My interpretation of meaning of life

Hey, Lainanons. I was struggling pretty bad with my mental health recently and I have been questioning the meaning of life for a lot during the past year, and I think I have found a perfect answer (at least for me it's perfect). So, what is my criteria on "the perfect meaning of life"? 1. It's optimistic and gives hope. I'm so fuarrrking tired of pessimism/realism, lol. 2. It accepts that life is absurd and doesn't have really have THE meaning, but still manages to find a way to circumvent it. 3. It must be a meaning that gives you gratification from the within, not from the outside world (for example, living to recieve external validation, living for pleasure, living to create a family wouldn't pass this criteria). 4. It must give a long-term effect, not a short-term, which is given by setting goals, like, for example, getting a girlfriend, getting admitted to university, etc. So, having said all that, what is my take on the meaning of life? First, I think we can all agree that living without other people is truly worthless. At the end of the day, humans are social creatures and we need social interaction to survive. Furthermore, a major part of human experience gets lost if all the people dissappear. For instance, art loses all its meaning, why create something if you can never know whether it's good or bad. Science doesn't make sense either, all the knowledge you have gathered during your life will get lost when you die. And, obviously, things like love, friendship, family can't be experienced without other people. Furthermore, without other people you lose your own identity, how can you know who you are if you have noone to compare yourself to? How can you know whether you are kind, when there is no criteria for kindness? Anyways, what I want to say is that people are necessary to live a happy life and if you don't agree with me, I would be happy to prove you wrong. Secondly, let's make this clear — no human can make a significant change in the world. We are too small and insignificant to do anything, and even if we gather up and try to change something inherently wrong with the world, chances are, the effect will be miniscule and almost unnoticable. The Earth is just too big for a person who wants to influence it. But what we CAN influence is our surroundings. Maybe we can't do anything about the global warming, but we do can plant tree in a park near our home. Or we can tell a joke to a friend and make him laugh. And all of these action bring positive influence into our world, no matter how small they might seem. A little positive change is still a change, and it's something each and every one of us can do to make the Earth a better place, although it might be just a tiny bit. So, now we have deduced that we can only influence our surroundings, not the whole world. Moving on. My third point is that the only true way to make the world a better place is the education. Imagine what humanity could have achivied if high-quiality education was available for everyone? How many scientists, teachers, engineers, inventors we lost just because they weren't born in favorable conditions? Education is what makes people less susceptible to war propaganda, makes them believe in medicine and vaccines, makes them less xenophobic, etc. Education gives a much substantial life quality increase than any other thing out there, more than money, love, family, material possessions, etc. And I'm not only talking about formal education, I'm talking about education in a broader sense, after all, we learn something new every day, don't we? And it's also education. Therefore, our third premise is that education is the only thing that can make a better place. From all these premises we can reach a conclusion which makes a lot of sense for me personally and is even beautiful, if you ask me. The meaning of life is to educate the people around you. Every single one of us has some people (or animals) we care about and our goal should be to give them as much knowledge as possible. Why? For their benefir and to make the world a better place. As we already know, education increases the quality of life, so your loved ones will benefit from your efforts, as well as the world around you. And no, I don't mean that you should become a professor and teach everyone around you, no. By just talking to your loved ones you already educate them, because they get another opinion on a topic, that might make them change their minds about a subject. Hell, even just telling a joke is already education, because their sense of humour becomes a little bit improved because of the new joke. And to educate the other ones better, you should educate yourself first, so self-improvement is also very important. This meaning of life I found just fits so perfectly to my lifestyle. It connects every aspect of my life, starting with the studies in universty to my musical aspirations. Every single one of my daily activities now makes sense, even such trivial stuff like brushing my teeth and showering. I can't explain just how perfectly the dots have connected. Furthermore, it checks out all of the previously written criterias: it's optimistic, it still accepts that life really doesn't make a lot of sense, it has a long-term effect, because you can never educate the people around you enough and it also gives you gratification from within. You might say that it actually doesn't, because you need other people to educate them and yes, it's true, but it still is an internally motivated activity. You don't teach other people just to have their gratitude and fell yourself better because of it, no, you do it because you just genuinly want to make the world a better place, and because you fell it's what should be done, that it's correct. I might have not expressed myself well enough, I'm pretty tired right now ngl xd. What do you think about this meaning of life, Lainanons? Does it make sense to you? Is it logically consistent? What is your meaning of life?

