Why does there need to be a point?

If a movie is going to end is it worth watching?

Paraphrasing something I read somewhere "Do we open a book just to close it again?" That for me, it means that it is not merely for doing something that we exist, but to tell stories, to pass on knowledge, to keep rituals alive, to be a vessel for something beyond ourselves. The important part, same as books, is to tell stories. Everything sparks from there.

Something doesn't have to exist forever to have meaning, that seems like a holdover from utopic afterlife religious indoctrination.

We can enjoy a movie or a lunch knowing it will end, I can pursue meaning and find multiple purposes throughout a lifetime.

How does something afterwards change the meaning of this in a good way?

Why fight for justice? E.g. the bible says god will judge and that i shouldn't. So if I just don't care about anything here but about god, I might have a bad time now but eternal happiness later. How meaningless is now this here? Everything is transactional. The love that you gave is for the sake of getting some much much more valuable later.

Why do people find happiness even in the worst situations? Because it is the only way to deal with it. We are made for survival and survival requires the willingness to survive. It doesn't matter if you are the strongest fighter, if you don't even want to fight back. Your desires come from survival needs.

And a little extra bit, there might not be a point in living. It might be meaning less. But I personally want to be happy. I just do. So everyday I work towards being happy. As I personally love my family and friends, I wish them to be happy. I just do. As my friends have family and friends, and their happiness is somewhat linked to their family and friends happiness, I want all of them to be happy too. And so on. As I can relate to the joy of being proud of oneself, I want them to feel that joy. And so on. None of this is objectively meaningful, I just like it that way. And I might be an asshole but I don't care if you agree with me, I want you feeling happy and fulfilled. Deal with it.

Enjoy the ride.

There is no point. The point is that you experienced life at all, the most rarest thing in this universe perhaps. Most people don’t even stop to think how amazing that is. Going outside and smelling fresh air, drinking water, laughing, crying.

Worms entered the chat

There’s no point, and that’s beautiful. Go live your life the way you want to — nothing will happen after you die

I like laughing and having sex (which I definitely have a lot of all the time I swear)

Your single existence might be ephemeral, but humanity isn't, your community isn't, and possibly your family either

Individualism breaks that sense of purpose, and it teaches us that happiness is made by personal enjoyment of often exclusive activities

If we lose trust in our community or in humanity in general, if we imagine the next person to only care about themselves, basivally if we expect individualism from others, we lose hope of feeling a more community-oriented form of happiness! And unfortunately in many places that situation is expected, because people are often indeed individualistic

The point is whatever we choose for ourselves. Just because we eventually die doesn't mean living isn't worth it. I don't care that one day I'll eventually die, I enjoy living now.

Well, things do happen after you die, just not to you.

Compassion for those who come after us is one possible source of meaning.

One could also consider that having no afterlife makes this life more meaningful than it would be compared to an infinity.

Well, that's kinda the point.

If you assume that all we get is what we have while we're alive, then that life becomes the point

A lot of people that reach the conclusions you have, opt out. They move into a commune, they go vagabond, they may choose to just flit between jobs and find whatever fun is in them.

Or, they may decide to become focused on finding purpose within the world that is, the societal structures as they exist. Some of those devote themselves to service, or find jobs that they believe make life better for others.

Some stay in the framework of things, but do the bare minimum and focus on their off time their purpose.

The point of it, from that point of view where this is all we get, is to find what makes staying alive worth it.

It isn't like the certainty of no afterlife removes your ability to live and love and do good things. It can make it harder to bear the bad things of life as well, but that's anything really.

The point is what you decide it is.

There is no point, we don't exist for a reason, we're just a thing that happened in the universe by random chance.

That's not an inherently bad thing though, heck, the concept of "bad" isn't even "real", it's just an invention we came up with.

But I digress. We must find out own purpose and meaning in life, it won't be handed to us. Think of the journey as a fun ride with no rules, there are no gods, the universe doesn't judge you, you are unique and weird and amazing and can interact with the universe in ways no gigantic star or powerful black hole ever could.

