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What's your personal solution to this problem? I ask sincerely but also by way of justifying the comment I actually wanted to make, which was that I haven't seen you around for a bit and am happy you're still here.
Carrying on, one of my major frustrations in modern discourse is that there doesn't seem to be much individual reflection on what the point of life (or anything) even is, let alone widespread agreement. "Gratifying the human limbic system" seems to be what we're settling on and that puts us squarely in OP's dilemma.
I've been here the whole time. Lurking is just my natural state. This is the only forum I've participated in across thirty odd years on the internet.
It's always been easy on a personal level. I have some innate affinity for and take pleasure from responsibility, returning the shopping cart, and working towards the flourishing of family/community/nation/humanity in that order. I appreciate that this is not a generalizable solution, although it's one I wish we could evangelize.
If one's moral framework is entirely built around one's own pleasure and benefit (or limbic gratification as you say), then sure, none of the above matter and anything I say will fall on deaf ears. There's no logical argument I can provide to convince you that I'm right. But frankly, not calling your parents or raising your children or treating your wife well or reading books or staying fit is, for lack of a better term, a bitch move, no? At the risk of typical-minding after already admitting I'm weird, I think nearly every man has this urge or understands what I mean when I say that.
Both sides of the aisle generally agree that the left fails to provide role models for men. Someone needs to wrest the banner of self-improvement, fitness, hygiene, stoicism, etc. from the Tates of the world and divorce it from the more toxic aspects of masculinity.
They just need a better physique and more charisma than I can muster.
The time is ripe for the birth of a new religion. Gather thy flocks, and adapt thy sermons to tiktok.
The latter can't be done. What feminists deem to be the more toxic aspects of masculinity are essential to it.
'I hate it,' quoth the hater.
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Deeply in this boat and curious how they respond. Having kids is probably the single best way to add purpose to your life, but this gets circular very very fast.
Yeah, I have a friend who says that 'meaning' is just another word for kids.
It certainly helps! But I find Christianity to be better on a personal level and it has the advantage of applying to the many, many people who won't (and some who shouldn't) have kids.
The Christian perspective is that there are two valid paths in life. Marriage-and-children-if-possible, and monasticism, which equates to a life of service to others and the greater good, in both cases as guided by the Church. I think this is a healthy perspective and would help a lot of people trapped in the modern abyss.
I am decidedly atheistic, although I do sometimes wonder if it's worth it to try to psy-op myself into a belief system. Not sure if I could though.
When I was younger, I thought Western societies abandonment of religion in favor of enlightenment/science/whatever was the natural progress of civilization, and an amazing thing. Now I think we've made a horrible mistake, but I don't think we can really go back.
Whoops!
Second reply for different topic:
What do you know (and how do you know it) that would stop you here?
Putting on my atheist hat, what I see is something like this:
Being is. Something exists, rather than nothing. The nature of Being is structured such that conscious life arises and starts thirsting for a relationship with a Creator beyond the bounds of the universe. Probability is a silly thing to bring into this matter imo; this is simply what is.
Meanwhile there's plentiful reason to suppose the simulation hypothesis, our status as Boltzmann Brains, etc. or at least to collapse into methodological solipsism. What doesn't make sense is to assume that the external world we perceive is as we perceive it, or that our faculties allow us to satisfactorily observe and evaluate its nature or scope.
Our existence is fundamentally incomprehensible. Within this scenario we either don't have free will (in which case, whatever, we're just going to do what we're going to do and the consequences if any will find us) or we do in which case we're left with the question of what is worth doing.
The two options would seem to be 1) temporal hedonism or 2) reference to an external source of value, e.g. a Creator who provides a possibility for ultimate consequence to exist and for some choices and outcomes to be objectively better than others.
Given 1) I would agree with Camus that suicide is the only interesting question.
Given 2) I find that all kinds of amazing possibilities open up and suddenly life is full of wonderful (and terrible) potential.