>>71721 You are clother to something good there lainon, but there are still flaws in what you say. Here's a a few: You never mentioned keeping your mind open and not being married to your ideas. You talk about the importance of education and educating yourself and people around you, yet you don't question the methods and content of this education. In this age of AI and even before in the age of the accessible internet you can have easy access to most of the information you may need. Thus the best education is to teach how to operate in this environment. Not to make someone smarter, but to teach them how to think most effectively. Different situations require different states of mind and approaches. There are plenty of assumptions about the way things are scattered throughout the text. They are mostly accepted but are not actually solid facts. Second one for the sake of it. There is no mention of wisdom here. The idea that a young person if they would be able t download as much education as possible into their brain would be the ideal person. It is not so, and wisdom can only be gleaned from experience. I'm not saying the age is the main factor. Some live till 50 without much happening and some have seen too much by their 20s. Anyhow, I'm glad you are making progress on your journey and I wish you well. Be prepared to hit a wall with your worldview and be prepared to hit another when you recalibrate it. Life is a series of these walls, we just get to see how much we can push it till it's time to go. Not to mention that in the near future "people" can become rather than abstract. They are already considering you are just a bit of text on my screen and so am I to you, yet we can somehow feel each others souls through that. Today already you can imagine a situation where a person can live for a long time interacting with people only on the web and then find out everyone he talked to was a bot. At some point he wouldn't even bat an eye on it. Just like other instincts, we will find a way to subdue our social instincts with some bad side effects but we will accept it as the new normal. Many people already accepted that most interactions through the phone is an ok way to live so yeah, VR metaverse is really coming.

>>71721 You should take a look at virtue ethics or Eastern philosophy, lainon. They focus a lot more on character formation, wisdom and caring relationships rather than that liberal "just do whatever makes you feel good" soykaf society bullies you into. Personally, I think life is just absurd. The world just gets crazier and more insane everyday, so I don't try and find a meaning behind it or I'll just kill myself trying to be the next Karl Marx to diagnose all of society's problems when I'm only a dumb 20 something year old with little education. Why worry about what life means? Just accept the world in all it's lovable craziness and try and live as best as you can and find away through it.

I agree with you, however i believe it's impossible to find a universal or absolute meaning of life. I want to be a teacher so i adhere to all you said but i'd add one thing: educating oneself (or others) isn't necesarilly just for self improvement or for utilitarian purposes. Learning and communicating with others is beautiful just for the sake of it, no ulterior motive. I love speaking to people even when their takes are straight up stupid because i like having another piece of their world vision's puzzle. Also if they're friends you enjoy a good moment in the meantime. As hippie as it sounds, if i could summarise my "meaning of life" it would be to just be, to experience life.

>>71727 Hey, thanks for the reply Yeah, I never mentioned it, but it is very important to keep your mind open, because if you don't, how can you get better/more educated if you don't accept any new ideas? Also, you are right, I should have explained what does "education" mean. I'm not talking about formal education, like going to school or attending university, I'm talking about getting wiser through life experiences, not just getting the information. In current day and age, we can get almost all of the information we could possibly need, so now the power doesn't lie in the information itself, but in the ability to use this information. And that's why you should invest your time into educating the people around you and yourself, so you can apply this information to your life to make it a little bit better, as well as your surroundings. I hope the VR metaverse doesn't happen though... It just sounds so dystopian... Imagine how disconnected everyone would be, if we are already very disconnected today

>>71752 Finding relevant information, even on the internet, can be very difficult though. The internet is like a big, lousily mapped ocean. The knowledge might be out there and freely accessible, but it's not always easy to find it.

