[jordanpg]

I believe the sociologists of the future are going to look back at this era and cite the manifest lack of meaning in human life as source of the ennui that is the subject of this thread.

For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost everyone, it no longer does. I don't even think most people who hold themselves out as religious really find any significant meaning there -- not doubting their sincerity, only the compatibility of those beliefs with modern secular realities.

It is simply true that it is a simple matter to learn enough about what we know about the universe to know, somewhere in the back of your mind, consciously or unconsciously, that none of this means anything. And the rest follows. It is garden-variety Camus' Sisyphus.

I believe this results in a void in our primate brains that is inadequately filled by anything yet available. We are in a transitory period where we are looking for true secular meaning to replace what we evolved with.

[anonydsfsfs]

People have been saying the same thing for over a century. Take the following passage from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, written in the 1920s:

> I belong to a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our fathers still had the believing impulse, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were champions of social equality, others were wholly enamoured of beauty, still others had faith in science and its achievements, and there were some who became even more Christian, resorting to various Easts and Wests in search of new religious forms to entertain their otherwise hollow consciousness of merely living.

> We lost all of this. We were born with none of these consolations. Each civilization follows the particular path of a religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all.

> We lost the one, and all the others with it.

> And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts’ adventurous precept:* living doesn’t matter, only sailing does.

> Without illusions, we live by dreaming, which is the illusion of those who can’t have illusions. Living off our inner selves has diminished us, for the complete man is the one who doesn’t know himself. Without faith, we have no hope, and without hope we have no real life. Having no idea of the future, we likewise have no idea of today, because today, for the man of action, is nothing but a prologue to the future. The energy to fight was stillborn in us, for we were born without the fighting spirit.

[rchaud]

> For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost everyone, it no longer does.

Did religion actually fill this void? Or did enough people simply go through life not voicing any of their troubles for fear of exclusion or even institutionalization in a religious and highly superstitious society that didn't understand mental health?

Religion didn't prevent alcoholism, out of wedlock pregnancies or domestic violence. It did however force families to take brutal measures to keep their missteps a secret from the rest of society.

[JackFr]

No. I think you misunderstand.

When you tell people there is nothing transcendent, that life is indeed meaningless - sometimes they believe you.

[paulryanrogers]

Isn't it best to tell people life is meaningless if that's where the evidence leads? After a few decades pursuing 'god' and sacrificing to ascend I think teaching false hope (with or without strings attached) is worse.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Telling anyone that life is meaningless is utterly different from telling them that you believe that there is no external agent or agency that provides a meaning for our lives. Asserting that life is meaningless is completely different from asserting that its meaning is personal and must be discovered by each of us.

[JackFr]

If it’s meaningless what does it matter?

Think about it.

[scaramanga]

Spoiler alert.

It means the statement that "it's meaningless" is, in itself, meaningless. That liberates you to construct any system of meaning that you like. But that freedom can also be quite frightening and anxiety inducing.

If that is the case, then you have a couple of choices (broadly speaking):

1. Soothe the anxiety away with opium, doom scrolling, religion, career, keto, multi-level marketing, or whatever. After all you are probably struggling to survive and assert ones own existence, against a backdrop of other fears which are much more realistic than abstract concerns about meaning (eg. losing one's job, income, looks, etc).

2. Rely on a social fabric of emotionally supportive family, friends, significant relations in a context of peace, freedom, financial and job security, your own physical fitness, and other stabilising, fear minimizing, forces which free up your emotional resources to let you focus on not just finding your own meaning but to create a collective meaning in connection with others who are, themselves, meaningful to you.

To be clear, I am not dissing, opium, religion, careers, or even keto per se :) I think those things are all fine if enjoyed in the proper context.

[JackFr]

> It means the statement that "it's meaningless" is, in itself, meaningless. That liberates you to construct any system of meaning that you like.

No. The idea that your life has no transcendent meaning does not free you to “create any system of meaning you like”.

It means your life has no transcendent meaning.

