I can't make the jump from nihilism to absurdism (Update)

The next step is to forge your own meaning. It doesn't stop at "there is no meaning". Once you see the void you can also see that there is space to build and no zoning code to stop you. You can, must in fact, decide why you choose to live, why you choose to act and how you justify your actions. You are the ultimate and only authority.

That's really hard. We're used to always being able to lean on something outside ourselves for purpose and guidance. And, to some extent, you still can. Back when you believed in external, inate authorities you were choosing what you believed. Those powers, whatever they were, were never real. You were to some extent projecting your own beliefs, desires, and ideals on to those things; church, state, god, whatever.

Find those childlike beliefs and clean the ichor of false gods off of them. Look at them from every angle. Decide which ones to keep, which ones to discard, and what you need to build from scratch. Whatever you come up with, polish it until it shines. Like a blade.

Another suggestion; check out Buddhism. The Buddhists figured out the same premise from a different angle thousands of years ago. The more grounded, secular forms of buddhism have a lot to say about confronting the void of meaning and carrying on in the aftermath.

May I introduce you to the immortal dialectical science of Marxism-Leninism?

I say that half in jest, but becoming active in a communist organization really did give me a worthwhile purpose to my life and something greater to strive for.

"nothing matters" is scope error. fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective) we are weird creatures with desires and dreams and hopes and ways to suffer and things we like. we dont need some sort of god or higher purpose to justify our existence, just what we personally care about

it's not about forcing yourself to be happy and make others happy. that's an obligation, a stated goal ascribed to you despite your wishes. living without "meaning", or more accurately objective meaning, is the opposite. it's about doing what you want. not in a sociopathic, solipsistic way, where you dismiss others and any concept of morality out of hand. but almost as play. not that you don't take anything seriously, mind you, but almost in that you are pursuing your whims as if you were playing a game of Minecraft. Everyone agrees destroying people's stuff in that game is a dick move, right? And people work together to do random shit in that game all the time. We're basically (or trying to be) playing Minecraft but the stakes are waaaaaay higher and we're also witness to an unbelievable amount of suffering caused by structures of capital which supress all of our natural urges unless they can be fully subsumed towards profit.

and this doesn't even mean that we can't live without a "higher calling" or "noble purpose", just that those are goals we become attached to and find worth and joy in naturally, not things we have prescribed to us as a required thing.

we are under no obligation to rationalize our desires and wishes, except when they come into direct conflict with other's, or when other's suffering and pain would be a direct result. and i honestly think this is true even if there was a god. Who is a god to prescribe the purpose of our existence to us? Is it just because God is more powerful than us and made us? Powerful people who make things are wrong all the time about those things. Is it because God is meant to be always right? According to whom? In whose interest? For what goals? Unless this God has all goals, that could ever be possible, simultaneously. Which is an absurd and incomprehensible concept. This God would still have no authority over what our goals are, merely the ability to suggest (though in a God's case, very strongly, but still). Just like everyone else.

So what difference even is it for the world to have a meaning made by God or somebody or to have none at all? You'd have to subjectively accept that God's goals as being your own, just like you have to for basically everything.

So the only conclusion I can make is that the lack of a God or a lack of truth or meaning means we are free, not doomed. If there is no god, then that God cannot coerce us to follow their arbitrary goals. And if there is no divine, objective meaning we must ALL follow or be punished, than what we want can be our priority. We can make our whole, all-encompassing, undeniably real and objectively true meaning(s) anything our whims pull us towards. Not in a "living in the moment" milquetoast way (i am not attacking mindfulness btw, just the idea that it's the only respite from meaninglessness or whatever), but in a genuine, powerful, driving and future-acknowledging way that we are supposed to exclusively reserve for "true meaning". And nobody can take that away from you, because nihilism doesn't, nor christianity, nor capitalism, nor any philosophical concept known to man, have anything that can debunk or disprove that. We, you, everyone has genuinely good reasons and drives to want the things we want, to have the meanings we find meaning in. To deny that is a fundamental denial of reality, a fundamental denial of one's very self, not in an enlightened way but in a sad way caused by domination, driven by the constant overshadowing influence of a dead God and a very much alive and very malicious Capital which urges us to justify our every actions and wish. But we don't have to. We can tell it to fuck off and then we can continue drawing pictures of garfield making out with sans (and then fighting for communism because adobe just sent all of your garfield pictures to some ai chatbot to regurgitate and fuck us all over with infinite slop).