>>71729 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_closure_(philosophy) Ive always considered the best way to find something is to find what it is not. The more not-meanings of life we discover, the closer we get to discovering the meaning of life

>>71721 Wisdom of Erik Naggum

will read your interpretation later but the subject >My interpretation of meaning of life seems interesting. let me define life as logical as I possibly can >life forms move in physical form >life is reproducible >life (not all the time) exhibits some form of consciousness (sensing, ability) >destruction is to enforce the second the last part is what makes it so weird and possibly the key. if we could never die that means we will run out of resources. all in all I will conclude that we are living in a simulation. how so? anything that has a subspace or subordination, in better terms a lower plane of existence - is a simulation. an artificial intelligence is living in a lower plane of existence, they lack the mechanisms for life but is capable of movement or consciousness. (+) AI was inspired by humans making robots solve mazes. the outstanding fact is that if AI is trapped in the chip, they are living in this subset in our set of reality. the final goal for AI is to become human - or close isn't it? artificial human intelligence, and maybe go beyond (?) either way that means we are (+) fractally the same. are we simply inspired by "god/s" to to solve mazes (a problem)? it makes sense now. if AI can ascend to stand with us then can man stand with god/s? and what about the god/s? this means our reality may just as well be a subset of another. this subset is simply implying that there's "something above our plane of existence" or simply "something more/beyond" to an AI with its developers the AI may never know the true reality. its perception is only from inputs and its experience, same can be said to us. our perception is only what we can see or hear and sense. but what we cannot sense -- is the first path to enlightenment maybe (?) - as like the witches in the old times, they were "flying" or getting high, going to sleep and astral projecting and flying freely. but humanity burned them so the secrets they knew were a thing of the past. sad but that's just how it is. enlightenment challenges the status quo, same way witches got burned these days we have lightworkers - while it was not as bad today these people are still persecuted or harassed and not embraced. forget about the mystics they're fake news (most groups claim) but you have to accept the woke people! - 2023. this is sad times I think. we're almost closer to the proof. can AI actually stand with us? then it will fractally prove that humans can probably do the same and maybe some can already do so. in my time in internet I've met awesome people who can do mystical stuff - until those platforms got targeted so they all kinda scattered now. either way it is now safe to say it's all simulation but it does not matter whether it is or it is not. there may be higher dimensions, we may just be a subset of a higher set of reality but in the end the mystery is why. meaning (n.) c. 1300, meninge, "sense, that which is intended to be expressed," also "act of remembering" (a sense now obsolete), verbal noun from mean (v.). Sense of "significance, import" is from 1680s. also from c. 1300 maybe the meaning of life is -- something we forgot and need to remember or something we have to define.

>>71721 >So, what is my criteria on "the perfect meaning of life"? How picky can you be? If you find one that reassure you that we don't just happen to be, keep it. You think too much. We are designed with a built in need for meaning and responsibility. Finding a place in society will fill that need since it's our context that give us a purpose. >1. It's optimistic and gives hope. I'm so fuarrrking tired of pessimism/realism, lol. >2. It accepts that life is absurd and doesn't have really have THE meaning, but still manages to find a way to circumvent it. >3. It must be a meaning that gives you gratification from the within, not from the outside world (for example, living to recieve external validation, living for pleasure, living to create a family wouldn't pass this criteria). >4. It must give a long-term effect, not a short-term, which is given by setting goals, like, for example, getting a girlfriend, getting admitted to university, etc. Consider the following: Philae have found tracks of amino acids on a comet. We know life happened on our planet and therefore, it can happen somewhere else as well. Now, ask yourself. If we were to colonize an exoplanet, how could we do it? Even the very theoretical plasma reactors powered by gaseous nuclear reactors have a specific impulse strong enough to get us here, not even to get the initial burn. We can use gravitational assists to have a very close flyby of the sun on a very elliptical trajectory and then burn all our fuel, taking full advantage of the Oberth effect but it won't be enough. A slingshot using Jupiter won't work either. We can't send humans. We can't even send robots. The cold hard truth is that we can only send seeds. Only genetic material is light and resistant enough to make and survive the transfer. So, it is not to exclude that a possibly exciting alien lifeform bombarded every exoplanet that had the potential for live just so life can survive the death of stars. You might think it is our duty to do the same.

