13 ms·

Living Like Nothing Matters

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
my reaction is opposite. live like everything matters. time is short, tomorrow not guaranteed. this is not freeing as much as it is restricting. if i could live for a 1000 years, sure then i can live like nothing matters. a bunch of starry eyed nonsense imo.
- sph 4y ago
  If everything matters, nothing matters. It's a matter of contrast.
  - moritzwarhier 4y ago
    It depends on perspective. "Living like nothing matters" can mean a lot of things. On the positive side, it could mean overcoming an instinct of fear that prevents you from pursuing your true desires. That might sound "starry-eyed" to people who are used to taking their wishes seriously and investing in realizing them. Many people are caught in a negative feedback loop that prevents them from standing up for themselves and taking on hardship, instead wasting their energy on a maze of fear management and "less-bad" life choices. Living "like nothing matters" represents an actually rational approach compared to this type of living, assuming you are made for it. But "living like nothing matters" could also mean to go all-in on the hedonic treadmill of pain avoidance and insincerity, not considering future costs (see obesity, addiction etc).
toomanyrichies 4y ago
I've read books whose gist is the same point this author makes, and I agree it's such a freeing realization. Out of the estimated 117 billion[1] humans who have walked the Earth, how many who have died can we actually name off the top of our heads? A few hundred at best? Maybe a few thousand if you're a history buff? And of that group, how many will still be remembered at the heat death of the universe? I'd bet money that the answer is "none of them". So what's the point of trying to be remembered or leave a legacy? It's a game that we're destined to lose, so why play? Personally, I don't care how big my gravestone is, or whether I have my name on the side of a building, or whether I have an element in the periodic table named after me. Because it'll all come crumbling down in the end. This too shall pass. And rather than being depressing, it's actually liberating. It means I'm done climbing the corporate ladder. It means I can work just hard enough to pay the bills at my day job, while leaving ample free time to engage with creative pursuits that satisfy me. It means I can have kids if it makes me happy, but I don't feel pressured to out of a sense of "continuing the family line" or some other bullshit. No matter how hard I try, literally nothing you or I do will be remembered on a long enough timespan. Hell, I don't even know the names of my great-grandparents, and chances are that, if I ever have kids, my great-grandkids won't remember mine. It's like Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" quote[2]. I don't know what the meaning of life is, but I'm pretty sure it's not "try to wrest some sort of immortality by being remembered after you're gone". 1. https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/#:~:text=This%20major%20change%20in%20our,ever%20been%20born%20on%20Earth https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived.... 2. https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > so why play? Projected or perceived legacy after passing is correlated with level of consumption while alive. Always has and always will be. Roman Emperors, Kings etc. they got to be on coins and have monuments erected after them after their death, AND at the same time they were the person with the most conspicous consumption in the whole country while still alive. Case in point: Queen Elizabeth II.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    I don't see how that answers the question. Or are you saying that the answer is "to consume a lot"?
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      To consume a lot of high quality things and experiences.
      - toomanyrichies 4y ago
        Maybe you know something I don't, but consumption never did the trick for me. And believe me, I've engaged in some pretty hard-core consumption. Long-term travel, drugs and alcohol, material possessions, sex, etc. I'll grant you that all of it resulted in temporary elation, but none of it resulted in long-term contentment. I hope you have better luck with it than I did. But I doubt my luck would change if I simply tried consuming even harder.
        Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
        You have simply been alive for too long. Or are paying too much attention to the wider scope. One of the two or a combination of the two. In countries where there is a fast turnover such as sub-saharn Africa, people don't have such problems. They get out in the morning trying to get more and they die way before they hit the wall of diminishing returns and for sure way before start wondering about the wider scope. With regards to wondering too much about the wider scope it becomes perfectly clear that having a high IQ isn't always an advantage. You want to be the luckiest dumbass to achieve both maximum consumption and the ability to never ever start pondering concepts such as the wider scope or any of the unsolvable phylosphical questions