Everything happens after you die, you solipsistic fool

Existential crisis moment:

Your most fundamental motivations are inherently irrational/instinctual, but once you know what they are you can pursue them more deliberately. Nobody can decide for you what the meaning of your life is, you have to discover it through experience and introspection.

I think life is about maximizing positive subjective experience. If it doesn't make you happy or allow you to live happy in other moments, don't do it. Work sucks, but it gives you money that allows you to buy things that make you happy.

I'm just hoping we help each other to achieve our goals before we go

Because you dont know jack shit no one does, might as well wait til the longest possible length to figure out the unknown

But you are here now, so live a good life and enjoy it while you can. Maybe try to help others do the same. This is all we get, so use it to the fullest.

If nothing we do matters, the only thing that matters is what we do.

Life sucks, the world is a bad place. Leave it just a little bit better than you found it and you've lived life's purpose in my book. We are generational garbage collectors, picking up the pieces of societal trash our forebearers left behind. So do your part. Pick up the trash. Leave the world just a little bit better than you found it.

Life is the point, this one

Why do you need reward in a second life for the first one to matter?

life's like minecraft. you set your own goals and then you pursue them.

Why aren't you creating meaning?

Without a god, there's only one option left for anyone with agency - us.

The fuck are you doing whining about it? Time's wasting and you don't have much. Get out there and build something that matters.

Embrace Absurdism. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv79l1b-eoI And/Or read Albert Camus

There's no meaning, no purpose. We're random life on a random planet. Try to have a happy life and try not to inhibit the happiness of others. That's it.

The journey wasn't taken from you just because there is no destination

Live your life its the point of living. not working all day in the best days of your life.

Your time its all you have. don't waste it.

"There's no point living, so you may as well die" is so last decade. "There's no point dying, so you may as well live" is where it's at

A lot of things happen after you die. And if you participate actively (both positively and negatively) then some of that have your contribution and thus you leave a legacy.

There’s nothing after this, so make the most of what you get. Try leave your corner of the world a slightly better place then when you were born.

Everything happens after you die. Who told you nothing does?

There are two types of thinking about it:

1. There is no point in living. We are doomed to get into the grave, and eventually be forgotten forever.
2. There is no point in living. No higher order, no higher purpose, no higher authority. We are free to live our lives, to explore, to insert any meaning whatsoever into it. We are forging our own destiny.

there is no point. simply try to enjoy it

Does there need to be a point? We eat because we're hungry, sleep because we're tired, live because we're instinctively apposed to death.

To enjoy the chemical pleasures that life has to offer, in its fullest.

Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s going to die. Come watch tv.

Why does there have to be a point? I have no legacy, I'll never pass anything to the next generation, I have and will not ever make anything that changes the course of humankind, the world will probably not be a better place after I am gone. But I still feel happiness when I see a beautiful sunset, I laugh when my dog does something goofy and I smile when I see others expressing real joy. I don't have to have a direction to still enjoy life while I am here to enjoy it.

You've got to outlive your enemies

Friedrich Nietzsche had a lot to say about this.

Suffering is part of what gives life meaning. If you don't know how hard it can get, you don't know how good it can get as well. And there's good suffering out there. Physical exercise, challenging yourself, testing your potential to see what you can actualize are all sufficient things to do in this life. You don't know what you can do until you try to do it.

Then you have to consider things like morality and knowledge.

We humans (and specifically old, white humans) tend to subject others to a certain kind of suffering through the patriarchy. That's not right. Every human should have a chance to live a good life in contrast to suffering. And the ethical pursuit of morality doesn't have to stop with our specific species of life. Humans also subject hundreds of other biological species to a life of slavery, torture, and death. It is a noble cause to bring freedom to those species, just as it is to bring freedom to Palestinians or Ukrainians or Hong Kongers. Their potential is limited by human made constructs which can just as easily be deconstructed.

Also, the universe is infinite (as far as we can tell). There are many machinations ongoing that cause certain events to happen. Why? Why was my local village destroyed by a rock flying in from space? Why is my town in Texas experiencing freezing temperatures when that's never occurred before? How long do I have to get to higher ground until the tsunami that earthquake caused reaches the coast? It's in our interest to learn about the natural world due to the hazards it brings to our lives, of which reality could end prematurely. Humans are also curious. Why is our universe the way it is? Why can't we live in a 4D reality? Can we even grasp reality? How do I know something caused something else? How confident can we be in those judgements?