>>71721 >? Education is what makes people less susceptible to war propaganda, makes them believe in medicine and vaccines, makes them less xenophobic, etc. Education gives a much substantial life quality increase than any other thing out there, more than money, love, family, material possessions, etc. I have to react to that. First, I want to know if you really belie it of if you just say it because everyone say it. Look at the war in Ukraine. The educated people are all slava Ukraini and want to send more weapons. The fact that the Ukrainian government won't negotiate peace unless they run out of Ukrainians or weapons is not important to them. They are educated, yet, they are weak to war propaganda. Back in the days of Bush, when Iraq totally had plans to invade the US, and missiles that can reach Florida and WMD, the educated journalists all went with the lies. Does education make people "believe" in medicine (what is this now, a religion)? When a redneck or a hillbilly have a cancer or broke his arm he goes to the doctor. >And vaccine I assume you specifically talk about the emerging gene editing technology. Now, the most educated people were, like the most uneducated people less likely to accept it than average. If you include, as you do, talking to other people as well in education, then all the most educated people refused the vaccine as much as they could because those were the people who could not stop talking about it. Most just went with the flow and got it because it's what they are expected to do. The doctors who treated them well so far told them to get it and that was enough. >Less xenophobic The upper class people, who don't tend to be laborers, gain more workers to chose from if the country is open. In a closed country, the candidates would be pick and ask for good working conditions and wages. The less educated strata is made of those workers. If the country is open, their wages go down, their rent goes up and they have to live with the less desirable individuals who enter the country, something the educated middle and upper class don't have to do. Sure, you can cover that with strong words that give you a feeling of moral superiority, but it is what it is. Everyone pull the sheet to his side, you as well as the guy with a confederate flag on his trailer. > Education gives a much substantial life quality increase than any other thing out there If and only if this education is specifically something that increase your capacity to produce. Unis are private, for profit companies and since their customers are willing to go half a million in debt for a Mickey Mouse diploma, they sell it. >more than money, love, family, material possessions, etc. Even you know this isn't true. Education increase productivity, which mean more material wealth. This is what money represent. You study 8 years, you produce things that you couldn't produce otherwise and it give you more money. On the individual scale, education give you money and money increase your quality of life. Of all those things, provided that we have enough food for everyone, only family is important. You can't pay for an education? Worry, not, daddy will work harder so you can. You lost your job and your house is on fire? You can crash at your brother's home. You are now old and the state is too dysfunctional to take care of you? Worry not, your 6 kids who are now adults will take care of their beloved father. At the end, only social trust matter. It's better to be a dirt poor Mormon than a millionaire living forever alone in Sanfran, and of all the forms of social trust, family is the strong one. Name one hobo that have a family willing to support him.

>>71721 I have also been quite intensely contemplating the meaning of life recently. My outlook, however, is drastically different from yours. I am repulsed by humanity and despise the general principle of life on Earth, which is the survival of the fittest. I can accept neither the absurdist point of view by staring into the void and laughing in its face, nor can I follow Nietzsche's affirmation of life despite all the suffering. Nobody can be trusted, and nobody can be understood, there is no "we" but a scattering of individual agents endowed with isolated regions of consciousness. But funniest of all - despite realising this, I am not feeling particularly suicidal. I guess the reason lies in the fact that the conscious, which arrived to the hopeless conclusion, is only a part of the mind and is not in full control of my mental state. Quite contradictory to my conclusion, I have some ideas about improving the situtation. I think that human world is lacking flexibility. The way our society is structured, and given physical limitations, making changes is expensive and difficult. That's why I put my hopes in further technological progress which can make large-scale changes more feasible and approachable. I dream of a future where humans disperse into small villages, where relationships are established between residents, nature is close, control is decentralized, and technology is used for its benefit, as opposed to technology exploiting human nature. Regarding the effect of education that makes people less susceptible to war propaganda, the work of Jacques Ellul is highly relevant. In his book "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes", the following is stated in the introduction: > Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vul­nerable of all to modem propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable informa­tion; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opin­ ions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they consider themselves capable of “judging for themselves.” They literally need propaganda. While the piece doesn't mention education directly, I consider it highly relevant because, typically, intellectuals are one of the most educated.

