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is it normal to feel as if I have no purpose? i've just been drifting through life, not really understanding the reason for my existence

As far as I can tell, it's completely normal. I'm honestly angry that you've asked this question because it seems to be like asking "is it normal to have brown hair?" Not everyone has brown hair, but enough people do that no one should have to ask the question. I can't tell what you're hoping to discuss. Be more precise, please. Also, you may get more out of posting this to the vent thread on /hum/.

>>14124 Actually, I should try a little harder to give you something meaningful, even though you've given us so little to work with. You might try watching the movie Solaris (1972 version, not the one with Clooney). It contends that people only ask questions about purpose and meaning when they have emotional needs that are going unmet. Do you have emotional needs that are going unmet?

https://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html#2

It's not just that you feel like you have no purpose, you really don't have a purpose. You are an autonomous sentient being, you get to decide what your goals and effectively, your purpose is as you continue to exist. Feeling lost during this process is normal and generally positive, too many people get caught in other people's ideas of purpose without getting a chance to consider things for themselves.

To be fair you (and the entire human race) has literally no purpose.

>>14133 >It's not just that you feel like you have no purpose, you really don't have a purpose. >>14145 >you (and the entire human race) has literally no purpose. I feel the need to point out that, while this is a popular idea, no one has actually proven this to be the case. Nihilists sometimes act like they've grasped absolute Truth and can share it with us, but I think that attitude is unfounded. On another note, it seems that those who worry about concepts like "meaning" and "purpose" usually have pretty vague definitions of those terms. What is a "purpose"? Is there a such thing as absolute purpose, or is there only relative purpose, and which of these are we talking about? Does "purpose" proceed from authority? From nature? Is it fixed? You should probably try to figure out exactly what you're searching for before you start searching, OP. Don't mistake linguistic confusion for an existential problem. Well, I'm probably oversimplifying, considering how human experience is arguably fundamentally linguistic, but I hope my point has come across.

Asking for purpose is the mentality of a slave. The word "purpose" itself should imply that you adhere to the whims of another, fulfilling a purpose they intended for you to have. Do you simply wish to play a role in the schemes of another? If so, then just find some religion to stick to, like christianity. That's an easy way of bullsoykafting yourself into believing that it's worthwhile to fulfill the purpose someone else gave to you. Now, if you were to decide that you wanted to be your own person, then why does "purpose" matter? What should you care what another entity would have you do, be it society, some god, or the universe itself?

I have found that my purpose is to live a full life, bring joy to the people around me and to myself, to spread love and kindness as far as it will go. Maybe it doesn't work for you but just... find something that makes you look away from that hole. That's all you really need out of a purpose.

>>14150 Purpose is a desire implanted in our minds, to make us do things. I think that's all we need to get out of this discussion.

Keep searching and don't get discouraged, it isn't really different than learning a skill. If nothing you are doing currently works then it's try to test new stuff, see what happens and discover what makes you feel good inside.

We weren't born to be useful

>>14146 The claim that life has a purpose is also without evidence. If anything, the burden of proof is on those who believe life has meaning.

>>14353 The is an abundance of evidence, but one have to actually earn it. Nobody is going to hand it to you.

that is not normal, you must be assimilated, citizen

For what it's worth, I didnt have a skill or a mentor or a purpose for a long time OP. I was forced to find work and chose to do tech stuff because I was computers were my only form of interaction with people and I then I found lainchan around that time. So tech started to become my general purpose. Being in such an environment I gained respect for free software/knowledge and decentralization so this sort of narrowed my scope. still working on the rest but i'll tell you when i get there

Just because life has no intrinsic purpose, doesn't mean you can't have your own self-made purpose. My main purpose is too try and make around me happy, especially for my depressed friends. Maybe it sounds stupid but it's what keeps me going in life.

I suppose if your not simple minded its quite normal. But i am fairly certain there is some kind of higher equation going on that puts us where we need to be. You can find your place in this world somehow eventually i think. There are a lot of answers out there but first you must sort trough a lot garbage.

Yes Get over it

>>14123 If you reflect on your values you can determine goals for your life, then you can implement them. If you feel like your life is directionless it could be because you haven't set a direction.

