johnny black

Do you ever take a step back and look at the big picture? No, I mean the really big picture. The one that shows our whole galaxy as an insignificant dot of light. The one with your grave and the heat death of the universe in it.

Don't your actions seem kind of insignificant and unimportant in the face of that? What could possibly make you get up in the morning and give you the feeling that what you are going to do is worth doing any more than anything else?

If your answer is some kind of life after death, do you think you could go on without that?

supersix2

Our actions are not insignificant. Everything we do affects everything around us.
Ever hear of the old cliche of a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokoyo causes a thunderstorm in New York. It doesn't seem to make sense but if you really think about it that butterfly is moving the air around it which causes a ripple affect in the air which could be enough to cause a weather system to change course. If little things didn't affect the big picture everything would be predictable. However, because so much stuff is random every little thing that happens affects the big picture.
Although we might not understand it, our actions on Earth could affect the entire Universe in the same way a butterfly can move an entire weather system.

rockzilla

Maybe my actions are unimportant in the really big picture, but they matter to me, I have no desire to change the universe, or the world, I'm just happy to live my own life and affect a few people here and there.

Martel

Go nihilism!

There really is no good answer to this question. On a large enough scale, it is true that nothing you do matters. At all. But then where does that leave you?

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Anamnesis

pr0f3n

This attitude is why I rarely discuss/post anything in sincerity anymore. My views are mine, you have yours. We'll all be dead in a hundred years. Time to post farm on a Nonsense Game thread

Thinking about the reality of the galaxy, let alone the universe, in terms of proportion, mass, energy, etc. is moot. It's great to have a healthy perspective on your life, and the importance of the small things that stress us out is good, but taken to an extreme, you'll suck the joy out of your life as well. All the ecstasy involved in first really talking to a girl/guy you fancy, or the expansive flavour of some chocolate or nice scotch, the weightless, effervescent feeling from a good laugh. Tiny, little, miniscule situations that make every day a new experience.

Of course, I don't really value those things as they're happening, but when I think about, today, 7/23/03, which was a shitty, stressful, unfufilling day, I can remember the little things that made it pass, helped me through it all.

... now back to being a bitter asshole

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In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche

rogue49

why not?

don't be apathetic.

tardka

It does not bother me that my actions are completely insignificant. From my pespective they are and I wake up everyday to have fun and enjoy life. If I never accomplish anything, but enjoyed myself I will die happy, and that is all that matters.

GakFace

so... what if a thought you stated somewhere, sparked an idea in someone's mind, who started thinking about it and explained it to someone, who then further elaborated on it.. and eventually the idea became a theory and soon people were travelling thru space Star Trek Style..... Now, you yourself did not make this all happen, but indirectly it is because of YOU and YOU only that this did happen.

Everything you do is more significant than you can imagine. What you do may not affect anything instantly.. but somewhere down the line it means something.

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RoboBlaster:
Welcome to the club! Not that I'm in the club. And there really isn'a a club in the first place. But if there was a club and if I was in it, I would definitely welcome you to it.

lurkette

I find it a relief that my actions are so insignificant. I think we all take ourselves way too seriously, like it really matters if we make $X per year, or what kind of car we drive, or whether we have kids, or whether we make a mark on the world. It sort of takes the pressure off, in a way, to know that none of it really matters. Makes it easier to have fun. Sort of like the difference between playing nickel poker with your buds and playing high stakes poker in Vegas. It also sort of makes things seem more precious, like here we are in this enormous universe and we get the chance to have these experiences. Better make them count.

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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

duckznutz

I kind of agree with Lurkette.
When I woke up and realised one day that 'nothing really mattered' it was a great relief . . and a pivotal maturing point in my life. A great weight was lifted off my shoulders . . my teenage angst seemed so pathetic looking back on it. I began to really enjoy life and I suddenly felt 'superior' to those still fighting the non-existant fight and I felt a lot more relaxed and at one with the world.

Not everyones actions are equally insignificant though . . . . . . there is the chaos theory that says a wasp stung Hitler's nose . . so he invaded Poland etc etc.

When I left school the headmaster addressed us all in the Hall and said "You are all leaving school today. You have all learned a lot of things. I want all of you remember to keep on learning. I want all of you to remember to read the news every day . . . but I want SOME of you to go out and MAKE the news!"

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Where your talents and the needs of the world cross . . there lies your vocation.

CSflim

Why do you require the universe to acknowledge your actions in order to recieve motivation?
Agreed...nothing I do matters...but thats not going to stop me doing it!

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duckznutz

By your logic . . nothing I do is worth less than anything else! You can take a negative view or a positive view of the same thing . . at least that choice is yours.

johnny black

A couple of people have made comments to the effect of "your actions have big consequences over time", but that's just not the case. The butterfly flapping its wings idea is a reference to chaos theory, basically the study of non-linear math. Chaos theory tells us that some things have huge effects, but not everything, in fact not most things. Millions of butterflies create trillions of flaps every day, it's doubtful that more than a handful in history have ever had an effect over more than ten yards. Human lives are the same way, most of us will die, and from the perspective of someone in a parallel universe in which you died during childbirth, nothing will be noticeably different.

