it seems odd that i’d turn to an online commune for advice, but i think it’ll provide some good perspective. I’m 18 and feel like my thoughts and day to day emotions are not providing me with any direction. My thoughts, decision aren’t leading to any ends (results if you will) and it’s all seeming very ridiculous.
I don’t know what you all can say as none of you know me, at all. But things are just seeming so insane, ridiculous in nature and I need something, something which i don’t know.
sorry, i just realized this doesn’t belong here, at all. mods please move this to mundane if you see fit.
Heh Gobbo, I’ve been familiarizing myself with alot of your posts around here, you’ve got the keen eye that isn’t too common.
I’ve knocked off 3 of those 4, sort of. Camus’ Outsider seemed to be like the sugar pill for me, took my mind off the seemingly troubling nature of things. Nietzsche I’ve been through Thus Spoke, and came out with, I think a somewhat skewed idea of what’ really going on there. I been through some of Robert Solomon’s work on Nietzsche as well. Brothers K. I thought was rather spectacular as well, but the same problem arose, in that I didn’t quite catch all there is to catch…but then i can’t expect to I suppose.
I think, like most high schoolers and undergrads, I was swept up in the existential ideals, without truly understanding they’re intended meaning, and havn’t since revisited them…
I think I’m going through a severe bout of denying myself of simplistic (but also important) pleasures and am certainly doubting all that I find at first glance, absurd, and therefore worth doubting. The lack of meaning of certain things has definetly impacted my ability to create just reason for doing things.
Forget Neitzsche… but for the others the quoted above is what the existential philosophers were trying to tackle. For instance in the Underground Man by Dostoyevski the main character drinks and continually puts himself into awkward positions because for him, as a higher intellect in society… he realizes that the only purpose and reason for doing things is to feel basically. His liver hurts… but he drinks to feel the pain, he constantly relfects and contemplates over meaningless exchanges because… what is to give them any more meaning than something else? Through these infinite regressions he lives his current life… finding a certain meaning.
It sounds strange at first… but existentialism attempts to divide philosophy in two, as opposed to phemenology which simply places events as happening as they are, with nothing behind them really.
Don’t read Sartre’s literature (his philosophy is worth considering) and if you start with Nietzsche then persist with him until you get it, otherwise his work is just confusing.
As to feelings of futility - welcome to adulthood. These feelings probably won’t go away, so learn to deal with them…
You’re blunt, but you’re probably as correct as i can hope for.
I think you both essentially got the essence of what I was trying to say. The irrational nature of things are uneasy, hard to cope with. I suppose I’m just wandering around in some f’ed up, non-sensical place, creating problems by assuming there’s reason for it all.
That’s just a very hard realization to accept, not that the idea is new to me.
Not my business, but I’ll throw two cents your way.
You are eighteen. You don’t need to “figure it all out”. Listen to W.J. to the point of having a purpose in mind, so you are not completely without direction.
Then take the words of Old_Gobbo, and have some fun and spend some time figuring out what makes you.
Then with the allowance and passage of time, you will be revealed without any unnecessary stress or strain, confusion gives way to thoughtfulness and eventually cynicism. Then it will be your turn to tell someone else to go play until they find what makes them.
At the risk of sounding too much like Dr. Satan-wannabe…
Life is what you make of it… truth is what you make of it… and YOU are what you make of yourself…
Things are as they are… but what meaning they have is up to YOU…
Now with that in mind… seek inspiration in philosophy… seek different perspectives… widen your options… and then go with whatever the hell you feel is the most likely too grant you acceptence and success in this life under these conditions… but keep in mind… that you are not LIMITED to one perspective… so whenever that perspective fails you… Switch to one more opropriate for your current conditions…
You are your limits… get to know them… and then expand…
At the end of the day… it means absolutely nothing what we did… what matters is what we think of those things and ourselves… So i’ll say it again… more perspective… less limitation… psychologically… intellectualy…
You’ll be fine…
Welcome to the world… it’s a piece of shit… but it’s all we got… you better learn to like it…
You openly asked for advice, I saw no point in polite sidetracking and bullshitting. I tried to just cut to the chase…
Of course, it’s just that the notion has made a bigger impact on your life of late, hence your request for advice. I can’t give you any easy answers, life is a complicated, depressing struggle and there’s no obvious point to it all. Ask yourself this: would you have it any other way?
Embrace the complexity, the anger, the confusion, the fear, the uncertainty. Because it probably isn’t going away any time soon, so it’s better to learn how to make something of it than to worry about something which one may never be able to change…
This is a very Nietzschean answer but I’ve not come across a better one. I do keep looking, but Nietzsche effectively ended all discussion of such ‘existential’ matters, or at least moved so far beyond what 20th century existentialism did that he rendered it obsolete prior to it happening. It’s only now that we are starting to move beyond Nietzsche, one could see the whole of 20th century philosophy as a coming to terms with his work.
This is a plug, true, but I imagine most of the Nietzsche readers here (and there are more than a few) would agree with what I’ve said. Or that I could bend them to my will…
i find it entirely reminiscent of ground hogs day except instead of reliving the same pointless day over and over again youre living a different one. its always the same mundane system though.
the only thing ive got in response is to set unattainable goals for myself to keep busy and motivated (like learn everything ever or be the president/rockstar/astronaut/all 3) and to be nice because its fun/easier having everyone like you.
If we gave you the answer to your problems do you honestly expect you would understand it?
Lets see …
You are looking for nothing. Simple as that.
You can’t find nothing because it doesn’t exist. Start looking for something as opposed to nothing. Like a career or something to keep you busy during your mundane existence. Love helps, too.
You don’t know what you are looking for because you can’t possibly know nothing. Unless you are dead.