chasing 4y ago
...and then you have kids.
- Razengan 4y ago
  Like every other organism ever
- rochak 4y ago
  ...or don't? It is a choice, right?
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    I suspect you missed the parent comment's point. Many parents feel strongly that their childrens' wellbeing is deeply significant.
    - rochak 4y ago
      Yes, but that is something that changes with time as children get older, especially in different communities. I get the point though.
- moaf 4y ago
  Maybe the point is not that nothing matters, but that life is ephemeral so put your energy into the things that matter to you. I was just telling an anecdote of when my first child was born and I took parental leave. I was shunned by some colleagues, and even my own father, for what was considered a career-limiting move. Looking back now nearly six years later, I couldn't tell you what we shipped in those weeks before or after my leave. I can barely even recall what broad initiative I was working on. But I do remember the days and nights with my wife, getting to know my child, and think about it often. Had I taken the advice of so many around me, I would have missed a once in a lifetime opportunity that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. Nobody will remember that about me, and the memory will be gone when I die, but it matters to me.
  - 4y ago
Razengan 4y ago
Going through a shitty phase (which happens often) I've been trying to cope in various ways, reaching high and low, inside and outside, for meaning and purpose and guidance. I don't subscribe to most existing models, not out of a rebellious choice but because I cannot find or follow their logic to a satisfactory conclusion. So far this is what I have, make of it what you will: • There must be a default state, and a part of it must reside in everything built upon it. It doesn't make sense that something began from Nothing, but I like to think that something began from Everything. • But it doesn't mean that a superset system can control a subset system 100% – Think of our relationship with computers and the programs running on/in them, along with all the physics involved and the virtual results. • Veritasium's video on "Math's Fundamental Flaw" [0] was a good source of inspiration: Shit may be coded with hard immutable logic but still have virtually infinite possibilities. • If you think your mind, or your "will" or "heart" or "soul", matters in any way and can make any difference, try to find the cutoff point between -where- that metaphysical quality starts, what sets "you" apart from everything else: What's the difference between you and every other person's mind/soul? Or a person's mind and a computer program? The difference between a world with no humans in it, and a world with 1 human? A barren asteroid and a planet with life? Can a rock access the mysteries of the Universe? Can you? TL;DR: What you see right now may be what you will ever get, everything may just be circumstance, but there -just might- be a way to touch something greater. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo&t=1772s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo&t=1772s
neojebfkekeej 4y ago
Oh really? Try holding your breath for 60 seconds while telling yourself nothing matters… You’ll get yourself in all sorts of entanglements by subscribing to these sorts of belief systems In reality, nothing matters existentially yet everything matters in the moment. Your ability to accept both of these realities at the same time is freedom
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  > Oh really? Try holding your breath for 60 seconds while telling yourself nothing matters… Is this supposed to be some enlightening statement? Even if you hold your breath until you die, still, nothing matters. You will die, and that will be the end of it. Some people who love you will be disheartened for some time, maybe til the end of their own life, but that too shall pass.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bakary 4y ago
    The idea is that nobody is really a nihilist when they're confronted with reality. Philosophy never survives first contact with a crisis in the moment.
    - xboxnolifes 4y ago
      You can simultaneously believe nothing matters while also not enjoy the sensation of pain. That doesn't suddenly mean avoiding pain "matters". It just means you have physiological response that makes you avoid pain. Your response, any many others here, seem to take "nothing matters" as "life is bad, so you should just die and be done with it". Which is a weird redefinition if you think about it. The real redefinition should be "life doesn't matter, so it doesn't matter if you happen to die". Which is not the same as choosing to take action to kill yourself, or even choosing to deal with pain.