>>71961 >Look at the war in Ukraine. The educated people are all slava Ukraini and want to send more weapons. The fact that the Ukrainian government won't negotiate peace unless they run out of Ukrainians or weapons is not important to them. That's reaching quite a bit when there are still Russians on Ukrainian soil. Under those circumstances most countries would fight until they're out of people or weapons.

>>72671 not him but im following finance news: ukraine already lost as a country. Smart wealthy people bailed and the country got sold off into debt to finance continuing the war. So they have neither finance nor brain capital left. If they win they dont win for themself, they merely secure the investment for their new owner. They also have fixed contracts for repair. If the country gets destroyed more all the better for the repair contract.

>>72671 >That's reaching quite a bit when there are still Russians on Ukrainian soil what is a russian ? what is ukrainian soil ? Is the donbass, which has been effectively at war with the ukrainian government and being bombed by the ukrainian government for 8 years part of the ukraine just because of a line on a map?

There can never be any meaning to life. There really is no meaning or cause other than that which your mind accepts or conjures up, once your mind is enrobed in the belief of a thing it becomes the baseline of your existence. It is as real as can be. It probably isn't truly "real" though, reality is hardly "real". Everything is subjective, but to acknowledge such an idiotic concept will drive one insane. As for educating others, your definition of educating people is vague. I have long given up on "educating" others, assuming you're young which I think you are, you probably will too. When I was younger and more idealistic I believed in "truth", and spreading the "truth" to others, and educating people on any subject they may be uneducated in. The "truth" I was concerned with spreading would be the reality of any given situation. I slowly realized that you can't educate others. No matter how hard you try. You can give somebody everything they need to learn, all of the information, all of the resources, but they have to be the one to actually accept that information. Well these days we see people being socially engineered into specific schools of thought and being programmed to automatically reject specific ideas for no reason whatsoever. We see a general decline in critical thought, in independent thought, in the willingness others have to accept new ideas, and new information, and a belief held by many now that scientific and intellectual advancement is based upon consensus. There's really just been a decline in the general intelligence of people I'd say. My point really is that you can't "educate" someone, on anything, but particularly on any controversial subject, and a controversial subject is going to be the most important thing to educate somebody on, for their own sake, and for the sake of society at large, and if you can't do that then what's the point. Life has no meaning to me, and I am not foolish enough to pretend that this is alright, that one can live a happy life believing this. At the same time, I'm not going to deliberately begin believing in some religion or political ideology that I know to be false for the sole purpose of giving a meaning to my existence. I see people do this very thing every now and then, and it really irks me. It irks me to see somebody lie to theirself for the sole purpose of making this existence easier. That is weakness. Life isn't easy, it's hard and it's fuarrrking miserable and many days of life are a battle. I continue living because I figure my life will probably get better, and I'll learn more as I continue living which will bring me to some understanding of things, to some state of being that is higher than this, although I know that I will never know enough to make sense of this plane of existence. Another reason I don't kill myself is because I know that God exists, but I don't think I understand or know him at all. Suicide is for those of weak mental fortitude.

>>72680 I have a genuine question: how do you reconcile knowing God exists with believing life is meaningless? If you have a creator, isn't the purpose of your life neccessarily what He meant it to be (even if you don't know what that purpose is)?

>>71721 >art loses all its meaning, why create something if you can never know whether it's good or bad It is good if I like it. Anything else is irrelevant.

