What do you keep living for? Is there a specific person, goal, or idea that you work for? Is there no meaning to life in your opinion?

Context: I’ve been reading Camus and Sartre, and thinking about how their ideas interact with hard determinism.

  • 0x01@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    When I was young, raised religious, there was an intense focus on finding purpose in life, almost as if there is no value to life itself without some end goal.

    After leaving religion and superstition behind everything that is left is remarkable, fascinating, and beautiful. There’s no need for life to have a purpose, a sunset doesn’t need to clock in to work, a rock doesn’t have an active role to perform but it’s still fine for it to exist, us too.

    I used to wish there was done grander purpose, but have you ever considered where that ends? Say you do have an ultimate purpose on earth, to collect all the smeeshmups, you do it and then what? Say your purpose is to be a good little Christian person and go to heaven, then what? Glorify some monkey with an anus for eternity because he agreed you did a good job? Yikes

  • einkorn@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    Isn’t the idea of a meaning of life irrelevant if you believe that the universe is deterministic?

  • greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    I live to be a good person. Figuring out what that means is a lot of reading, reasoning, and experimentation. I’m not sure you even need to justify wanting to be a good person, but maybe it is good to do good.

  • MochiGoesMeow@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    Im not sure. I stay for my family and husband and my animals.

    But I wouldn’t mind dying. Eternal rest from all the grind. Even if there is nothing after death. It would be nice to just sleep forever.

  • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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    3 months ago

    This is it. You die and you are gone, gone, gone. Make every day count and don’t waste time bargaining with an imaginary god for a preferred place in her cinematic universe.

    It’s not grim. It’s extremely freeing. ‘Now’ is all there is.