to me absurdism isn't so much about looking at existential meaningless light-heartedly as it is about reconciling with the notion of it—by spitting in the face of the universe's cruel indifference and arbitrarily inventing personal meaning.

it's like aiming to live a life that you alone feel is purposeful just because you can, in spite of the will of any higher power or lack thereof that tries to rob you of it.

girl i just get high

Nothing in nature has any intrinsic value, that doesnt mean you cant create one for yourself

Just imagine Sisyphus cumming or whatever the saying is

Marx, when talking about Louis Bonaparte, wrote "[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

Obviously, the point Marx was making here is that, we are all products of the accumulation of history. We would not be here, in the way that we are, if it were not for the never-ending march of time, and with it, our history. However, the inverse is also true, in that, the actions we take now and today, forever forge a link in the chain of history. Do not be distracted by the grandiose notion of "history", however. History is not all things that find their way into the pages of a textbook. History is not just the epic of time, but it is also a personal and intimate story, of which you and your relations are the subject of.

So what of the links you forge? What of your familial bonds, your connections to friends, your entanglement with your greater community? Your legacy is your relations. To say nothing matters is to reject the notion that our actions in the material world have no impact on the development of ourselves and of our future selves, and the development of those we leave behind.

If you can reframe your point of view around this notion that your actions in the world lead to developments within others, then it's difficult to see how nothing matters. Every time you show up for someone who needs assistance, it matters. Every time you take up an activity, that gives back in some way, it matters. It can be difficult to read and hear about all the events of the time we live in. It can feel as though, nothing you do moves the needle. You must take that energy and direct it locally. Once you can see the results of your local actions, you will see a change in yourself and in how you feel about what "matters".

I think you're supposed to try existentialism first, then jump to absurdism.

Anyway try reading the Principia Discordia. I don't know if it hits as hard when you're not a fourteen year old atheist stuck in the religious south, but maybe.

Have you tried pushing that down deep and never dare confronting it?

I think you need to get some shorts in a bright color, preferably flower print

One of the many problems with "stewing in ennui" types like Camus is that they represent finding meaning in life as a matter of internal psychology, not just something rational but something that is rationalized. For many people, it is engagement with the world that acts as a precondition to experiencing meaning, rather than an experience of meaning somehow preceding anything meaningful. My suggestion to you based on what you say is to go do stuff with people.

Life-hack: Whenever the ennui comes knocking, just start speculating about alien life intelligent or otherwise, you'll either scare or awe yourself out of that depressive feeling, at least that's what I do

Personally I'm on the train of thought that the question of life being meaningless is meaningless in practice, at least to me. Who cares if it's meaningless in a universal sense? I have a life, people I care about, things which are important to me. Isn't that meaning?

In a bigger picture sense, I think the industrial revolution and the corresponding Enlightenment allowed scientific analysis to creep into and chip away at the foundation of western religions, without removing the reason people resort to religion. (E.g. Marx's "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature".) In a socialist or communist society, one's labor directly develops the individual (at the same time as it develops society), and in this sense one can find meaning in developing oneself and humanity. In pre-socialist society where labor is alienated, this avenue to meaning and self development is cut off, and so in modern society the individual finds themselves constantly experiencing a crisis of meaning. Enter nihilism.

For me, the clear direction and path for meaning in modern, atheist society is to find meaning in the class struggle.

I'm no philosopher, so that's just my layman take.

It's tough to passively live in an absurdist mentality. Especially with the heavy indoctrination into the abrahamic value structure embedded in most world cultures. It's something to keep reminding yourself of. That being said, you're allowed to give yourself a purpose that means something to you. It doesn't have to just be "everything is meaningless", it can instead be "everything is meaningless so I might as well make it better."

To say the same thing a different way. Nihilism says "nothing matters so why do anything", which is a very easy passive emotion to sink into. Absurdism says "nothing matters so why not do everything", which requires actively choosing to do something. The latter option sounds a bit more fun to me, even if it takes a little effort.

Permanently Deleted

I used to be really distraught about the meaningless of life. But then one day I just woke up and thought “damn this shit sucks” and suddenly the meaning of life became pointless to me. This was before I even knew what a nihilism or camus or absurdism is.

