Is living a fulfilling and/or happy life just cope for our mortal existence?

[bingbongbangbung]

We're all gonna die anyways, and in time, everything we do will just be forgotten. Nobody's gonna care about us unless we become famous, and even then if enough time passes or evidence is destroyed, they'll be erased too. I know it seems nihilistic but this isn't reall my own viewpoint, it's those of black pillers.

[Subglacial]

For some people, the reality of a life without ultimate purpose is liberating, not disheartening. With no arbitrary guide, no way the world "needs to be", they can focus on doing things they find meaningful. This is "cheerful nihilism". A life without purpose is not a life without meaning.

To be clear, this is not a "Nothing matters, so let's go crazy!" mentality. Nihilists that see freedom from morality as an excuse to hurt people very quickly find themselves disowned by friends, imprisoned, or dead, and that freedom doesn't amount to much when they're miserable (or dead).

I think most people are generally good-natured and value helping other people, even if it's only for the purpose of self-gratification, so most people settle on some ground between hedonism and charity. Nihilists that sit with their thoughts long enough usually find that helping people still makes them feel good, even if it doesn't matter in the end. What we do today might not matter tomorrow, it does matter today.

If finding value in the face of oblivion still seems challenging, consider that we deal with the temporary nature of things all the time in life. We take care of our bodies, knowing that they'll eventually get old and weak. We cultivate friendships, knowing that we'll eventually grow apart. We (some of us) make our beds in the morning, knowing that they'll just get unmade at the end of the day. We savor the taste of spaghetti, knowing that it will be gone once we swallow.

Sooo... my advice, if the end of the world is bumming you out? Just shrug an accept it. Sure, the world will end eventually, but damn does this spaghetti taste good.

[Oliverlogan263]

Dude don't think like that, it's just gonna make you miserable. Sure nobody lives forever but that doesn't mean our lives don't mean anything. I mean think about all the great people who ever lived - you don't remember all their names maybe but they still made a difference right? Even if it's just to their friends and family.

And like yeah we're all gonna die someday but that doesn't have to be all that defines us you know? People live on through the things they create, the people they love, the good they do in the world. Just cause it ends doesn't mean its not worth it while its happening. Things wouldn't feel so good if we never had anything bad to compare it to.

Life's too short to waste it being sad nothing matters in the end. If you ask me those blackpill dudes just want attention by trying to bring everyone else down with them. Who cares about being famous? As long as you tried your best and enjoyed your time while you had it, I think that's enough. You only get one shot at this life man - may as well make the most of it and try to be happy. Don't let some losers on the internet make you see it different.

[bingbongbangbung]

Yeah true but even those people who are famous; eventually, even their legacy will become forgotten given enough time. And yeah I agree, life only has as much meaning as we give it because aside from reproducing to pass on our genes, there's no other intrinsic purpose to existing.

[bingbongbangbung]

Just that from what I observed, everything we humans do can be categorized as survival, pleasure, or a hybrid of them. I can't really think of anything that's neither based in survival nor pleasure; even stuff like religion and philosophy to an extent are a hybrid.

[Oliverlogan263]

Yo dude don't stress yourself out too much thinkin about all that existential stuff, it'll just give you a headache lol. Who cares if someday far in the future people forget about the famous folks, all that matters is what we do with our time here and now right? Like yeah sure survival and pleasure are big parts of life, but isn't learning new things and expressing ourselves through art, music or whatever also part of what makes us human? Even if it started out as something to distract ourselves, I think things like philosophy can help us understand each other and the world better too. As long as we tryin to leave things a little better than we found em, does it really matter what our "purpose" is in the grand scheme of things? Just live your best life man, that's purpose enough if you ask me!

[Anonymous]

I think from this we can learn to be less depressed about not having this or that and just be grateful for what you do have, of course always try to be better than yourself and just be happy not live an unhappy life because you don't have this or that, because the fact is it won't matter when u die. be happy while u can be.

[bingbongbangbung]

Don't think I'm ignorant of it; I know someone is intentionally spamming dislikes for responses of all my recent questions (not accusing you OP)

[Opinion Owner]

🥴never even noticed you, I simply click on stuff I want to comment on I don't actually see who is posting what. I don't even think dislikes are visible o. O

[bingbongbangbung]

You're OP, which stands for original poster; I'm referring to the troll (s) that are following me around, and disliking everyone who responds to my question lately

[bingbongbangbung]

And yeah, sadly dislikes are invisible, so I can't exactly block and report them for spam/harassment

[Opinion Owner]

they used to be visible but I guess people complained and they turned off the feature

[bingbongbangbung]

Well for a while, you can actually select different default emojis as reaction (exclusive to mobile app), and of course they showed amount of dislikes and likes for the website.

[Subglacial]

A lot of sites have hidden or done away with "dislikes" in recent years. I'm guessing the reason is to promote positivity and productive discussion. It's really easy to dislike a post and move on, but actually having to describe what you disagree with and defend your position is a higher barrier to entry.

I'm not sure I agree with that decision (I would dislike it if I could), but I don't think it was done as a knee-jerk reaction to people complaining about having their feelings hurt.

[bingbongbangbung]

@Subglacial then why not get rid of dislikes altogether, like what FB or Instagram has?

[Subglacial]

I like to imagine that it's to give people the impression that they're doing something, like crosswalk buttons that do nothing when pressed (signals are on a timer), but that's not consistent with my earlier guess about promoting productive discussion.

More realistically, it could be because dislikes can color a reader's opinion of a post before they've even read it, but it still provides a useful metric for the poster to be able to see how (un) popular their post is. This was YouTube's reasoning: making dislikes invisible to discourage creators/fans from dislike-bombing competitors' videos to make them less attractive, while still giving creators a way to see what their audiences think about their own videos.

I can only speculate, though. I really don't know. You'd have to ask a web developer or a sociologist or something. (Or just ask GAG.)

[bingbongbangbung]

@Subglacial nah YouTube only hid dislikes because many MSM, corporate, and govt videos were being heavily disliked, which exposed that the propaganda being pushed by the elites weren't working