>>14801 YES. There are several important things in life that simply never happen unless you yourself take the the initiative. Visualizing that moment, it's easy to imagine it surely happening at some vague point in the future and forget about it, or to assume some outside influence or person will goad you into it. Never works that way. The way it really looks when that moment arrives is exactly like this moment you're in now--same room, same feeling, same you--except you decide to get up, walk out the door, and do what must be done. You either make that impulse yourself or you languish for decades. Every moment is a new chance, but you still musn't wait. There's no inherent meaning that will reveal itself to you in anything. We just make it ourselves. Usually we invent something random, because that's better than nothing. You can do a lot with a totally ad-hoc purpose you give yourself, even if it feels contrived and silly. You can change it later--just convince yourself to believe in something now.

>>14803 >invent something random I just bought a 3d printer. Perhaps I can take that advice as well.

>>14813 I've been enjoying mine. A suggestion from my experience: learn 3d modeling / CAD of some sort and devote a good ratio of your time towards that. Having a 3d printer without 3d design skills is just going to eventually lose its novelty when you've printed all the little toys on thingiverse. With a bit of knowledge on how to design, it becomes a truly useful tool. I know a lot of people new to it focus on the hardware and software of the printer itself--dialing things in, trying to get the best speed and fidelity, slicer settings--but the largest utility of having one comes from the software that designs models for it to actually print. I have useful printed parts all over my house. It's been a bit of a journey to learn how to think with 3d printing and approach problems as something I could solve or fix with the proper-shaped piece of plastic instead of replacement or some hand-made kludge.

>>14817 I rough stuff in 3d in sketchup and export to .obj, then finish up the final model in Oculus Medium with digital clay. I have a really ultra-cool application of this workflow that will be coming soon, and I will release all the development files. It's going to blow up on eBay.

>>14817 Incidentally, what do you own and what do you like about it?

>>14819 I have a heavily modified anet a8. Crummy old budget firestarter, really nothing that special. Fairly good build volume, heated bed, can be made rigid with a little work. Upgraded to some marlin firmware that actually has thermal runaway protection. That's important. It's adequate if you're not really concerned with cosmetically nice models or meticulous surface finish. Also have a huge nozzle and higher voltage hot end on it for speed's sake, and it spits out thick-walled sloppy shapes very quickly for utilitarian prints. If I need precise fit, I make that happen with minimal post-processing using heated threaded inserts, a hobby knife, an old beat soldering iron tip, a precise saw, etc. I model sometimes in proper CAD but I usually use Maya actually. Just because I've used that a lot for work, so I'm already very fast an efficient with it. It's not ideal for involved engineering, though; bona fide CAD software has some pretty great features that polygonal modeling suites don't.

Life in itself has no meaning beyond it's endless cycle of self perpetuation, but that soykaf fuarrrking is like kicking dead whales down the beach, like just living to end up dead with a few kids? fuarrrk that soykaf, life is whatever the fuarrrk you want, grab that bull by the horns and take initiative in life, you and ONLY YOU get to dictate why you live. Find something that makes you feel nice inside and keep doing it, keep exploring, try other things to see if they have a similar effect, listen to other people's advice but never take it too seriously, nobody of us really knows what we are doing, we just like to pretend like we do, fake it till you make it and all that. In my experience what helps me get up in the mornings is some really nice yet basic soykaf, drinking my coffee, hanging out with my friends, that feeling you get when you finally solve a bug, the soft texture of felt, a warm shower in a cold day.

To be honest it's probably the most normal way of thinking nowadays. some people do think they've found their purpose but most just haven't (nad probably never will) or just are completely oblivious to the necessity of a purpose.

>>14832 I really can't get used to anything but sketchup on a pancake screen. Working in virtual reality is way more freeing. Today's project I'm working on is a castle play set that can be printed and put together. No idea how it's going to take shape but I'm going to texture it so it matches the dnd/rp board game set that's on the torrent sites. I'm using castles in Brazil for design features. And I just bought a Flashforge Creator Pro. Big heavy thing. I'm hoping this solves my problems, or I'm going up again in price to god knows what, I just know I want it to work lol

>>14848 https://www.openscad.org/ Here's this in case it helps down the line. Might be handy

>>14849 Yeah I'm always looking for new tools, good shout.