Now the statement, “Your life has no meaning.” is not knowable, but it is true or false. Personally I believe, but cannot, prove that it is false. My point is that if you believe it is true, any follow-up claim you want to make is moot.

What’s even the point?

[evanmoran]

Your point is beautifully made, but I think keto is probably on the wrong side of the ledger. Diets are the hard work that pays off into that better fitness and some of that fancy “stabilizing, fear minimizing” stuff you speak of.

That said, if you mean doom scrolling r/loseit and r/keto and not actually doing it then you are totally right :)

[makeitdouble]

If you have no strong opinions on the meaning of your life , strong religions would come and greedily take any ground you were willing to concede. If you really had no idea what you want to do you might as well end up in a covent or an abbey.

The presence of that extreme also allowed not being religious to be itself a strong voluntary choice.

It doesn’t prevent alcoholism or other human problems, just force filled the “why am I here, what am I going” gap whenever people found nothing else to fill it with.

I think we are less religious overall for very good reasons, now we should pay more attention to the gap that is less empty and what would come to fill it.

[scaramanga]

They [religions] also took over politics, and made it so that you could go to prison for not attending church every sunday (at least they did in England). As they said at the time: no biship? then no king...

Religion can only reasonably fill the gap in meaning if it isn't forcefully shoved into said gap. If shoved there, it's just another foreign body that miserably fails to heal anything as any number of other quack solutions: alcohol, social media, impulse purchasing, etc. In other words, it's just another opiate, but one which for a long time, was forced on people at literal gunpoint.

Not dissing religion per se, I just think that when we say "we used to have religion, and psychological health was fine", then we're looking at it with insanely rose-tinted glasses... actually, veering off in to total delusion?

But I am kind of guessing what historical periods we're talking about. Maybe we mean in prehistory, like the mesolithic? Because there's a lot less evidence about that so you have space to suppose that it was all very lovely, there were few tribes, they didn't have to violently compete, and internally they were all emotionally supportive environments in which a rich tapestry of mystical beliefs provided members with a deep sense of meaning and connection. But I would still be pretty skeptical about that. Not saying it didn't happen. But how widely and for how long?

[benlivengood]

To put a fine point on it, the problem is not that life is meaningless but that it has significant meaning and value and also death exists. Death is the antithesis of most human values and we're so far powerless to deflect it on a long-term basis, while religion gave hope or belief of circumventing or ameliorating death.

I scoff at all of the "accept it as part of the natural order" rationalizations; death is the enemy and my goal is to push it as far toward the heat death as possible. That final end will be a defeat, but much less of a tragedy than the ~120 years we get now. If meaning and memory can exist for 10^100 years instead then that's a prize worth fighting for.

I think all the proof anyone needs of this is the joy of children; death is unlikely and far from them and so they have nearly boundless ability to enjoy life and its meaning.

[themacguffinman]

Pretty sure the "fine point" on it is just your personal spin on the matter. The people who believe life is meaningless frequently demonstrate the sincerity of their beliefs by killing themselves early. A common adjacent belief is anti-natalism, the belief that their own parents and most other people should not have children because it's morally a net negative to introduce new agents of suffering. Nothing about "the joy of children" is as universal as you present it as.

[noduerme]

Be that as it may, I was at peace with my existentialist void before the modern internet came along. I had companionship in smokey cafes with other people who saw the same lack of meaning in the universe, but were engaged in the making and building of things. All I see in this new paradigm is the desire of everyone to tear everything down, to destroy.

Existentialism leaves room for humans to give meaning to their own lives, through acts of creation and bonhomie. It also leaves room for the Holocaust, for evil.

Humans don't necessarily need a new religion. We need to learn to recognize evil when we see it without relying on dogma.

[boppo1]

>to know, somewhere in the back of your mind, consciously or unconsciously, that none of this means anything.

But perhaps that is incorrect.

[bowsamic]

That’s why the only thing that really helped me was Buddhism, which directly tackles these questions and understandings