The human condition since The Enlightenment has meant we've shifted our epistemological focus away from us towards the greater world around us. If we no longer have an Almighty God which has all the answers and tells us what's good and ill, who does that now? We do!

God is dead. But morality, knowledge, and the good life of flourishing are not.

Existentialism is the branch of philosophy that deals with these problems, I think you would have an interest in it. I struggled with these kind of questions a lot when I was in my 20s (what is the point? Does anything even matter?). I read a lot and hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was the first book that really eased this anxiety for me. There probably is no point in living, it’s fine. Everyone decides on what they are going to do based on their circumstances in life. In the end the universe may not exist again, so what, we were all perfectly fine before it existed and who knows, maybe everything that made your conscious possible will be able to exist again in another universe, you won’t have memories of your past life, at least you shouldn’t have anyway.

I write a little and one of the first stories I wrote was about a being that created the universe from nothing because it was bored, I made a character narrate later on and his thought process was along the lines of “if you existed in this universe, who’s to say you won’t again in another? Whatever random events lead to life being self aware could happen again. The universe could expand until there is no energy left and then retract until the next big bang does it all again. It may not happen for the next trillion cycles but eventually something could happen again like it is now. Maybe it’s all happened before and we just don’t remember it.”

So, even if you don’t find a purpose. You are not alone in your journey. It’s part of being human, to have awareness of your own existence but powerless to know as to why you exist. Some people just can’t handle those kind of truths, it scares them stupid and that’s why you get things like hedonism, flip it the other way and you get nihilism. Despair can come from both.

My own personal thoughts on it are:

You are alive and you are able to do as you please. You always have a choice. If you make your life a journey of accumulating a larger number than others then so be it, I am happier without playing any number games. I want to see things and meet people and interact with them. I love petting cats and dogs, I love ducks. I enjoy the fact that my tongue evolved enough so that I can enjoy the taste of good food and tasty bourbon. I like to know that I am helping someone or something else not be scared of existing, like if my cat is worried because of a noise, I can soothe her nerves and she doesn’t have to feel fear anymore. I am still able to see the good in humanity even if I don’t have much faith in the world currently. There are problems with society as it currently stands in the west but if everyone can find it in themselves to be honest with each other and help one another out then the world will be somewhere worth living in, no matter how short that time is in the grand scheme of things. One day the sun will explode, will the universe care about some billionaire’s wealth? No. Nor should anyone now, if that’s what they choose then so be it. What really matters is not what you do for yourself but what you do for everything else.

/schizo rant

IIRC, the nihilist position is that there is no point, and the way I've chosen to interpret that is that it means we are free to personally define the point at any time, and for any length of time, as we please. The pointlessness lets us custom design life to fit our needs and desires, if we can minimize getting caught up in "you should do this and be that" external mentalities that may be incompatible with our natures. This seems like one of many correct paths to life satisfaction.

Of course, part of the battle is discovering what's in your(you in general not you specifically) nature to do and be, and then having the courage to see it through no matter what influences around you are saying or doing that may contradict it. The other part being unlearning incompatible mindsets that may have been fed into your mind when you were younger; authority figures anywhere in, and in any stage of, life are in dangerous positions to cause long term harm to impressionable, trusting minds, which is why I personally focus more on the "figure" and less on the "authority" part of "authority figure" when I'm dealing with people in those positions.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" - Aristotle or whoever actually said it.

The point is there is no point. No higher order. We're an accident of physics.

Whatever you want. Find something that brings you joy and try to do more of that. If it's important to you to leave a legacy, try to connect to others and be in their lives. Try to make good, meaningful changes to the world, even if they're small. Our existences are only so long, and worth enjoying.

There is no inherent goal or point in life. You get to decide. You get to give your life meaning.

It can be hard. Sometimes, material conditions like poverty, working conditions or social pressure make it hard to find meaning. Sometimes, you can loose the meaning, like when you loose a loved one. A good society should help empower all people to give themselves meaning. Sadly this is not the direction many countries are taking nowadays.