If you do somehow affect the world in a significant way, what of it? You probably won't even be aware of what it was that you did. Space travel is as likely to come about because you got killed by a drunk driver and the person you would have married ends up marrying someone else thus setting off a chain of events, as it is to come about because of some thought provoking comment you made to someone based on your education and hard work. You can't predict what effect your actions will have over the long term. Humanity may have a better chance to survive in the future if you kill yourself tonight, there's no way to tell.

But really, why should you even care whether humanity survives after you die? You are a pattern of atoms, when that pattern can no longer hold itself together it will cease to care about other patterns. The atoms certainly won't care what pattern they're in. In the end, they are just a pattern themselves, and they will break down. Humanity is just a bigger pattern of which you will be a part for a short while, like an atom that is part of the pattern of you. Why should you care about the future of the humanity pattern any more than an atom should care about the future of your body pattern?

Most people want their kids or ideas or both to live on. We are told that selfishness is bad, and meeting the needs of people we do not know is a greater good than just caring about the people we know. We venerate people like Mother Theresa who live out these values. Yet there are people who think the humanity pattern is a blight on the larger planetary ecology pattern and should be eliminated. Are we being selfish as human beings if we disagree? Our values are arbitrary, inconsistent, and thus impossible to attain, not that we can do more than take a random stab at them anyway, because our limited perspectives cannot see the long term effects of actions that we will no longer care about in a hundred years anyway.

Is it liberating to realize that your actions don't matter? Sure. Is it a superior way to live? No. The universe doesn't acknowledge any actions as being superior. We all end up exactly the same. That doesn't stop you from making choices, but it does make those choices irrelevant and meaningless. The person who discusses philosophy and thinks about what they should do is no better or worse than the person who tortures and murders women to satisfy his control fantasies, or the person who acts at random, or the person who kills themselves and makes no more choices at all.

Nothing is worth doing any more or less than anything else... however you want to state it, it's the same thing. It's a choice, in the same way that having a choice between two doors that lead to the same room is a choice. Why even bother to make it?

CSflim

Life is what you make of it. You have a finite time to experience. Make use of that time. Only YOU can decide what to do with it. Don't do something because of some higher ultimate "purpose", do something because of its relevance to YOUR life. Nothing matters...but why should it?
Nihilistic Hedonism? maybe, but it works.

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johnny black

Yeah, congratulations, so does everything else.

Everything you do is equally relevant to your life. Not a great metric for making one choice over another.

GakFace

johnny black: You yourself said that you do not know what the future holds, so how can you say it is pointless, you have no clue what your actions are doing... You have no clue if there is some form of life watching over us right now, learning from us. That would be intergalactic... thats significance<sp> according to you. But see you have no way of proving me wrong, as I have no way of proving me right, thus you can't say its pointless... you can THINK it, but you can't say it to be true. Simply because you do not know, you are not all knowing of who and what you affect.

Beyond all that.. you say its all insignificant... well if its all the same, then one can just as well say that it is all significant. Everything is significant.. wait.... I kinda said that, and you just said the opposite or what could be called the same... not much of a counter really

Finally, If you don't see why to bother, then why did you even bother to start this thread? Cause obviously enough, according to you, it was too pointless to even waste your time doing this....


I for one can look at the BIG picture, and guess what.. I'm still PART of that Big picture, thus... if I am part of it... how am i nothing? I'M THERE!!! I AM IN IT!!!!... to think otherwise would not be looking at the WHOLE picture.

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RoboBlaster:
Welcome to the club! Not that I'm in the club. And there really isn'a a club in the first place. But if there was a club and if I was in it, I would definitely welcome you to it.

hobo

We all have our roles to play. Things that I do are significant to me because the world around me is all I really know. I don't care if I have an effect on the universe or not.

johnny black

Reread my post. Our actions are insignificant on a large scale, but even if they were not it doesn't matter, because no outcome is more desirable than another.

You're in it like a bug on a highway is in it. Your significance is the same. You are in the world, but your choices are meaningless. You are in it, but it would not matter if you were not.

The day I lose interest in doing meaningless things is the day I check out for good. Believe me, my attention span won't even last long enough to open up the Titty board. Just another forgettable name on a forgettable board in a forgettable world.

stonecurran

well even though we are small everything we do has a bearing on hte future 4 ourselfves and every one around us. my motivation is to get the best out of my self every day and die nowing i did my best

CSflim

What do you mean by that?

Why not?

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Moonduck

"Reread my post. Our actions are insignificant on a large scale, but even if they were not it doesn't matter, because no outcome is more desirable than another."

So if someone advised you to give all of your money to a stranger in exchange for said stranger beating you to death, that'd be okay, right? No outcome being any more desirable than other outcome after all. Do you strive and struggle to keep living, to put food in your mouth? If so, why? The alternative being perfectly acceptable. Your line of reasoning, and I hesitate to call it that, is specious and ultimately pointless.