Sorry if if didn’t help. I suppose I just found the idea of nothingness bothering me more annoying than depressing eventually.

Its easy to look at your achievements and see that they are pointless and meaningless and see some sarcastic humor in that. Laughing at suffering is the hard part. So start with something small. Think of a time when you didn't factor in a simple detail and it made everything go horribly wrong. Now imagine that you are someone else watching you make this obvious mistake and how funny it is.

I have a hole that needs digging and then filling back in. you interested?

Knowing that there's nothing else makes the little time I have even more precious.

Nearly everyone who has ever lived is already dead. You and I, and everyone else here are some of the lucky few to not only exist right now, but to be aware of our own existence and its fleeting nature.

We don't know when the ride is gonna stop and we're gonna have to get off, but while you're here experience everything that you can.

To me, it is very serious business to balance the things I need to do to extend the time I have while making sure that I am enjoying most of my time.

In two hundred years I don't expect anyone will remember my name, anything I've written will be gone, my voice will be in the wind, but maybe if I'm lucky, I'll leave things slightly better than when I got here.

Lastly, I'll let you in on the secret that people don't talk about when it comes to "good deeds" or " doing for others." Generally speaking, it feels good to help other people, it feels good to make things better, it feels good to bring someone else joy when you can. For me at least, it's a little selfish.

concerning meaning, I ascribe to the "the things you want to do and find meaningful are meaningful" side of things

if meaning was a fundamental part of existence it would be a detectable natural constant

the concept of meaning only came in relatively recently, much more recently than life on Earth

humans invented meaning, so it's our responsibility to ascribe it

meaning is real and you have absolute personal authority over what is meaningful (you are more powerful than creation itself in this respect)

I’ve been in the same boat and still am from time to time, or think I am. I’ll share my thoughts and even if they don’t apply to your situation maybe they’ll give you some ideas.

What got me into a better, though not necessarily good, state of mind was thinking about killing myself. If you can’t/won’t kill yourself, then you have to keep on living. Once you realize you have to keep living the question becomes what is the better life? Then you can rationalize that obsessing over morality/purpose is not useful especially when you know it doesn’t reach any conclusions.

If you’re spending hours trying to find the “best” thing to do, you’re wasting time that could have been spent doing good things. So really, at a certain point, obsessing over the most moral or purposeful action is really preventing you from doing good rather than facilitating it.

It’s better for you to live in the moment or even give into some (non-destructive) hedonism rather than cycle around in moral distress wasting time and only making yourself more exhausted and unhappy. Sure maybe spending time playing video games or just chillin isn’t the very best use of your time, but it’s better than being in a constant state of moral confusion and discomfort.

When you recognize that you’re having a crisis that’s not going anywhere, choose to let it go because at least you know that will make you feel more relaxed. Try to do something that makes you happy if you need a distraction because making yourself happy is better than making yourself anxious or depressed even if it’s not the very best thing you could do.

I mean Hell, in some circumstances, choosing to make yourself happy instead of something else might be the best thing to do anyway. Happier people are able to think more clearly and act more charitably. Plus, through empathy, the people around you are affected by your mood. So even from a societal, not-selfish standpoint, choosing to be happy and relaxed or be a beacon of hope and laughter for others is much better than being depressed and adding to the melancholy of the world.

Yeah it sucks having a desire for purpose in a universe where there is no objective morality. But if you can’t bring yourself to end it, just choosing to be happy is a more moral option than choosing to wallow in sadness at that fact.

Even if you lived an otherwise average life, just trying to be hopeful and helpful will be better than stressing and obsessing over purpose.

You can also try to see it as a battle if that helps. The world is trying to make you depressed. Fascism and capitalism win if they can make you feel like there is no hope for change, no way to make the world better. Do you want them to win? Or do you want to rise up and fight to the end? Do you want to give up? No! Fight! Scream at the monsters of this world! When others lose hope you can bring it to them! Fight back against the complacency and melancholy and hopelessness of this life! Laugh! Smile! Find joy in the world and in your fellow men! Be a beacon of hope and happiness for those around you! We might lose in the end, the world may fall to pieces, maybe we’ll all die horribly, but you cannot and should not seek to control the world, but you can control your life and how you react to it. Isn’t it better to live a happy life? To die laughing rather than suffering forever? Rage against life. Mock those who try to take your happiness, who try to take your hope. Don’t give them the satisfaction. If you can do that, if you can be happy despite all the bad that surrounds you, that is a good life, a worthy life to live.