This choice is an individual one, but I've never quite comprehended those who choose 1).
From Aurelius' Meditations.
This is the kind of thing you hear when someone's peddling something that they know will never be made distinguishable from non-reality by any demonstrable method whatsoever. Maybe it sounds good to believers eager to quit getting kicked around by observations of reality, but you could use lines like this to argue for literally anything
Yes, literally all belief is faith-based and we should be very careful about where to place that faith.
All maps are wrong; some maps are true. If it's blurry but gets you where you're going it's better than technically-accurate but leaves you stranded.
Anyone who would complain about this state of affairs had better take it up with Reality.
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Who said that the unity, order, design of (ii) are going to be favorable to you?
Hence the 'terrible' and the 'faith' in my post.
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Pursuant to a few posts up the chain, what do you think the point of life is? Or, if it hasn't one, what do you think is worth doing while alive, and why?
Yes, it was a horrible mistake, which validates Christian priors. Re: going back I'm not so sure. Seems to me that the problem should work itself out over time, though with hellish collateral damage.
The Old Testament is basically a long list of examples of what happens to a people when they stop worshiping God and start worshiping anything else. Eventually the survivors come back around and the cycle starts anew. Humanity is generally a faithless bride, which is why the example of Mary is so vital.
I'm not sure. I think I've been having a gentle ~third life crisis about this for the last year or two.
I think the "point" of life is to procreate at a base level. Because life seems to be a self-replicating collection of molecules that enjoy being alive, and replicating ensures this process continues. However, procreating is hard these days, and so is a while away yet.
I'm going to think on this more and maybe my answer will change after a few hours of writing, but my initial gut response is that aside from procreation, life is about maximizing your subjective sense of pleasant/enjoyable experiences, and minimizing the bad ones. The logical endpoint of this is wire heading however, which I don't like and is not inspiring at all. You should also seek to increase other's enjoyment of life, and not make their lives worse, this is slightly more inspiring.
I like how you anchored it in actions (and their "why") though, that I will need to think more on.
Incidentally the novelty you're finding here is reflective of a split in Christianity.
In Western Christianity, 'faith' has become somewhat conflated with 'belief', i.e. a sort of propositional system where one evaluates a statement and says "Yes I think that's true" or "No I don't."
The New Testament says that "Faith without works is dead", which has caused much consternation in the West. Which is it? Believing a proposition or performing actions? What 'saves' us?
In Eastern Christianity, faith is understood to have much less to do with propositional belief and more to do with action. Let me explain my perspective here a little.
Faith is acting as though something is true despite not knowing for sure. When you sit in a chair it might buckle and injure you, but you're operating in faith that it won't. When the plan is for someone to pick you up at a minor rural airport at 10PM with no other transportation options available, you're engaging in faith by showing up expectantly, even if he might have forgotten or died in an accident along the way.
To have faith in Christ is to behave as though following Him should be your highest priority. To believe that but act otherwise is to break faith. Make sense? As the Bible says, even the demons believe that Christ is who He says He is.
It would be too great a digression to go into Orthodox theology a la Palamas but long story short I think it's basically correct to say that all propositions re: God are approximations and therefore necessarily partly incorrect. There's not really anything that I intellectually think is 'true' about God, because all truth about God is beyond mortal understanding.
To be a Christian requires some (possibly temporary) dogmatic intellectual belief, yes, but of surprisingly few propositions, and those universally of the sort that we might call unfalsifiable. But the much greater part of being a Christian is acting accordingly. Go to the liturgy. Receive communion in the hope that it's actually doing something. Confess your failings and strive your hardest to be more Christlike.
Like passion in a marriage, belief comes and goes. But love is a choice, and faith is always on the table.
This was really beautiful, and actually inadvertently addressed something I was writing in a different comment to you (started on my computer, left the apartment, will finish later).
Great stuff! Now to find something to have faith in...
Well, maybe sit with it a bit. But always happy to talk.
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