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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 10, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How does one find purpose/meaning? That is, what gives you a "reason to get out of the bed in the morning"? Particularly when "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" seem particularly aimed your way.

(More specifically, with neither the usual standbys of "faith and family," and while being too anhedonic for hedonism?)

Edit: to put it more simply, how do I find a reason to keep struggling through another 30+ years of miserable, pointless, futile existence, rather than just skipping to the end?

You have to create purpose / meaning.

Why are faith and family unavailable?

Hedonism is mostly meaningless.

You have to create purpose / meaning.

And how does one do that?

Why are faith and family unavailable?

For faith, raised pretty irreligious, have never found any religions possible (unless you count Xunzi's strain of Confucianism as a religion), none of the churches in my area seem like a "good fit."

For family, while I do get on well with my parents and two brothers, that's the whole of our family, and it's going to end with my generation.

Hedonism is mostly meaningless.

I know, but sometimes online I get people going on about how they avoid suicide by looking forward to the next Marvel movie, or the next World of Warcraft expansion, or whatever. And a bit more often I get "find something you enjoy doing, and then make your life about doing that," which both tends toward hedonism, and which doesn't really work when one doesn't really enjoy anything.

Check out Jordan Peterson's lectures if you haven't already. He helped me learn to accept religion from a sort of symbological point of view. Worth a shot.