Ok, assuming there is no God or higher power, wouldn’t it be true that we’re all extremely insignificant and useless. I mean, sure, we help each other out here on Earth, we kind of got our own thing going here on Earth, a government, responsibility, surviving, reproducing, ect. That’s all fine and wonderful, but outside of socializing with fellow humans and surviving and all that, aren’t we basically completely insignificant? What I don’t get is…why we care about our feelings and self-benefit. Why we think we’re special. Why we think emotions even matter. We’re nothing. We’re just…ya know…things. We’re just an accident. A product of a thing or something. You guys know what I mean, right? I don’t do that whole big word thing. That’s just…no. ok whatever.
This discussions been started a thousand times before, but heres my problem with your premise.
Those are mostly if not only perceptions, there’s nothing that makes them absolute truths.
Are we and accident? Based on a certain perception of the world yes.
Are we insignificant? On a certain perception on the universe or existance in general yes.
Why do we think we’re special? Well aren’t we? What other life form have we encountered that behaves like we do?
Do we literally have to be in the center of the universe to be significant?
The whole “we’re nothing” perception is all based on a particular world view. And what made you conclude we are an accident anyway?
Insignificant to whom? Useless to whom?
I don’t even know you guys. Like insignificant to ourselves? It is 4 in the morning and I am just so exhausted. I don’t even know ok. I just do not know.
I don’t think we’re useless. We do a lot of good and pretty damn neat things.
Probably, in the grand scheme of things. That need not be a bad thing though.
We care because of the type of animals we are. That’s what we do. Nothing wrong with it. But I do agree we often give ourselves a certain special status that isn’t exactly warranted.
These statements seem to directly contradict one another.
Doesn’t an accident imply there was another intended outcome?
Not a thing, a process - evolution.
In the grand scheme of things, yes we are utterly insignificant.
I don’ think that’s a bad thing thought. I don’t know why people get so hang up on intrinsic meaning.
There are many reasons to feel depressed about life but the fact that intrinsic meaning doesn’t exist is not one of them.
As Humean hints at, all of the judgements you make require a subject doing the judging. You say our insignificance follows from the non-existence of a god – why would a God’s subjective opinion about our significance be any more relevant that our own opinions?
Why do we care about feelings? Why WOULDN’T we care about feelings? We’ve evolved to care about feelings. We’re hard-wired to care about feelings. You can’t just turn that off–apart from damaging the part of your brain that cares.
If nothing objectively matters (a phrase which I consider to be nonsensical from the start) then surely we’re free to place significance on whatever we like. Life is enjoyable, so why not place significance there?
Glad to see you back fj.
You may feel insignificant because you don’t feel like having a purpose in life, in society, amongst friends, family etc.
We need emotion to fall in love and make babies, hate to wage war against enemies, to make friends, make bonds that will be mutual/beneficial.
Many inventions has been invented out of annoyance.
Yes emotions are very beneficial to our ways of life.
The idea with insignificance is literally, one that does not signify… Signifying as a vector, pointing toward some thing is more comforting. Leading to, intending, all these steer away cognitively from the “feeeling” of insignificance. The evolutionary process is a signifier, but it’s a signifier of hope. This is of a feeling, a trust in the process. The trust’s reverse side is fear. If trust is the the opposite of fear, they seem of the same stuff. If I choose to trust in a singular uncertainty, its an awareness of a singularity within an eternal field. Does that not give absolute assurance in that an eternal repetitive process leads to a certaity, rather than lack of?
This is the rationale that I can only desribe, as the faith necessary to overcome, and not undermine this process we realise as life.
I really can’t see why someone would want to try to make sure other people did not feel significant. I mean if everything about us is insignificant, who gives a shit if some people feel their lives mean something? But somehow this ‘error’ is significant enough to require some other people to correct it.
Introspection, a lost art.
It would be just as true that we’re all extremely significant and useful. Your judgement of what is significant and what isn’t is just your perspective, having a lack of god has no bearing on the matter. This is a value judgment, that we are all privy to decide ourselves and there is no objective reasoning that means it must be either way.
Insignificant and useless are two totally different things. I’m paraphrasing Bill Nye the Science Guy here - Compared with the planet, I’m just a speck. Compared to our sun, the planet it just a speck. And with about 400 billion starts in our galaxy, which is just one of a few hundred billion galaxies in the known universe, we certainly are insignificant on a cosmological perspective.
I must now direct you to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vlrTVC2tQ. To quote Carolyn Porco - “These beings, with soaring imaginations, eventually flung themselves, and their machines into interplanetary space. …We have come so far, and all of this is cause for great celebration”
I would therefore have to challenge you on the “useless” assertion you provide.
I’ll answer your question with another question. Which would make you feel better:
Being in a situation where you desperately need $500, and your best friend is able to give it to you and help you out.
or
Your best friend is in a situation where he desperately needs $500, and you are in a position to give it to him and help him out.