      - Bakary 4y ago
Archelaos 4y ago
"But the care of thine honour and reputation will perchance distract thee? How can that be, if thou dost look back, and consider both how quickly all things that are, are forgotten, and what an immense chaos of eternity was before, and will follow after all things: and the vanity of praise, and the inconstancy and variableness of human judgments and opinions, and the narrowness of the place, wherein it is limited and circumscribed? For the whole earth is but as one point; and of it, this inhabited part of it, is but a very little part; and of this part, how many in number, and what manner of men are they, that will commend thee?" -- Marcus Aurelius: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, 4.iii (AD 161 to 180), transl. Meric Casaubon.
Syzygies 4y ago
A far better Conan story is his private opening for Johnny Carson, remembered after Johnny's death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazTAqBQakQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazTAqBQakQ Johnny told him "Just be yourself. That's the only way it CAN work." Conan spends the entire bit unpacking that advice.
newaccount2021 4y ago
StuckDuck 4y ago
wikitopian 4y ago
The unsettling thing about people who insist that humanity is irrelevant because it's small relative to others things is that they must necessarily believe larger people are intrinsically more relevant than shorter and thinner people.
- mrwnmonm 4y ago
  I have no idea how these people think that size has a relation to meaning.
- Bakary 4y ago
  Luckily culture is shifting all over the world towards making most of us much larger than before, thus increasing our significance.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mrwnmonm 4y ago
But seems like ads matter.
motohagiography 4y ago
While I understand this approach, it's not that nothing matters, it's that the esteem of people you don't admire doesn't matter. Here's a thought experiment: if you are able to see a the still mostly full moon tonight, and luckier still if you can actually see some stars, when you look at the moon, consider that you are actually looking down at it. You, as a person are hanging over it sort of perpendicularly to the surface of this sphere. Keep your eyes on it long enough that you see it move just so imperceptibly slowly, until you feel a bit dizzy or get a bit of vertigo from the motion. From this vantage point of hanging off the side of a sphere, it's like seeing the moon for the first time, and once you have seen the movement you will recognize in that moment that you are _on_ a planet, which is suddenly finite with an obvious curvature, and the most immediate question is, what the hell is this thing and how is it possible we can distract ourselves from contemplating it? It is the literal definition of physical perspective, where when you view the moon as downward from you, it makes everything here seem both finite and possible. The stars when you look down or out at them become asymptotic points on a blanket-like manifold. The mistake was that we think these things were merely "up," and things "down" here are the sum of the real. I think when you see how we are situated relative to the moon, other planets, and stars without the narrative filter of a self that looks inward, it's not that nothing matters, it's that anything that obfuscates this sense of clarity you can get about our place in the cosmos just from looking down the hollow space between us and the moon - is necessarily absurd.
- layer8 4y ago
  > the esteem of people you don't admire doesn't matter. Why should the esteem of people you do admire matter? I’m genuinely curious why you added that qualification.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Actually, why should anything matter? Why do people have kids, if in a few generations no one's going to remember anything among millions of humans? Population growth can actually make human life on the planet unsustainable, as garbage builds up and resources dwindle. Coming from an atheist point of view, let's say, what's the point of humans having a replacement rate when a smaller population can be a lot richer and better off? Why build anything when in 20 years computers will do it better? All that software you wrote, why even do it? All those stories and art can now be remixed. The hive mind will have the answer to every question better than the people who bicker about stuff they don't even know about. Who cares about their opinion? In a couple decades, who needs them to even work? To tell jokes? To have sex? Do we need to pay the next generation all a UBI to make sure they get their needs met? We may as well build a virtual reality for ourselves to experience whatever we want since it all doesn't really matter, right?
paulpauper 4y ago
(2) You can become more self-aware and stop caring so much about what other people think about you. I am tired of this advice. People who are successful get all the right people to care about them. This does matter.