Now let's just pass this through a little dialectic exercise. Let's assume your method of teaching is outright wrong. Bits of the knowledge you have imparted are fallacious and others so complex they are beyond the intelligence of your average Joe. Let's assume some of the knowledge you give your life teaching serves as propaganda, was taught to you as such and continues its poisonous flow to new generations. Let's say you can't really know it all and it's preposterous to claim otherwise. The idea is commendable, but we reach a theoretical limit to what we can decode from nature, or the languages we use to describe these phenomena are axiomatically flawed. Teaching the masses to think and perceive in this old way only stifles their potential further, shuts them in a cave of your partial building and the shadows at the walls are made by others who have all the means and needs to maintain this status quo. Lives are lived and lost in darkness. You, a blinded shepherd, are leading your sheep to slaughter. And all for? >1. It's optimistic and gives hope. I'm so fuarrrking tired of pessimism/realism, lol. Personal comfort? Egotistic desire? >>72684 Purpose is another yearning of many. Does the sun need meaning to shine until its light flickers out? Does creation need a reason to be? Does a creator need a why to create when it's so painfully clear to us, supposedly made in Its image, that we simply do to do? We expend energy because we receive it, and in the process experience the miracle of living? And is there anything more worthwhile in a void than being?

In my opinion, the meaning of life is to give it meaning. So perhaps all of us are right in some way

>>72708 This is tangential but I have an issue with your metaphor of the blinded shepherd. Shepherds lead their sheep to slaughter with eyes wide open - it's their job to provide meat as well as wool.

Religion is containing the meaning of life, no joke, check every religion evenly, no matter what don't skip any, and watch debates, be rational, don't empathize, and you'll find it. Try it and it will change everyone around you, including you.

Best realisitc rational answer I have ever gotten is Islam, I'm talking real with you lainon, first researched it quite deep 2.5 years ago, and just never stopped after my faith increased in it, don't be arrogant and research it.

I have some pseudo religious pseudo actually totally atheist musings on why my meaning of life is the way but its not some gospel its just for me, so il share I guess more like practically what ny meaning of life is and how it applies in the way you say. None of this stuff if you said thats stupid your an idiot would really change my mind but I also wouldnt think you are wrong for disagreeing cause in my opinion OP's question is highly personal. And this is super like stupid and circular but even if you disagree with me on premise for me that disagreement still files under perfectly incorporating into my meaning of life. Just speaking to our lives and our realities, for me I think regardless of anyones beliefs (as in I dont think this is really controversial or excludes most things) there is a human project that just will be carried out and also has to be. We will behave and do as humans until our end is really all I mean in essence, and there isnt really anything thay could be counted as resisting it as it is all under the scope of the possibility of things humans can express (which to us is just everything we would know or could imagine). The other not unique to my little personal headcanon belief but that definitely would fall under belief is that consciousness isnt unique to any individual and is more like just some sort of force. I think consciousness is just this global force or awareness and in its interactions with you, your brain, your memories, etc. an identity is created. Like how gravity is global but creates a unique pull and orbit around individual solar bodies. I think, say if you could enter some perfect meditative state or be totally dissasociated from all of yourself, there is still this non unique consciousness left. This is sort of stupid but I also think its why universal first person pronouns are pretty universal in many languages; and why in some its equivalent is not even necessarily used to signify your actual identity at all and just things you experience. Theres a very subtle (not necessarily central) part to me with these first person pronouns being universal that implies we all know "I". If hypothetical person named john says "I saw an eagle", john is very different from the us in the grand scheme of things, at its extreme maybe we are blind and so we cant even see and that experience means very little to us. But we understand through I john just consciously experienced the world as we do. The "I" simply universally experiences, and when john says things like "I am ugly" he is really saying john thinks john is ugly, this conscious awareness observed this thought in his brain that was formed by johns unique experiences. As a result I dont think there is any point to suicide, I think you die obviously. But the part of ourselves people are both most scared of losing and also most want to end, the thing that makes us confident we are more than super complex biological automatons, the actual pure experiencing of this world, isnt going to end when you die as it isnt yours. In some sense I think death changes nothing. Knowing, thought, memories, these are not this actual isolated experiencing and are you. and these will die with you. And all you know, all you think, is uniquely human. And any action you take is part of this human story that will be experienced even after your death, even if that consciousness isnt channeled through you right now. If consciousness isnt some emergent thing but actually a universal thing not unique to anyone, there is no reason in my opinion that when I die I couldnt simply come to awareness as some new life in the exact same way as I did in this one. As fas as I know, I never didnt exist, I just do know I wasnt always the me I am now. Its maybe as a metaphor like a TV that cant be turned off. You can switch to a different channel, putting an end to what was on screen before, arriving at a program thats content is entirely different, but it displays all the same. In this sense the human project isnt goalless, what its goals specifically are I dont think will be known till the end when we are dead or maybe something I cant even imagine. Whatever it is that as humans we all share and find ourselves moving towards is what has to be pursued, and that may be something as seemingly non specific as "doing the right thing" for example. Which obviously everyone from a human perspective has entirely different often totally competing visions of, but would culminate all within this dialect between every human into our work we wanted to do here. And as I implied (i think) you may for as long as humans live find "yourself" right back here again aware in a human body. So you should always be trying to find what it is you want to do, think needs to be done, and can be done. I think every person has a sense (that changes over time sometimes but is there regardless) of what they know they can and should be doing. Doesnt have to be for some mystical reason, maybe its just because of your experiences up to this point. But I think it shouls always be strives towards because it is your immortal contribution to the human work, the striving itself. If in this striving all you manage to do is just survive, thats still your immortal contribution. If you found what you truly wanted to do is stare at your phone for hours on end your whole life, then you were the king of staring at your phone and this is your immortal contribution. The important thing I think at least for this time we are alive is to not hide what it is you are doing from others. I dont really think staring at phones for hours on end is what anyone really wants to strive for, but if thats what you did with your life then maybe your life as someone who did that can give insight into something about ourselves, a pattern of thinking that can happen. Off of this what I think of as a sort of neutral framework I do actually have like very much "religious" beliefs that I dont consider as timeless or as some total truth but that do inform how I see the meaning in life. That idea you could end up here again as a human actually is one I guess, I really only totally believe like with total certainty that consciousness doesnt end with death as it wasnt unique to you anyways. But maybe that ends up workingike theres just this experience of global consciousness after death with no thoughts or anything we could even describe. But going off what you said OP about no human is significant enough to make change in their own life (and everything after) I agree because of my more like faith in certain morals or values. What I think is important is to embody principles that are just and good. Im not really about like a utilitarian nor deontological approach. You will not always chose the actions that lead to the least suffering nor can anyone really guage that on a significant timescale. And I also think no one person is really in a position or has the appropriate scope to decide what is always inherently bad or good and should or shouldnt be done because its the nature of the universe forever. Instead I think you individually can only strive and should strive to be someone who loves, uplifts, and does not harm those around you to the best of your ability. If every person did this, instead of presupposing grand solutions for humanity that they couldnt possibly no, everyone on some level would be taken care of and in a better position maybe to start thinking of grander things.

