Nihilism

[AESCHYLUS]

(those of whom carry a belief of any deity, refrain from polluting this thread with your faith and earnest self-deception)


You and I highly overrate ourselves everyday, with thoughts of worth and purpose. We constantly decieve ourselves left and right in order to mantain this, Why beacause our Brain perfers victory over truth. But what does truth even mean to us when our lifeless bodies decay?
Temporary efforts of the feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose.
Can we even give a purpose for living if there is no purpose to our lives?
Why do we continue to live, perservere in living? It must be the fear of death, but why do people, in the knowledge of their true meaninglessness even bother?

[imajenius]

Well first Nietzsche who is commonly associated with Nihilistic thought seemed to have the opinion that the real Nihilist were Christians and other religions. Of course I really don't know what I am talking about and I only gathered this from Wikipedia.

Okay now that I am done with stating my complete ignorance on the subject, I think life has as much meaning as you put into or rather how much faith you have in it. Put it on the same level as money, in this digital world today money is even worth less than it has ever been before but people put faith in it and so it is worth something... To them.

To me, I don't need life to have meaning, I enjoy my emotions and my thoughts and the universe on what ever scale you put it is really incredible, even understanding how organisms work is amazing in its own right. And the sheer chaotic order that reality apparently is, well is to me, IS. I accept it, I feel comfort that I do not need to believe something to feel like life is worth living or has some meaning. I simply live, for it is all that I know, death is worrisome but being dead isn't.

[CaptainTesticles666]

Humans are merely chemicals designed to reproduce as much as possible. If humans realized they were worthless, they wouldn't survive very well. I think that's why there aren't any creatures smarter than us.

[Steve_TPF]

This is essentially the same as the Meaning to Life thread you started a while ago.

Do our lives have some greater purpose other than continuation of the species? Probably not. But so long as I'm here and enjoying life that's good enough for me.

[AESCHYLUS]

Yes but i believe we answered that question, this thread is a continuation of "is there a meaning to life?"

[Steve_TPF]

If the question has been answered then why/ how is this a continuation? To what end?

I don't see what you're looking for here that hasn't already been answered.

[uchiacon]

Well, the question is, why bother thinking about this break prospect and enjoy the life we have been given, because chances are once we go into that hole, that's it.
I think of it this way, if you're going to get a philosophical point across, try not to write it the way you did, because it gave me the impression that you are (possibly) an emo or goth eager to denouce life as pointless, resulting in any number of bleak outcomes for yourself.
And christ, if we didn't continue on living,(lol) humankind would die out, and all our achievements, goals and victories would crumble away into nothingness and the earth would reluctantly await the arrival of the new intelligent wave of life. Its called nature, and it waits for no man.
All in all, my opinion of you is that similiar to a doomsday preacher, because when you think about it, that's pretty much what you're stating.

[headcase]

I don't think we shouldn't discuss it because it's bleak, or even agree what it is a necessarily bleak outlook. I'd subscribe to a pseudo-Nihilist philosophy (see Existential thread linked below) and I'm especially chuffed with life at the moment.

Apart from that, I'm going to have to agree with Steve here, this is just going to rehash the Meaning of Life and the Existentialism, Nihilism and Meaning threads. Feel free to continue discussion in whichever of those threads you feel is the most relevant. Ideally I should lock one because they're both fairly similar but after two pages both arguments have diverged so I'll let it go. I'd also recommend reading them both, they're fairly short but interesting.

#LOCKED#