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Struggle to find meaning (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Throughout my life I've struggled to find meaning. I've wondered, am I alone in this? I'd like to hear what others have to say. Particularly others that are more knowledgeable in philosophy.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Given that religion exists I'd say you're not alone in seeking meaning.

There are parts of your brain that exist for the sole purpose of identifying why things happen, imagine the advantage an organism has that can spot patterns in their environment and make predictions based off of what they've seen.

Unfortunately sometimes that hard wired part of the brain seeks to find deeper meaning in places that provide no meaning.

Shadows don't exist, but we see them, they have no purpose because they are nothing but an emergent phenomenon.

An asteroid travels through space for millions and millions of miles in the depths of nothingness between galaxies. It is never seen by a sentient being and is far enough beyond the range of gravitational affect of everything that it's influence is less than a single decaying atom. Why is that asteroid there, what is its purpose? It exists to exist.

You are a bundle of atoms destined to lose cohesion, revel in the beauty of it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You are a bundle of atoms destined to lose cohesion, revel in the beauty of it.

I don't see beauty in any of it though. It's mostly ugly, and gross.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That's cool too, you're somehow 7-8 octillion atoms that collectively agree that they're ugly, neat

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

“I’ve struggled to find meaning” could mean quite a few things. You’re not giving people much to work with.

But here’s something with respect to one interpretation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'd like to read what Marx had to say about this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I suppose Marx's discussion on alienation is less about some ultimate meaning of life (which many people have already talked about here) and more about how people find meaning in their work, their humanity and the wider world, and how the way our society currently works alienates us from those things and from finding our own meaning, instead pushing us to act like cogs in a pointless machine. For example, if someone's waking hours are mostly spent making useless things for people they'll never meet, or denying people medical coverage, they're going to develop a very different sense of their meaningfulness than someone who builds houses in their neighbourhood, or who grows or prepares food for their family and friends. Both are labouring in order to survive, but the latter can see much clearer how their actions matter.

(I'm probably butchering it, this isn't a theory I know much about, so check to see if someone else has corrected me)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Makes a lot of sense. I can't help but feel like a lot of the work people do is completely detached from their own community. Which inevitably begs the question, if it's so detached is it even worth it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Which inevitably begs the question, if it’s so detached is it even worth it?

That's a great point. At the end of the day, I'm confident saying that lots of jobs are not worth it, from the perspective of ourselves and our communities. Many jobs actively harm our communities. The people who create jobs are the people who have the money to pay people, and if you need money to live or to thrive, it's tough to avoid taking those jobs, so the work our society does is largely dictated by who has money, and especially by those approaching billions of dollars. And the solution must be to take away that owning class's power to dictate society's direction (easier said than done, of course!)

There's a whole world of world which has been labelled "bullshit jobs", named after the book by David Graeber. I haven't read the book, but even their article with some great examples and quotes from people with nonsense jobs and the wiki page I linked show a variety of these jobs not worth doing.