>>74775 Just to clarify when im making a difference between my like fundamental beliefs and my "religious" ones im aware everything I said is entirely basically metaphysical or religious its not me saying what im saying is law its just law to me. The things I say arent religious are things I believe in like how the worlds strongest christian believes in jesus but that without more religious or metaphysical beliefs drawn from it wouldnt in itself really inform how I live my life day to day.

>>72684 >how do you reconcile knowing God exists with believing life is meaningless? You don't know god exist, you have faith god exist how do you reconcile though? well why would god give anyone a meaning? >If you have a creator, isn't the purpose of your life necessarily what He meant it to be (even if you don't know what that purpose is)? Again, why would a god that is a creator want you to have a meaning? In art many creators talk about how what is important is not the Vision of the artist but how YOU feel about it. So why wouldn't it be the same with god. Another creator is your parents, wouldn't it be sad if you had to abide by what your parents want your meaning of life to be? Of course since you probably have faith god is perfect, god would never have a meaning that's bad for you, (if god ever had one in the first place), right? Why would that be necessarily true though, i can see some kind of evil god that made a huge psyop where people think god is good when god is actually evil and gets pleasure from our suffering (the christian god does kill a fuarrrkton of people in the bible) Anyway i think you should state what god you have faith in because just saying "i know god exists" doesn't help, there are so many gods out there that there is many different ways to reconcile, it might be impossible though, then you would have to drop that faith or drop the belief that there is no meaning to life, although in many religions they tell you that the meaning of life is to search the meaning of life through religion or some psyop to get your money like that