- jjulius 4y ago
  This depends entirely upon one's definition of what a "successful" person is in this context.
sailfast 4y ago
This article’s doing a bit too much, primarily by calling out that famous actors whom we recognize and care about should act like nobody will remember them, which is a bit of a dubious premise. You’re better off reading Camus. This article is more stoicism than nihilism.
- irishloop 4y ago
  I do think the example is interesting because it gives us a person who, at the time, seemed so very important -- and no longer was. It gives us that metaphor of false importance. That being said, I would agree that this post perhaps not quite achieve the philosophical thought of Albert Camus :)
alex_young 4y ago
Why does anyone care about their legacy? In the long run we’re all dead. The only things one should concern themselves with are things they have the agency to change. This can be frighteningly hard to tease out sometimes, but literally all other worries are wasted cycles of a short life. Live like the future matters and do your best to improve it. It’s the hardest game with the simplest of rules.
User23 4y ago
As Feynman put it, “what do you care what other people think?” I think the common and incorrect reading is some kind of snarky interpretation. I think the correct reading is to make an honest inventory and realize what exactly it is that gives you reason to care what other people think and what does not.
codebolt 4y ago
The science based counter-argument to all this is the understanding that time is eternalistic, so even though we die our lives never disappear out of existence. I choose to go the complete opposite route of the author here, and try to live each day as if it matters gravely.
Melatonic 4y ago
In my opinion the key is to live your life believing that (for the most part) what other people think of you is not important. Assuming you have a good moral base and are not actively doing things that are actually a detriment to society or individuals then why let some random person you barely know dictate how you feel about yourself? That being said I think it is also important to recognize that for the smaller subset of people you do genuinely care about you should also very much care what they think of you. There are exceptions to this, of course. If you find someone excessively judging you from this group then it might be time to rethink what you are doing or if you should be invested this much in them in the first place.
fsckboy 4y ago
> How insignificant am I in relation to this vast universe? as far as we have discovered, any one of us is among the most beautiful, remarkable, complex things we know of, and on top of that we have emotions! what's the sun? fusing hydrogen. What's Jupiter but a big hurricane? what's a black hole? these things are large, but they're lacking in subtlety, variety, and complexity compared to us. What's in between them? nothing, vast nothing. It's the rest of the universe that so far appears to be insignificant to me.
- IB-I 4y ago
  “As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are.” - Peter Cook
Aperocky 4y ago
> How insignificant am I in relation to this vast universe? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten. > (1) You can become depressed and lose faith. > (2) You can become more self-aware and stop caring so much. 1. is our ego speaking, 2. is curiosity speaking. Universe take me for a ride, show me as many things I can, I'm plenty content as an observer.
Kiro 4y ago
Why does it matter if anyone remembers you when you're dead?
- barnabee 4y ago
  It doesn't
  - Kiro 4y ago
    So it does matter as long as I'm not forgotten while I'm alive.
cik 4y ago
I don't understand the obsession with either side of significance or insignificance. People ought find out what works for them - and it's individual. Personally, I loved Ray Dalio's book Principles - not as a discussion of finance (which it also is!), rather as a means to help me solidify the idea of codifying my life principles. These in turn, provide tremendous meaning and support to my decision making process. Everything, every action, every step one takes has some form of an impact on something. The question is merely whether or not as individuals we care about it. Significance is in the eye of the beholder, and measurable on a scale that you determine. Am I insignificant compared to anything in space - absolutely. But what if my generations learn the lessons I deem important for them to learn? I might argue my impact is massive, it's now generational. Remember my name or not - but instilling and living ideals.. sounds like a large impact to me. That may not work for others. YMMV.
dade_ 4y ago
So I think it boils down to, “My general theory about life is that “things usually work out.”” A foolhardy view that conveniently removes the denomination that are dead.
cainxinth 4y ago
> My general theory about life is that “things usually work out.” Mine is “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