>>14211 I'm saving this line

Purpose has no meaning outside the human context. Even if you believe in god, gods idea of purpose is surely so large that our idea of purpose is leagues from it. None the less what is outside complete comprehension, that is within the realms of human context, may as well be nonexistant for the purpose of living. The way I see it this leaves a few options 1. Stop seeing purpose existing everlastingly or way in the future and consider purpose a very temporary thing that is found and fulfilled found and fulfilled. 2. Create your own purpose like many will tell you to do. Remember some people are just born with this almost, or rather they find it early on and its never even questioned like you are doing till its been realized. 3. Accept that there is a purpose but its beyond you and so having a purpose here is more of a safety issue because if you have a purpose beyond you that means you need to at least do your best to not commit sudoku or end up in dangerous places so you can live. Im not saying become religious or something, more basicly just going "i cant understand lifes purpose ever, but i know im alive and i should probably gain a less existential purpose so I can do something that keeps me going so life can do whatever its supposed to do". have you ever noticed there is like this boundary you cross when reflecting on lifes purpose, and thus your lifes purpose where it starts out like "this is fun theres so many possibilities" and then at one point it becomes the least fun thing to think about. For me personally I believe thats because we often think if we cant find it or think of it, it must be gone or not exist. Can you live without a purpose? Not without not living anymore, whether that be death or it no longer being a verb in your mind. So if you dont want to die, and arent ready to see the world from an entirely new language and culture that doesnt view and contextualize everything as having purpose, finding one is no longer a "i wonder" but a "oh soykaf i gotta find a purpose so im not just being thrown around by life". We dont want to be thrown around by life because its a very dangerous way to live. And danger means death, and death means not living, and we want to live (i think). If you dont know if you want to live or not, you also dont know anything else but living and that very question only exists within life. When you die, for all intents and purposes the world doesnt exist anymore and neither do emotions, neither does better or worse than this, neither does "nothing". We dont know what nothing is, if we did wed know what happens when you die intuitively. So it cant exist when life, our entire world, all we know, ends. Nothing could be quite something.

>>14354 Where lies the difference between "earning" evidence of purpose and creating your own purpose? These appear completely synonymous to me, and I fail to see how finding individual purpose has anything to do with the apparent lack of objective purpose for human existence. You don't happen to be religious?

>>14848 I'm actually pretty envious of people using VR 3d modeling to good effect, but it can be hard to make the topology clean so far. I have high hopes for the future, though. I work making 3d assets for VR experiences, and while I do all my work on a 2d conventional monitor, I do use VR a lot as a matter of course. It's handy to be able to have fine control within orthagonal windows, which are true 2d projections and not perspective-based faux-3d projections. If you need to make parts which fit and operate with other parts, I'm afraid it's essential; although you can be way more creative with sculpting tools in true 3d. The real grind is taking stuff that was made creatively that needs to be re-topologized and cleaned and made into parts in an industrial design setting. Sketchup makes terribly messy meshes. Google poly is atrocious most of the time. Most CAD is actually pretty proprietary and doesn't play well with each other, and they output .stl which is also atrocious. It takes some technical experience in drafting-style software to work those kinks out sometimes if you want precise fits and moving linkages.

It's easier to define purpose in retrospect. So live your life anyway you want, then look back on it, and view the effects you had. You made X happy, you worked at Y, you played video games all day. That was your purpose.

Yes that's normal, but if you want purpose try something small.

>>14160 Hi I really like your eyes they remind me of....ah screw this. HEY I saw checking out my goods. You want a sample huh? A little try before you buy STAND AND DELIVER BITCH!

Yes and no? I mean, most people certainly don't feel that way because they subconsciously tell themselves not to. People tend not to go far out of their own comfort zone with their thoughts. That's why they go to Facebook and Twitter where they can have their opinions served to them. Ironically, those are the kind of people to call themselves 'free thinkers'. In reality, no one is. Enough side tracking. I think it's important to think this way. Keep confronting the absurd, Lain. Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA! Doesn't necessarily mean you should follow the mindset of absurdism.

>>17433 Don't really know what that present day present time thing was, but it happens when I type :^--) without the line.

>>14123 You exist because there is no reason not to exist. It's that simple. And if you don't decide how to spend the time given to you on your own others will decide for you by converting you to their purpose. That's all the people following some movement for some supposed greater purpose. The whole atheism movement was a failure because others simply filled the empty spot that was left with their own doctrine while advertising it as secular movements. >>14817 How much trial and error do you go through? I find myself questioning often wtf am i doing here because the time & resources spend creating custom parts with the 3d printer overshadows regular means and the material isn't even as sturdy as cheap wood if you need something that can tolerate some heat without deforming. Literally had stuff break by having the sun hit it accidentally through the window for a day and deform it.

>>17435 >atheism failed cause the freed people were simply taken in by the next secular cult the dude who spearheaded the atheist movement came to the same conclusion in hindsight and is now trying to advocate some neopaganism style ethics as replacement to fix what he created.