While it is awesome to need something, and then receive it - I’ve found many more people find the greater joy in being able to help those in need (assuming all of your needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy are met). Of course, according to Maslow - you’ve got to meet your own needs first. So - I care about my own selfish needs, so I am able to find myself in a position where I can help others. (and pardon my glossing over Maslow - I am only vaguely familiar with his work, however it is on my list of works to check out)
I would go as far as to say the subjective experience of emotions is what matters most to each individual. You would sent someone to run some errands for you. You would not send someone to take your vacation for you. By living a life filled with things you would not want others to do in your stead, would seem to be more fulfilling than living a life filled with things you would want to send others to do on your behalf.
I imagine very few people on their deathbed think “I wish I had less enjoyment in my life”.
Accident is a bit of a stretch. More like, “We are one of many possible outcomes available to the universe win which we live”. Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick lane provides interesting insights on how complex chemical molecules formed from geothermal vents in the ocean, which were precursors to organic molecules like RNA and DNA.
While we are not an accident, humans are also not “an inevitable” outcome - just one of a nearly infinite number of possibilities. So, if I had to use a descriptive word, I’d use fortunate. However, being an accident, or being fortunate is irrelevant - as we DO exist. So… you exist - what are you going to do with your existence?
Due to the possibility of an Extinction Level Event, such as a giant asteroid impact, or even being able to destroy ourselves with biochemical weapons - a major concern of humanity should be establishing an extra-planetary population large enough to allow for genetic diversity in their offspring. Whether this is a moonbase, on martian soil, an orbiting space colony, or a space colony expedition (ALA Star Trek Enterprise type thing).
Excellent questions. I hope you find these perspectives helpful in formulating an answer.
The Doorman
Hey Kandee!
Long time, no see (or read?)
Still asking the old what’s-the-meaning-of-life question, eh?
I like WW_III_ANGRY’s answer (or part of it at least):
…except I see it like this: imagine how significant the universe is relative to nothing at all. It may not necessary have any “meaning” or “value” and it may not be a “spiritual” place per se, but what would count as “spiritual” anyway? What if we’ve always been living in a “divine realm”–and this is just what it looks like–except that we’ve been living in it so long that we’ve gotten use to it, and it no longer seems significant to us?
That’s one way to look at it. I’m sure we could hash out a dozen others.
It reminds me of those sanctimonoius fools who think the’re being deep by being “the real world…harsh,unfair, dirty etc.” BS
Not necessarilly because it’s wrong, some of it is true. But being a misanthropic asshat talking about how shitty the world is is just as if no more looney than saying, “the worlds perfect, everythings fine…”
Yeah, thread is on the right track.
I tend to think of it this way: it’s always both - everything is always everything all the time.
You are, in fact, a meaningless bit of nothing floating along another meaningless bit of nothing, amidst an infinity of meaninglessness.
However, at the same time, you are, in fact, a god onto itself - a trillion-trillion components, a trillion-trillion potential thought-combinations waiting to happen, and are able to take action based upon those thoughts. It’s fucking incredible and I haven’t even gotten started.
Try your best to be a good person and have fun. That’s it. That’s the meaning of life.
I quite like this.
There are a lot of politicians around I wish would think about things like this–What’s it all about; what’s it really mean in the general scheme of things; why do I do what I do?
First of all, we don’t know there is no “god or higher power.” Some of us are pretty (damn) sure there’s no Judeo/Christian/Muslim God. Some of us go even further and say the Universe is indeterminate. But maybe that’s because our knowledge is limited. We seem to know that there are mathematical ‘laws’ that govern the behavior of matter. Have people invented those laws or have they been in place since before the singularity from and through which our universe (known and unknown) was created and that set into place what we call evolution?
Neitzsche didn’t kill god; he avowed man’s freedom from a religious God. But there are still people who need an explanation for existence and the world around them. Physicists and mathematicians continue to search for that explanation, as do some, but not all, philosophers.
In the meantime “…this busy monster, manunkind…” looks around and declares himself “superior” to everything he sees; however, he’s slowly learning that other mammalian species can also do a lot of things man thought were reserved for our species. One thing we haven’t found is a species that has developed a written language.
That makes us pretty unique here, on our world. We don’t know what’s gone on in other worlds. Maybe humanity’s purpose is to find other creatures who’re also evolving into something that makes them unique in their worlds to see if we’re compatible so as to take life beyond what it is for us now and on this world.
One thing, for sure–if that happens, none of us alive now will be alive if that happens. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with “…live, love, laugh, and be happy.” Who knows? That may be exactly what’s needed to arrive at an ultimate ‘purpose.’
Your intellects are trying to compete with the innate natural intelligence of the human organism which is extraordinary and for which the intellect is no match.
There’s a self in you that is maintained by your constant utilization of thought. It exists parallel to the physical life and thinks it has a body. But the body doesn’t care about what you think; it does its job regardless. Thought is an interloper that interferes with smooth peaceful functioning of the organism which is an extraordinary creation of nature. Make no mistake about it. You are not an ordinary thing, not just a haphazardly thrown together concourse of atoms.
If we are insignificant it doesn’t matter.
In an infinite universe anything within is relatively insignificant. yet any fraction of infinity is infinite itself and thus grand.
Its both man. we’re insignificant and amazing at the same time.