my reaction is opposite. live like everything matters. time is short, tomorrow not guaranteed. this is not freeing as much as it is restricting. if i could live for a 1000 years, sure then i can live like nothing matters. a bunch of starry eyed nonsense imo.

sph 4y ago
If everything matters, nothing matters. It's a matter of contrast.
- moritzwarhier 4y ago
  It depends on perspective. "Living like nothing matters" can mean a lot of things. On the positive side, it could mean overcoming an instinct of fear that prevents you from pursuing your true desires. That might sound "starry-eyed" to people who are used to taking their wishes seriously and investing in realizing them. Many people are caught in a negative feedback loop that prevents them from standing up for themselves and taking on hardship, instead wasting their energy on a maze of fear management and "less-bad" life choices. Living "like nothing matters" represents an actually rational approach compared to this type of living, assuming you are made for it. But "living like nothing matters" could also mean to go all-in on the hedonic treadmill of pain avoidance and insincerity, not considering future costs (see obesity, addiction etc).

toomanyrichies 4y ago

I've read books whose gist is the same point this author makes, and I agree it's such a freeing realization. Out of the estimated 117 billion[1] humans who have walked the Earth, how many who have died can we actually name off the top of our heads? A few hundred at best? Maybe a few thousand if you're a history buff? And of that group, how many will still be remembered at the heat death of the universe? I'd bet money that the answer is "none of them". So what's the point of trying to be remembered or leave a legacy? It's a game that we're destined to lose, so why play? Personally, I don't care how big my gravestone is, or whether I have my name on the side of a building, or whether I have an element in the periodic table named after me. Because it'll all come crumbling down in the end. This too shall pass. And rather than being depressing, it's actually liberating. It means I'm done climbing the corporate ladder. It means I can work just hard enough to pay the bills at my day job, while leaving ample free time to engage with creative pursuits that satisfy me. It means I can have kids if it makes me happy, but I don't feel pressured to out of a sense of "continuing the family line" or some other bullshit. No matter how hard I try, literally nothing you or I do will be remembered on a long enough timespan. Hell, I don't even know the names of my great-grandparents, and chances are that, if I ever have kids, my great-grandkids won't remember mine. It's like Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" quote[2]. I don't know what the meaning of life is, but I'm pretty sure it's not "try to wrest some sort of immortality by being remembered after you're gone". 1. https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/#:~:text=This%20major%20change%20in%20our,ever%20been%20born%20on%20Earth https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived.... 2. https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> so why play? Projected or perceived legacy after passing is correlated with level of consumption while alive. Always has and always will be. Roman Emperors, Kings etc. they got to be on coins and have monuments erected after them after their death, AND at the same time they were the person with the most conspicous consumption in the whole country while still alive. Case in point: Queen Elizabeth II.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  I don't see how that answers the question. Or are you saying that the answer is "to consume a lot"?
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    To consume a lot of high quality things and experiences.
    - toomanyrichies 4y ago
      Maybe you know something I don't, but consumption never did the trick for me. And believe me, I've engaged in some pretty hard-core consumption. Long-term travel, drugs and alcohol, material possessions, sex, etc. I'll grant you that all of it resulted in temporary elation, but none of it resulted in long-term contentment. I hope you have better luck with it than I did. But I doubt my luck would change if I simply tried consuming even harder.
      - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
        You have simply been alive for too long. Or are paying too much attention to the wider scope. One of the two or a combination of the two. In countries where there is a fast turnover such as sub-saharn Africa, people don't have such problems. They get out in the morning trying to get more and they die way before they hit the wall of diminishing returns and for sure way before start wondering about the wider scope. With regards to wondering too much about the wider scope it becomes perfectly clear that having a high IQ isn't always an advantage. You want to be the luckiest dumbass to achieve both maximum consumption and the ability to never ever start pondering concepts such as the wider scope or any of the unsolvable phylosphical questions

chasing 4y ago

...and then you have kids.

Razengan 4y ago
Like every other organism ever
rochak 4y ago
...or don't? It is a choice, right?
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  I suspect you missed the parent comment's point. Many parents feel strongly that their childrens' wellbeing is deeply significant.
  - rochak 4y ago
    Yes, but that is something that changes with time as children get older, especially in different communities. I get the point though.
moaf 4y ago
Maybe the point is not that nothing matters, but that life is ephemeral so put your energy into the things that matter to you. I was just telling an anecdote of when my first child was born and I took parental leave. I was shunned by some colleagues, and even my own father, for what was considered a career-limiting move. Looking back now nearly six years later, I couldn't tell you what we shipped in those weeks before or after my leave. I can barely even recall what broad initiative I was working on. But I do remember the days and nights with my wife, getting to know my child, and think about it often. Had I taken the advice of so many around me, I would have missed a once in a lifetime opportunity that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. Nobody will remember that about me, and the memory will be gone when I die, but it matters to me.
- 4y ago

Razengan 4y ago

Going through a shitty phase (which happens often) I've been trying to cope in various ways, reaching high and low, inside and outside, for meaning and purpose and guidance. I don't subscribe to most existing models, not out of a rebellious choice but because I cannot find or follow their logic to a satisfactory conclusion. So far this is what I have, make of it what you will: • There must be a default state, and a part of it must reside in everything built upon it. It doesn't make sense that something began from Nothing, but I like to think that something began from Everything. • But it doesn't mean that a superset system can control a subset system 100% – Think of our relationship with computers and the programs running on/in them, along with all the physics involved and the virtual results. • Veritasium's video on "Math's Fundamental Flaw" [0] was a good source of inspiration: Shit may be coded with hard immutable logic but still have virtually infinite possibilities. • If you think your mind, or your "will" or "heart" or "soul", matters in any way and can make any difference, try to find the cutoff point between -where- that metaphysical quality starts, what sets "you" apart from everything else: What's the difference between you and every other person's mind/soul? Or a person's mind and a computer program? The difference between a world with no humans in it, and a world with 1 human? A barren asteroid and a planet with life? Can a rock access the mysteries of the Universe? Can you? TL;DR: What you see right now may be what you will ever get, everything may just be circumstance, but there -just might- be a way to touch something greater. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo&t=1772s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo&t=1772s

neojebfkekeej 4y ago

Oh really? Try holding your breath for 60 seconds while telling yourself nothing matters… You’ll get yourself in all sorts of entanglements by subscribing to these sorts of belief systems In reality, nothing matters existentially yet everything matters in the moment. Your ability to accept both of these realities at the same time is freedom