Anyway, before I give a list of reasons to keep living, I’d like to note that personally I’m not against suicide. I can’t do it and feel like living is better than not living but that’s just me. I can imagine lives I’d feel weren’t worth living, so I understand euthanasia. That being said, just in case you or anyone needs/wants reasons to live, here are some reasons not to die that might work for you:

• If you give in to the hopelessness that surrounds you, that’s kind of a defeat and I’m petty so I’d rather die fighting than lose like that.
• If life is as rare in the universe as it seems, you are one of the only beings in the entire universe who is capable of experiencing it and comprehending it. Eventually everything around you will be gone. Even the stars will fade, but you have the chance to see them. You have this one chance to experience things that may never happen again. Isn’t it a waste to cut your life short? To leave so many experiences un-lived?
• If you’re worried about morality, the world probably is better with you in it. Don’t give in to the eco-fascist whatever shit saying “humans are the virus.” Chances are any negative environmental impact your living would require is negligible compared to any major country or company. Maybe you dying would lead to people taking more flights or eating more meat just by the butterfly effect, negating any positive effects your death may have had. But see, your impact as a human being, your impact on the lives of others, even if only as a good friend, is certain to be impactful. You can help many people directly even just by being hopeful or letting them vent to you. In my opinion, even just doing those tiny things outweighs whatever chance that your death would be ever so slightly better for the world.

TL;DR: If you’re committed to not killing yourself, then you’re going to have to keep on living. If you’re going to keep on living and want to help/improve the world, just being happy will do that more than spending a lot of time and energy focusing on purpose or morality or the lack thereof would. If you need more reasons to live, thinking of happiness as a battle is a useful option. Fascism and corruption win when people give up hope. Want them to lose? Then fight. Choose to be happy, choose to be hopeful and inspire others to do the same. That is a fight worth fighting and a life worth living.

"Does life have meaning?" is a meaningless question and the answer to that meaningless question is a meaningless answer. How so? Let me ask a set of questions:

• What is the consequence of life having meaning?

• What is the consequence of life not having meaning?

• What is the meaningful difference between the two answers?

Personally, my answer to all three is "nothing."

I'm just so desperate to have a purpose and meaning in my life, but at the same time I can't sincerely believe in any religion or afterlife. I try to "live in the moment" and "be happy and make others happy", but it just isn't enough. I need something more.

Your duty in life is to make the world a better life. It's to leave the world in a better state than when you entered it. You don't have to be the architect of some world-historic event like a socialist revolution. It can be much simpler things like feeding ducks at a nearby park or buying groceries for your aging grandparents or refusing to vote guilty in a jury. Your duty to leave the world in a better state when you leave the world can be fulfilled through individual acts as well as fulfilled through being part of an organization, be it a church, club, mutual aid network, or revolutionary party.

Don't be suckered into pondering on the alleged meaning or meaningless of life. There's much work to be done to make the world a better place, to right what is currently wrong, to beautify what is currently ugly, to feed what is currently starving, and so on.

If there is no heaven, we are tasked with creating heaven on earth. That's the core of absurdism to me. Rebel against mystification and build out of the physical relationships we can observe.

I really relate to wanting to see greater meaning in reality. I grew up mormon, with this story that there is purpose to existence, that we as a church, as a people, were working towards something. As I learned more about history and scientific inquiry, that understanding of the world fell away. But... I still need to see purpose, still need my actions to be for something. Absurdism never really sat right with me. I'm sure there's genuine philosophical insight there, but... it's hard not to see it as a justification for whatever lifestyle you already happen to be living.

I've found a strange sort of... worldview? Spiritualism? something... in looking at the world in terms of evolution. We started with a universe of hot, simple gas and yet here we are billions of years latter as complex arrangements of matter perceiving the and understanding itself to be matter. I can't see that as a universe without purpose. When we talk about evolution in the english-speaking world, a lot of emphasis is placed on the competition, on the struggle for survival. "Nature is red in tooth and claw". It's certainly part of it. But in overemphasizing it, I think we overlook a much more core evolutionary principle: cooperation.