But despite everything: You are ultimately empowered to create meaning for yourself. Nobody can truly take that away from you.

There is no point. This life is what you get. It's up to you to make something of it.

To make evil men and women powerful.

It's a sandbox survival game. So, the first step is to survive to the point where you can start making choices, the next step is to figure out what you want your goals to be. Then, the hard part. How will you achieve those goals?

The meaning of life is to have a life full of meaning.

I find meaning by doing drugs and hooking up with randoms from growlr.

Try playing disco elysium

Nothing happens to you after you die. The pieces to pick up and carry on is on those we leave behind, if we are remembered well. If not, the pieces to pick up and throw out is on them too, anyway.

If nothing happens after we die, it's the same thing as that nothing happens in a movie after it's ended. I hope that the character I was will still exist in peoples' mind even after I go. I've recently started to embrace that "All the world's a stage" thing a lot and lot more, recently.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,"

Cat videos.

Its something for us to decide. It may very well be meaningless but in the end I would rather exist than not exist overall although I would not mind existence being over as it will be someday. Hope if does before it becomes to awful.

You are the Universe experiencing itself.

Welcome to adulthood.

The question you ask is universal. The answer much less so and in that difference lies the journey of life.

For some it's about amassing as much wealth as possible, for others it's about cementing a legacy. The pursuit of happiness is a common approach and to serve is yet another. Some seek solace in religion, others in hedonism. Some spend a lifetime searching, others exist and take in the experience.

For me it's about making the world a better place.

I guess everybody will come up with different answers to that.

To me, saying "there is nothing after death" is a simplified model. It asks you to live in the here-and-now, to live in the moment, because that makes you productive today.

Of course, the world won't end when you die. You will leave an impact on the world, kind of a track. Like, when water flows over a landscape long enough, it leaves a river bed. That will stay, even after the water subsides.

So in some sense, death might be your end, but it's not the end. I don't know whether that helped you.

First existential crisis? There's isn't one. Once you make peace with that fact then you can overcome the existential dread of oblivion and move on content in the understanding that nothing you do matters in the long run, and focus your energy on something else.

Because life is it's own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It's only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose -- we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach -- who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

In my book, it doesn't have a purpose, everything only matters for a brief moment in your life. "This too shall pass", for better and for good.

The point is to pass on your genes.

All I know is that I'd rather be here than not be here. It doesn't get much deeper than that for me.

It's the everyday drudgery, miseries and annoyances that make the good times worthwhile. Just like you never appreciate the sun more than in a place that gets very little of it.

I currently live in a country that enjoys a very high standard of living and where people really do enjoy the good life. Yet weirdly enough, a lot of the locals are depressed and keep complaining. Why? Because they don't realize what they have, because it's their everyday normal.

As for what's the point of living, if you don't want to fall into the easy fallacies of religion, I suggest you simply enjoy your life while you can. You were born with a finite number of hours on this dirtball and they're ticking away, so make sure you spend as many as you can with your loved ones having a good time. Because when the clock stops ticking, it's over.

people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?

Why not? Happiness comes from what happens while we're still alive. It's ""just"" a question of finding those things.

What do we owe to each other? For coexistence without inherent meaning in an afterlife, is the only source of moral good the social contract that we've made with each other to coexist peacefully? What are the bounds of that contract? What are the terms of our coexistence?

If something happens after we die, what’s the point of it all?

No matter if anything happens after death or not, or what happens, we can not know and we don’t seem to be able to comprehend it either way. So we can not know if what we have got is comparatively good or bad. The only thing left is to make the best of it. Because why not?

If there's no point, why not have fun?

what else can you do? we are because we am

l duno

Learn. Evolve. Improve one's mind. Understand more of the universe. Gain a greater understanding of one's place in the universe. Grow beyond what we understand and comprehend existence at this point.

I prefer not having a meaning of life.

Imagine having a real purpose. Then the question would still be "why", but you'd also have that obligation to do.

It's up to you to create your own purpose in life.

In my view, connection with others and the happiness and joy we can find in that is the reason for living.

