Hello everyone. In the last year, I have came across a fundamental question in life. Why are we here ? What are we looking for ? I have been working on these two questions, questioning myself almost everyday. Here are my answers* : Why are we here? Being an atheist, I have, a long time ago, forgot about god being the reason I am here. I simply think, we are here for absolutely no reason. We are born and we will die without knowing why we are here. I have came to the conclusion that not knowing the reason I am here, I will simply enjoy the trip. What are we looking for? I don't think humans all have a common goal. I don't think humans come to earth with a personal goal either. Looking at everyone's actions, I have found something all men and women have in common. Something we are all looking for. It's called well being. I mean, everything we do, we do it to feel better. All we want is to feel good. What do we want once we feel good ? We want to make sure we will continue to feel good. Drugs are a good way to feel good. If you moderate your drug use, drugs will make you feel better in life and therefore, help you reach our goal - feeling good. Feeling euphoric. If you abuse drugs, the euphoric and well feeling effect will turn out into a bad feeling. Being addicted to a certain point does not help you feeling great and all. So everything I do, I do it to feel good. I go to school to have a better job, to make more money and when you have money, there is a bigger chance you turn out to have a fun life and feel great about it! What about you guys ? At this point. I have shared with you my thoughts on the subject. By creating this thread, I wanted to have your point of view on the two questions I have tried to answer personally. All your ideas and thoughts are welcome. If you think you live for god, then I would like to hear it. If you share my point of view, I would also like to hear it. Please share your own answers to these questions Thank you Farewell. * My main langage is french. Writting in english is more challenging so I am sorry for any strcutural errors or wrong use of some words.
There is no point to life, and if there is, we humans are incapable of understanding what it is. The world we all have been born into is kind of like our clay: it is ours to mold into whatever sort of world we want. So the short version is this: Life is pointless, so make your own point to it.
That is what I think. As we don't really have a goal in life. Each one has it's own goal. My perpetuous goal is to feel good everyday! But to go through, we all need our little goals and aspirations.
exactly! You can do anything with your life. That is both a good and a bad thing: Good in the sense that you have absolute freedom to do as you please, but bad in that this freedom can cause anxiety and depression to those who are not yet ready to cope with that fact. Jean-Paul Sartre (check him out btw. His essay "Existentialism is a Humanism" is some good shit) put it best when he said "We are condemned to be free". Another classic piece of philosophy, Albert Camus' essay "The Myth of Sisyphus", explains this viewpoint with a very vivid and clever metaphor. The infamous legend Sisyphus of Greek mythology basically fucked over one of the gods (I forget which one) in order to cheat death by putting him into some sort of trap. The god eventually escaped, and was about to take Sisyphus' life. Rather than die, however, Sisyphus bargained that he should be allowed to live forever. The god agreed under the condition that he be forced to roll a rock up a hill only to have it fall down for all eternity. Life is sort of like sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill. At the end, what we do and shit doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day our efforts are mostly futile. We die, and so do the things we do, but the rest of the worlds goes on. The true purpose of life is not in the end goal, as so many religions and other philosophers try to tell us, but rather int he process itself; the act of rolling that stone up a hill is what we live for, even though we never truly succeed at it.
yess Sartre is amazing. He's also a large part of my research project: I had to read and analyze his play "No Exit". It's pretty spot on, but really a very cynical and almost depressing piece of literature haha
The meaning of life is to discover what you want from your life, what you are passionate about and want to pursue. Then you say fuck it to all the other bullshit out there that doesn't mean anything to you. In other words, you only need to make your life what you want it to be.
No one can tell you what to do with your life, but I can repeat some wise words that have helped me on my journey: "We only live to learn to love."
I don't think that we live to "feel good", I think we live to survive. Every living thing on the planet has one fundamentle simularity: survival of the species. This can even explain behaivior such as bullying, and rules of attraction. Put simply, our single purpose in life is to reproduce, and ensure the survival of our species.
I think that our main purpose is to breed. As long as we keep doing that, life will continue. We just do other things on the way. It doesn't matter if we make mistakes, just as long as we fulfill our purpose. If you believe in God, he doesn't care if you screw up, he's not as unforgiving as preists say, in my opinion. That's just what I believe
Yeah well, we do want to ensure the survival of our specie and reproduce. By saying we are looking to '' feel good '' I'm using these two words in a large way. Maybe more like Well-Being. Can't find the perfect word at the moment. We can surely go in more of a natural thought saying all we do is reproduce to ensure the survival. That isn't wrong. I am just taking it on a spiritual/philosophical way. I share your point of view. That is surely what humans all look to do. Farewell.
I wish I was able to see it that way. Live to love ; that's a nice goal... but kind of hard in reality. When I see people backstabing, ending relationships left and right, it kind of gets hard to believe... I sure like your way of seeing things. Have a happy and lovefull life Farewell.
The purpose of life is subjective to each and every individual. People have different goals than others. Everyone has a goal. I dont care if you are the richest man on earth or the poorest. The richest man's goal could be to fuck as many women as possible...while the poorest mans goal could be to get something to eat... Some people live free, some live opressed, some people have fun while some people reflect to the past as their soul bleeds. No matter what you believe in or how shitty you feel you are always alive because you cant kill your soul. My purpose in life at the moment is to follow through solidly through out college. So you could say my purpose is making money. I know once I have money the world will treat me better, thats always the way it goes. I remember reading in a quote book something I really liked and it has stuck with me....It went like this..."The key to life? Ya I will tell you the key to life. There is no key to life and there never will be, so stop looking for it as life passes you bye"