Each of us is a colossal, ambulatory city made of cells. Trillions and trillions of organisms sharing resources, dividing labor, cooperating. If we go down another level, each of those cells is itself already a symbiote - a big cell and a little cell (the mitochondria) working together to do more than either could on their own. Going up a level, we're talking to one another. Competition may iterate on an organism; make a tooth longer, a hide tougher. Cooperation does one better. It changes the paradigm.

We find ourselves in a universe that selects for cooperation. Maybe it's that way for a greater reason. But... even if it isn't, if it's just how these physical laws happen to be expressed... we still get to see what it may become. Contribute, even. I see a purpose in that.

The universe has a flow to it that we don’t fully understand. Science has not advanced to the point where we can answer the question of why things happen in the way that they do. However, we do know that life itself appears to be a contradiction. Life flows in the opposite direction of the universe as a whole while also being inextricably part of it. We’re like an eddy caught up in the cosmic tide.

The things we value as human are a reflection of this reality. Our natural inclination to value life, fear death, build community, and our curiosity are a natural consequence of material phenomena. Understanding how and why they come to be is part of developing a consciousness that can help to ease the chaotic relationship we as living things have with the entropic progression of our universe.

This perspective isn’t neither nihilist nor absurdist. It does not reject the concept of meaning out of hand but instead seeks to understand how and why we create meaning. It also does not dismiss the contradictions present in the world but instead seeks to build an understanding of the world that resolves them. It’s just what I understand to be dialectical materialism.

The most fundamental question of ontology is not exactly "why do I exist" but rather "why does anything exists rather than nothing?"

You don't know a lot in philosophy. The only consensus is that you know that you exist, which implies that at least one thing exists rather than nothing.

But nothingness would've been a lot simpler right? When something exists then there's the question of what. Who chose the content of what exists? My faith tells me no one since I'm also atheist.

Now you might be tempted by simply saying that existence is just chaotic and random and all the rules of matter just spontaneously spawned out of the void for no reason but think about it : the possibility of randomness, the possibility of time and space themselves, that's a something. If there are dice in the universe that generate random realities then those dice are not nothingness.

So basically what I'm personally convinced of is that, in a good little materialistic fashion, all is driven by necessity. We exist because it was necessary, so you're necessary. Things are how they are because they generate the most something

My final personal conclusion to the existential crisis is that something has to observe the world. The rules of matter had to end up with life eventually because life it is the most something of all things. Intelligent life is the only thing we know of that can observe still matter, the universe without life doesn't really exist because nothing is here to observe it.

So there it is, your freshly delivered atheist purpose of life : create a something that start existing, and contemplate all the things that exists. You are a vessel of the bare concept of existence, you're the product of the necessity of existence, you spawned to create and contemplate because something had to exist

Scratch too deep at reasons for being and you'll wear a hole through to nihilism, why not live for people? for humanity and human potential? Why strain your ears for a response from a universe that can't answer?

It's true, life is meaningless.

But at the same time, life is not meaningless.

There is no inherent, unchangeable meaning. No universal purpose for us to be here.

And yet we still strive to have meaning. It is not real, but its absence leaves a real void.

So meaning is real even in its absence. It's real precisely because of its absence. It is up to us to fill that vacuum - or not. Meaning only takes the form that we give it.

Regarding nihilism and absurdism:

• Nihilism is an observation of emptiness.
• Existentialism is the proposition that emptiness provides space for creation.
• Absurdism is the recognition that the universe ultimately makes all of our efforts meaningless.

Nihilism creates stress out of the problem of our existence. Existentialism creates anxiety from the pursuit of a solution. Absurdism comforts us when the anxiety gets too great by reminding us that we don't have to be perfect, there's no such thing, we just have to live in a way that is honest to ourselves.

Finally, on making others happy: It is also important for you to be happy. And while meaning can be a part of that, so are health and leisure. I find that I have an easier time engaging with meaning when I am feeling somewhat lifted above the daily doldrums, which then allows me to further elevate my spirits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

Play the first 3 mgs games, and happiness is a silly goal. Philosophy has made literally zero people happy. No one is happy. But existentialism means literally just fill that meaninglessness with absolutely whatever the fuck you want. Let that liberate you, it means there's no such thing as a wasted day because it's a day you were there for.