Ask Lemmy

As Ricky Gervais once said (paraphrasing), "If you went to see a movie and in the middle of it realized it was eventually going to end would you just say, 'Oh, I guess I'll leave because there's no point.'"

There isn't one, we're animals with higher brain function.

Try to ease suffering by being less savage and overcoming the animal instincts of hoarding and violence which are antithetical tou our capacity to form cohesive societies.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

I frankly find the idea of an afterlife horrifying. You're a disembodied conciousness existing eternally - not a million years, not a billion, endless existence.

And what are you supposed to in the afterlife? Have a family reunion? Replay your fondest memories like you're watching an old VHS tape? Explore your wildest fantasies (but not the ones your deity frowns upon)? In the long term it just sounds as agonizing as hell.

The purpose of life is to experience it. Experience as much of it as you can, before you can't anymore. The good, the bad, the mundane, or insane.

Try to live a good life. What the definition of "good" is will be different for each person, but a few general categories include being good to others (help when you can), being good to yourself (don't be your own worst enemy, mentally or physically), and being good to the world (leave it better than you found it).

Cherish the things that you have, and the things that you don't.

Here's my take - if there's any merit to the heaven and hell stuff, it's purely in the last minutes of you actually dying (assuming a not-sudden death). Something your brain might conjure up before you go, premised on your remaining memories and attitudes towards life. If you mostly feel guilt about what you've done in your life, it will probably be an experience akin to hell. Joy, and a bittersweet sadness about leaving this world? Probably closer to heaven. And perhaps many various experiences in between that don't neatly map to this. All mostly a play of the last final, firing synapses before the curtain falls.

If we take this approach, what does it say about living? Well, I'd say that it's important to live as fully and well as you can. Do good things. Make good connections with other humans and love people worth loving. Help people out. Have a laugh, read a good book once and a while. Live a life that, when it's all said and done, has honestly good material to draw from in those final moments before oblivion.

The afterlife lasting an eternity may not be all that it's cracked up to be. I enjoy this quote because it provides a different perspective of looking at our daily lives.

"Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."

• Alan Watts

Life is self-emerging. There is no higher or predefined purpose. You can live without one, or define your own, which may or may not change over time.

Regarding death as the ultimate conclusion; you can make of it what you want. You can consider what you leave behind. You can see life itself as worthwhile, without a need for an end-goal that follows after.

My wife is soft and makes me happy.

Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, the answer is the same. Bring joy to others, help people who need it, have people that depend on you. If there is confirmed no afterlife, I would keep living my life the same because I want my kids to have a great life, and grow up to be great people. That is a mission that makes me want to live as long as I can.

You might enjoy the show "The Good Place"

Just because gods and heaven and hell aren't real, it doesn't mean that nothing is real. Kindness is real. Compassion is real. Understanding is real. That tingly feeling you get when you do something good for someone else is real. It may have been the product of countless years of evolution rather than divine whim, but it's still real.

If you're lucky, you'll have another 60 or 70 years of awareness ahead of you. Find meaning by seeking out that tingly feeling as much as you can :)

to shitpost, obviously

The common argument to this is why does it matter as you did not exist before your birth (unless you believe in reincarnation). It helps to learn a lot about time space. Particularly how forward and backwards does not matter much to it time wise and how long after you are dead your life could be observed if looking from other areas of the universe. So to some degree regions of time/space like our lives are eternal we just don't realize it.

It's not black and empty. There's no you to feel those things.

The mind is what the brain does. It's a process, not a thing. It doesn't 'go' anywhere, and it doesn't sit there chewing on a lack of input either.

The brain stops doing, the mind stops being.

As for the point of it all: smoke 'em while you got 'em. Live your life, and try to make the world a bit better for others.

After all, there's nobody running the universe. Nobody to take care lest a sparrow fall. No justice, no redemption, nobody balancing the books. The only thing in the entire universe that gives a damn if we live or die is each other.

You want a purpose, there's your purpose. To do what only people can do: care about people and try to make their time on this rock better than it otherwise might be.

To explore and understand the significance of your existence because from my understanding ( ignorant ) we don’t really have an answer to our origin but rather an idea. History which is knowledge passed down, is always written from the perspective of the “winner” and rarely the losers.

Negative Utilitarianism.. To reduce Suffering in the world. To reduce more suffering than you cause.

So many great replies here, already.

But I haven't seen an answer to the "pitch dark forever" idea. I've had a perspective shared with me, which I think actually is more accurate:

The collection of atoms that currently think they're me will someday join other collections of atoms that think they're a rabbit, or don't realize they're a tree, and eventually, some will join a new collection that think they're someone else entirely.

If I leave the world a tiny bit cleaner or kinder then I found it, I'm doing a favor to those future collections of atoms that once briefly thought they were me.

I used to think there wasn't a point to life because we all just die. But then people told me that I couldn't be successful and that made me mad so now I'm fueled by spite. I've achieved almost everything I have set out to do so far in life, so now I'm just here to have a good time.

To pass your seed and knowledge to the next generation.

Teach, fuck, prosper.

Why would there have to be a point? It's possible there is no architect and thus no point. It could all be random chaos colliding into this weird situation, and we're just particles floating along in the maelstrom.

To come the question of why should you care, well you can choose pleasures or pain in your time on this planet. Pain is the default if you make no choice.

If you think there is supposed to be a point, you are missing the point. Red pill blue pill matrix shot.

Actually there is no afterlife whatsoever.

I turned existential a few years ago contemplating existence.

Then I started asking questions like what is that reincarnates? Nothing. When I die the atoms will be used by the universe for something else. My memories will be gone.

And I realized it's all just a game. It's the part of the illusion. I know I know. It sounds made up.

But hey now that we are here do what you want to do. If you don't feel like doing anything then that's fine too. Have a simple and a minimal life.

I think a lot of our stress to be something comes from social conditioning.

The society keeps saying you have to be something. They give you a list of things and tell you to follow it in a particular order and say viola you are a respectable human being now. As if you weren't a human being before haha.

So maybe stop focusing on being or becoming someone and focus on actions maybe? That's fun.

But yes everything goes to nothing in the end. The reason we feel it shouldn't end or why is it the way it is or it's unfair is because of the thinking mind.

The mind likes to create ideas and concepts. We sir are living in one hell of a conceptual world. You and me are tied down by the concepts. We can't accept the absurdity of the nature of this futile and impermanent life.

That's how nature works. Then our mind comes up and creates psychological dramas on how sad it is. Hahaha.

It's all part of the game. Play it. No one gets alive. There is no one to get out alive. Hahahaha.

If there's no sequel to a movie, what's the point of watching it?

I think the point is to just enjoy what you can while you can. And if you can help others you should do that too.

I would flip the question. If there is a heaven or afterlife, then what is the point of living? Really, what's the point if you just get another awesome life later on? Is this all meaningless aside from proving to God that you will praise him?

Without an afterlife, then the life right now takes on so much more weight and importance, because it's all you get.

If there is a heaven, what's the point of living? Just take me there right now