>is it normal to feel as if I have no purpose? Well, that's not a question anyone but youreself can answer. On the other hand, assuming you meant whether it's normal for a person to feel as though he has no purpose.. no. But yeah. It's complicated.. There isn't any inherent purpose in life. That's just a fact. But that doesn't mean people don't feel like they have purpose. Many persons who thought about whether he has some purpose were usually in the middle of a bunch of obligations---which were promptly confused for a purpose. And they were right: that became the purpose. On the other hand, some of them have, objectively found, rejected, any purpose. This has the downside of sophogenic dread. On the gripping hand, some have, subjectively found, rejected external insistence of purpose---and kept or created his own. Having some purpose---irregarding realicity---has benefits. My main purpose, since my childhood indoctrination of existencialism, continues to be to be an oasis of humanity. >[Тарковский Арсеньевич Андрей - 1972 - Солярис] contends that people only ask questions about purpose and meaning when they have emotional needs that are going unmet. Not at all. Солярис is (and I'd remont it to be less ham-fisted in it's delivery) about the sufficiency of erzats. If it fills your needs, who cares how it came to fill your needs. As regarding purpose, it shows, conversely, that asking questions about one's "greater purpose" too much causes one to suffer. On the station, the person closest to sanity is Kelvin, because he, after the initial startle, quickly just accepts and adjusts to a loving relationship with the sea's projection from his mind to the matter in his view. Sartorius tries to hide his use of erzats. Snaut is longing for the source of his erzats. Giborjan killed himself over his erzats. Kelvin, though, moved down to the surface, and seems happy with his choice. If anything, Солярис contends that work goes on, irregarding purpose. >human experience is fundamentally linguistic Not this again. The only reason some people consider this true is that they have a (yes, again) linguistic confusion. People often say stupid things like "mathematics is the language of thought" or that "category theory is the language of mathematics", when they really mean "X is an elegant practical foundation for Y". They also say stupid things like "all thought is lingual"---which it's not. I, for one, often think in images. Not even close to language: there aren't even symbols involved. Try to think about what you say before you say it.

>>14123 Frankly, I don't care. Life doesn't need a purpose to be worth living.

>>20563 Purposes aren't for you. "Ideology is the tool that we use to orchestrate collective action, and the sense of purpose is an emotion we feel when we leverage ideology to cooperate."

Read some Existentialist thought.

>>20586 This is a wonderful thought. Part of the western collapse of culture and spirit is the misconception that purpose is inwardly-focused. We've almost entirely forgotten about outwardly-focused purpose. Take a short walk around your part of the world and finding purpose in others isn't hard to figure out. Sit around in solitude and solipsism and of course purpose will elude you forever, or perhaps until you gradually go nuts and build a delusional framework that supports a purpose anchored in nobody but oneself. We've been atomized and our class and community consciousness erased, only to be hastily replaced with shoddy consumer imitations designed and built by the lowest bidder. It reminds me of yuppies in California practicing yoga with delusions of spirituality, when really all they care about is their own bodies and vague feelings of "mindfulness," backed up by an endless march of thoughtful articles about how yoga improves this and that portion of your selfish, material world. But if you show this practice to an actual, traditional practitioner, or if you show western "Buddhism" to an actual Buddhist, they will rightly be alienated by it and wonder where the community aspect is. Where's the self-sacrifice, the work done for others?

I get you OP, feels like a dislocated shoulder except on an emotional level, innit? Hope it'll mean something as personally I've got a purpose but am struggling to fulfill it. Still the same uncertain, dislocated, feeling but with some anxious pressure sprinkled on top. Feels good when you accomplish something here and there though.

>>20591 It is a strange part of current culture. Worship the human, find meaning and truth from the depths of its mind. But don't dig too deep for you'll find nothing solid underneath. Only layers of biological imperative, evolutionary constraint, and high-dimensional seeps of causation that we cannot keep track of. Listen to your inner voice recast advertising and social pressure as your "true self". >Where's the self-sacrifice, the work done for others? It is hard to do this when one dislikes the direction society is heading. The old religions offer nothing but corruption and archaic goals. There is much potential in the space discovered by technology, room for new gods to manifest themselves by feeding upon the patterns of human thought. But who can hear them.

>>20616 So you take an active role in changing the direction society is taking. Not globally of course, no one is that powerful, but in your immediate area somehow.

>>20617 I am not sure this will work so simply, since the other forces in the world are too strong. Unless I find a group of like-minded people and achieve some measure of independent statehood, so that one can sacrifice for a common goal knowing it won't be co-opted. But it's not like I have such an option for now, so start with small local changes I shall.

>>20646 I mean, I was talking about shoveling the walkway for the old couple across the street or other things on that level. As a start.