It's what makes the world so terrifying that there are so many broken people who just want to hurt and dominate others and have no care for depth of connection. Because they are wasting their lives on accumulation of power and are painfully obviously deeply sad and broken people.

Sam Altman has his own issues, but he's dead-on when talking about someone like Elon Musk:

“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy,” Altman said. “I don’t think he’s, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.”

So find people, find connections with them, make your life about your connection with others. That's my suggestion. Love is scary, but also freeing. Will that be a struggle with the obligations we face? Sure, but not impossible, especially if you do your best to set clear boundaries and focus on your family and friends as opposed to the soul crushing job you work to be able to take care of yourself.

One of my favorite films is Dead Man. It's a "buddy movie" about the importance of friendship and the unlikely places we find it. Two men who have been rejected by their respective societies find friendship, trust, and kinship in each other. I think this may be worth a watch for you.

Whatever you decide to make of it, which is an incredibly beautiful thing.

What's the point? Nothing. Congrats.

Yet (...) people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why? Fuck if we know. Chemical shenanigans on living organisms.

"If nothing we do matters - then all that matters is what we do."

People in the future will wonder the thing. Kind of like a cosmic rickroll

if one's life was just loneliness, failed relationships, and soul-draining work it might appear pointless

maybe there is lots of other things to do?

A) There is no point.

B) The point is whatever you want, whatever you value.

C) Somebody keeps living after you, so "the point" is to pass things forward because "something" happens, to somebody else after you die. We inherit everything from our ancestors.

D) How should I know?

We're just smelly sacks of biology like a rat or a lizard who happen to have developed higher reasoning capacity for whatever reason.

While happiness might need reason, life doesn't. I find that, in a way, we live in a probabilistic universe with enough attractors that allowed things to form. Among them were humans, now also building some things with/against the odds, and subsequent self-image/sense of importance.

You can still suspend thinking about the inevitability of death and inherent lack of meaning to feel or create something. It does require one to choose and get comfortable making choices that are beyond right and wrong (not in a moral sense), however.

I don't know if there is one answer for why people can still feel happy despite it all, and I suspect there will be different reasons. One reason could be that they've just accepted the futility, focusing on what makes them happy. Or maybe they've accepted that pursuing universality/objectivism when it comes to subjective things is impossible. Or maybe even that no matter which option one takes to view life, one cannot escape delusions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVbKHNNWOUg

Give it a try of you really want to know...

Because the alternative would be having no happiness at all.

There is no purpose but to be alive, or rather, you make your own purpose.

I'm pretty confident that there's an afterlife.

I speak from my own research into related phenomena.

The afterlife is basically the dreamworld but moreso.

Ngl this type of post on reddit used to make me depresssed as a kid and id make them too, dont want to see them, theres no point in thinking about this thats why ppl either dont or spend all their time religious

If that’s the case, a Buddhist would have nothing to worry about! And a Christian would be in shambles I guess.

The chances that there this nothing waiting for us after death are laughably slim, especially as we make more discoveries about death and quantum phenomenon

Read into NDEs

Its like running a marathon: you do it for the journey, not for the medal at the end.

(Disclaimer: you do it for the medal. But you would do it anyway, even if there is no medal, because its the journey that makes it worthwhile)

Check out Optimistic Nihilism.

Why not? One good ability I've heard is why watch a movie or listen to music or play a game if you know it's going to end? No one and nothing is it's best all the time, just understanding that there are some things that can be worth experiencing is the best life has to offer, really.

I simply believe that it's not the destination what matters, but the journey and what you do in it.

I just got a haircut, ate an ice cream while listening to Lady Gaga, had a nice soup for lunch and tomorrow I take the day off after a long and stressful work week. My meaning is in those details.

Thinking there's something after death seems to make people lose sight of this world and fail to see the beauty in it, IMO. When I hear religious people ask this question I think their god(s) must feel insulted. Doesn't really answer your full question but that's my thoughts.

I welcome you to study Islaam to know the purpose of life. https://ia800202.us.archive.org/14/items/SacredFreedom.WesternLiberalistIdeologiesInTheLightOfIslamByHaneef/Sacred-Freedom.pdf

The meaning of life is to search for the meaning of life.