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Your comment was similar to one I was going to make... It's interesting to see that man still seeks that feeling of meaning (in life) and hope (after death) eve
by kirse 18y ago
Your comment was similar to one I was going to make... It's interesting to see that man still seeks that feeling of meaning (in life) and hope (after death) even when they do not believe in a God/afterlife.
How does one find value in life when - in the long run - their entire existence will be forgotten and their species just a blip on the timeline of Evolution? If you think about it, on the infinite (or even extremely large) timeline of this universe, our individual value pretty much equals 0.
Sure, in the short run it is evident that one's life can have value and purpose to humanity. Many powerful leaders and wars have proven this. But so what? Our egos won't be around to reap the glory of knowing that either. Zooming out to the larger timeline - or the big picture - of this universe, I can't see how someone finds value in this present life without a convincing belief in either:
1) God/Afterlife
2) The existence of a solution to mortality
Life without one of those beliefs would be like working hard with the goal of a profitable business but knowing that in the long-run my business would never turn over a single dollar of profit. It's pretty obvious that the big picture negates the short-term goals and meaning of that work.
- zupatol 18y ago3) Finding value in what you're doing right now. Life should be like running a profitable business, which you know will not last forever. The point of your business is giving a value to your customers today. Eventually a competing business will cater better to your customers' needs and put you out of business. This doesn't take away the value you've given your customers, nor the money you made. Going one step further, the business does not even need to be profitable. You can find value in activities which are economically and socially useless most of the time, like art for example.
- Eliezer 18y agoYeah, I think I'll stick with that "Get out of Earth" one, but thanks for the suggestion. "On a grand scale we simply want to save the world, so obviously we're just letting ourselves in for a lot of disappointment and we're doomed to failure since we didn't pick some cheap-ass two-bit goal like collecting all the Garbage Pail Kids cards." -- http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0044_Subject_Nenslo.html http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0044_Subject...
- zupatol 18y ago"In other words, Bartlebooth resolved one day that his whole life would be organised as a single project, an arbitrarily constrained programme with no purpose outside its own completion." Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual
- knome 18y ago3) The possibility that after fulfilling the manifest destiny of implacably rampaging across our universe our descendants will eventually tease apart the fundamental mathematical equations describing the foundations of our existence and find our universe not alone with nothing but the greek chaos surrounding it but amid a vast collection of universes for our future generations to spread to and conquer. Goals of Man ☑ Don't get eaten by a lion ☑ Get out of Africa ☐ Get out of Earth ☐ Get out of Solar System ☐ Get out of Galaxy ☐ Get out of Local Group ☐ Get out of Earth-Visible Universe ☐ Get out of Universe
- Raphael 18y agoNice unicode checkboxes. But dude, what are we running from?
- knome 18y agoExtinction.
- MikeCapone 18y agoA good read on this subject: "Global Catastrophic Risks", edited by Nick Bostrom. You can also check out the Lifeboat Foundation: Lifeboat.com