xboxnolifes 4y ago
> Oh really? Try holding your breath for 60 seconds while telling yourself nothing matters… Is this supposed to be some enlightening statement? Even if you hold your breath until you die, still, nothing matters. You will die, and that will be the end of it. Some people who love you will be disheartened for some time, maybe til the end of their own life, but that too shall pass.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Bakary 4y ago
  The idea is that nobody is really a nihilist when they're confronted with reality. Philosophy never survives first contact with a crisis in the moment.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    You can simultaneously believe nothing matters while also not enjoy the sensation of pain. That doesn't suddenly mean avoiding pain "matters". It just means you have physiological response that makes you avoid pain. Your response, any many others here, seem to take "nothing matters" as "life is bad, so you should just die and be done with it". Which is a weird redefinition if you think about it. The real redefinition should be "life doesn't matter, so it doesn't matter if you happen to die". Which is not the same as choosing to take action to kill yourself, or even choosing to deal with pain.
    - Bakary 4y ago

Archelaos 4y ago

"But the care of thine honour and reputation will perchance distract thee? How can that be, if thou dost look back, and consider both how quickly all things that are, are forgotten, and what an immense chaos of eternity was before, and will follow after all things: and the vanity of praise, and the inconstancy and variableness of human judgments and opinions, and the narrowness of the place, wherein it is limited and circumscribed? For the whole earth is but as one point; and of it, this inhabited part of it, is but a very little part; and of this part, how many in number, and what manner of men are they, that will commend thee?" -- Marcus Aurelius: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, 4.iii (AD 161 to 180), transl. Meric Casaubon.

Syzygies 4y ago

A far better Conan story is his private opening for Johnny Carson, remembered after Johnny's death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazTAqBQakQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazTAqBQakQ Johnny told him "Just be yourself. That's the only way it CAN work." Conan spends the entire bit unpacking that advice.

newaccount2021 4y ago

StuckDuck 4y ago

wikitopian 4y ago

The unsettling thing about people who insist that humanity is irrelevant because it's small relative to others things is that they must necessarily believe larger people are intrinsically more relevant than shorter and thinner people.

mrwnmonm 4y ago
I have no idea how these people think that size has a relation to meaning.
Bakary 4y ago
Luckily culture is shifting all over the world towards making most of us much larger than before, thus increasing our significance.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mrwnmonm 4y ago

But seems like ads matter.

motohagiography 4y ago

While I understand this approach, it's not that nothing matters, it's that the esteem of people you don't admire doesn't matter. Here's a thought experiment: if you are able to see a the still mostly full moon tonight, and luckier still if you can actually see some stars, when you look at the moon, consider that you are actually looking down at it. You, as a person are hanging over it sort of perpendicularly to the surface of this sphere. Keep your eyes on it long enough that you see it move just so imperceptibly slowly, until you feel a bit dizzy or get a bit of vertigo from the motion. From this vantage point of hanging off the side of a sphere, it's like seeing the moon for the first time, and once you have seen the movement you will recognize in that moment that you are _on_ a planet, which is suddenly finite with an obvious curvature, and the most immediate question is, what the hell is this thing and how is it possible we can distract ourselves from contemplating it? It is the literal definition of physical perspective, where when you view the moon as downward from you, it makes everything here seem both finite and possible. The stars when you look down or out at them become asymptotic points on a blanket-like manifold. The mistake was that we think these things were merely "up," and things "down" here are the sum of the real. I think when you see how we are situated relative to the moon, other planets, and stars without the narrative filter of a self that looks inward, it's not that nothing matters, it's that anything that obfuscates this sense of clarity you can get about our place in the cosmos just from looking down the hollow space between us and the moon - is necessarily absurd.

layer8 4y ago
> the esteem of people you don't admire doesn't matter. Why should the esteem of people you do admire matter? I’m genuinely curious why you added that qualification.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Actually, why should anything matter? Why do people have kids, if in a few generations no one's going to remember anything among millions of humans? Population growth can actually make human life on the planet unsustainable, as garbage builds up and resources dwindle. Coming from an atheist point of view, let's say, what's the point of humans having a replacement rate when a smaller population can be a lot richer and better off? Why build anything when in 20 years computers will do it better? All that software you wrote, why even do it? All those stories and art can now be remixed. The hive mind will have the answer to every question better than the people who bicker about stuff they don't even know about. Who cares about their opinion? In a couple decades, who needs them to even work? To tell jokes? To have sex? Do we need to pay the next generation all a UBI to make sure they get their needs met? We may as well build a virtual reality for ourselves to experience whatever we want since it all doesn't really matter, right?

