble for every day existing that I can get, thank you very much. Sure, I have my own beliefs and things I would willingly accept oblivion for. But, if those aren't on the table, I'm gonna keep on existing as long as I can. It's one of the few things I'm pretty good at.

Understand that most of the answers you’re going to get on Lemmy are self righteous. “There is no meaning of life.” As if they can also know there isn’t. I encourage you to look at the philosophy of this question over the ages and how others have answered it. You won’t find many other thoughts on it here since they believe that if you can’t see it, it’s not true. We know so little in all of existence that it’s incredibly arrogant to think we can answer this with any certainty.

None

This is the first post I've ever seen that's gotten twitter-style ratio'd. There are more comments than votes.

Negative utilitarianism posits that reducing suffering is the ultimate moral imperative.

This is a fun question to ponder, and you'll get a thousand different answers from a thousand different people.

I think the more important question (and much harder to find an answer for) is What's the meaning of the universe? Why does the universe exist? How was it created? Why was it created? What was before the universe was created? What comes after the universe?

And you can join those two questions together. Are the two related? Is the universe's purpose to create life? Is life's purpose to experience the universe? Would the universe exist if there was not life to experience it?

The “meaning of life” is dependent on the scale.

On an intergalactic scale, practically nothing, unless you’re someone involved in some way in intergalactic travel (like Musk, potentially). On a planetary scale, your life as a political or corporate leader or humanitarian could impact generations of others. If you’re a doctor or lawyer, your life may impact tens of thousands or even generations of people. These are scales based mostly on space.

You could also look at a scale based on time. If / when the planet explodes, maybe someone like a Musk will be the only one alive today who genuinely has an impact on the human race long into the future. If you want to look at the time span of a country’s existence, someone like a Julius Cesar, a George Washington, or Adolf Hitler will have certain meaning for hundreds of years.

Your life’s meaning may yet to be realized. The point is to live your life day to day in a manner that has a positive impact on the lives that surround you. If you don’t have the impact of someone like political or corporate leader or someone like a Greta Thunberg, maybe the point of your life is to be a supporting player for someone else.

It gets difficult to find meaning if you live an isolated life. Without a family of your own, a fulfilling career, without traveling to engage with others outside your regular week’s schedule, it’s easy to say your life is meaningless. Because you haven’t made an attempt to give it meaning.

Your life doesn’t have to have meaning. But if you’re asking this kind of question and expecting someone to tell you there’s some inherit “meaning” bestowed upon you at birth, you’re not going to get a hopeful answer. That’s not to say you need to go out and look for it. It’s to say that “meaning” comes from the impact have on something, by choice or otherwise.

To laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And if you ask Vonnegut; to fart around.

Unironically this

First of all.
Life has no inherent meaning; there is no grand plan or objective purpose to your life or any other persons.
Thus; what you choose has meaning is objectively meaningful (to you).

On a grander scale. As far as we know currently, we are the only example of advanced intelligence in the universe. We are almost certainly not; but we have no evidence at this stage. This is objectively meaningful; for humanity as a whole, if you choose to participate in ensuring the continuation of the only example of intelligence is totally up to you. As long as some people choose to continue the species intelligence continues in the universe.

You are the best suited vessel for transferring your DNA to the next generation. That is the meaning of life in the most specific sense. More generally, humans have evolved to help others achieve this goal, in the form of generosity and autism. At the purest biological level, the meaning of life is to have children and to help others of your species survive to have children.

This does not prohibit you from finding your own personal meaning of course, and I wish you the best of luck in doing so.

Life is what you make of it. Which is why we are leftists, we'd like more people to be able to have lives that are actually fulfilling to them.

I don't believe life has a meaning. I don't believe that anybody has a reason to be here, in any kind of grand scheme of things.

However, if somebody finds something that they enjoy, they might find they want more of that feeling, and choose to stick around to get it.

Most living things want to continue living. Whether that's because death is scary and potentially unpleasant in a few different ways, or because they've become attached to something in the world.

That's why I think some people fight diseases to live a few more years. They might not be planning on anything specific, other than just not dying.

Life doesn't come with a meaning, you are free to find one that speaks to you

Edit: the idea of this came to me because I was pondering why people fight so hard to beat diseases and live a few more years. What are they planning to do? Why exert effort just to be here longer when you don't have a reason?

Sometimes one just wanna go out on their own terms, and finish all their goals, and disease is just something that's in the way.

A few more years is precious to those, I suppose.

There is no objective meaning to life. Any meaning imposed by yourself or others is arbitrary and completely subjective.

As a human you are trapped on earth and nothing you do will affect the Universe in any way. Nothing the entire human race has done or will do will affect the Universe in any way. .... Ever

Have a good time and then die.