paulpauper 4y ago

(2) You can become more self-aware and stop caring so much about what other people think about you. I am tired of this advice. People who are successful get all the right people to care about them. This does matter.

jjulius 4y ago
This depends entirely upon one's definition of what a "successful" person is in this context.

sailfast 4y ago

This article’s doing a bit too much, primarily by calling out that famous actors whom we recognize and care about should act like nobody will remember them, which is a bit of a dubious premise. You’re better off reading Camus. This article is more stoicism than nihilism.

irishloop 4y ago
I do think the example is interesting because it gives us a person who, at the time, seemed so very important -- and no longer was. It gives us that metaphor of false importance. That being said, I would agree that this post perhaps not quite achieve the philosophical thought of Albert Camus :)

alex_young 4y ago

Why does anyone care about their legacy? In the long run we’re all dead. The only things one should concern themselves with are things they have the agency to change. This can be frighteningly hard to tease out sometimes, but literally all other worries are wasted cycles of a short life. Live like the future matters and do your best to improve it. It’s the hardest game with the simplest of rules.

User23 4y ago

As Feynman put it, “what do you care what other people think?” I think the common and incorrect reading is some kind of snarky interpretation. I think the correct reading is to make an honest inventory and realize what exactly it is that gives you reason to care what other people think and what does not.

codebolt 4y ago

The science based counter-argument to all this is the understanding that time is eternalistic, so even though we die our lives never disappear out of existence. I choose to go the complete opposite route of the author here, and try to live each day as if it matters gravely.

Melatonic 4y ago

In my opinion the key is to live your life believing that (for the most part) what other people think of you is not important. Assuming you have a good moral base and are not actively doing things that are actually a detriment to society or individuals then why let some random person you barely know dictate how you feel about yourself? That being said I think it is also important to recognize that for the smaller subset of people you do genuinely care about you should also very much care what they think of you. There are exceptions to this, of course. If you find someone excessively judging you from this group then it might be time to rethink what you are doing or if you should be invested this much in them in the first place.

fsckboy 4y ago

> How insignificant am I in relation to this vast universe? as far as we have discovered, any one of us is among the most beautiful, remarkable, complex things we know of, and on top of that we have emotions! what's the sun? fusing hydrogen. What's Jupiter but a big hurricane? what's a black hole? these things are large, but they're lacking in subtlety, variety, and complexity compared to us. What's in between them? nothing, vast nothing. It's the rest of the universe that so far appears to be insignificant to me.

IB-I 4y ago
“As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are.” - Peter Cook

Aperocky 4y ago

> How insignificant am I in relation to this vast universe? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten. > (1) You can become depressed and lose faith. > (2) You can become more self-aware and stop caring so much. 1. is our ego speaking, 2. is curiosity speaking. Universe take me for a ride, show me as many things I can, I'm plenty content as an observer.

Kiro 4y ago

Why does it matter if anyone remembers you when you're dead?

barnabee 4y ago
It doesn't
- Kiro 4y ago
  So it does matter as long as I'm not forgotten while I'm alive.

cik 4y ago

I don't understand the obsession with either side of significance or insignificance. People ought find out what works for them - and it's individual. Personally, I loved Ray Dalio's book Principles - not as a discussion of finance (which it also is!), rather as a means to help me solidify the idea of codifying my life principles. These in turn, provide tremendous meaning and support to my decision making process. Everything, every action, every step one takes has some form of an impact on something. The question is merely whether or not as individuals we care about it. Significance is in the eye of the beholder, and measurable on a scale that you determine. Am I insignificant compared to anything in space - absolutely. But what if my generations learn the lessons I deem important for them to learn? I might argue my impact is massive, it's now generational. Remember my name or not - but instilling and living ideals.. sounds like a large impact to me. That may not work for others. YMMV.

dade_ 4y ago

So I think it boils down to, “My general theory about life is that “things usually work out.”” A foolhardy view that conveniently removes the denomination that are dead.

cainxinth 4y ago

> My general theory about life is that “things usually work out.” Mine is “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”