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Comment by Xeoncross | Hacker News Reader

  > Everything you do is ultimately pointless
  > the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions

Clearly you can see the contrast here. I agree that people are far more important than anything else.

I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.

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I like the Tibetan take on this: We’re all going to die. Every day we live a little and die a little. We should aspire to live joyfully doing whatever is meaningful to us. And let things die throughout our lives. Holding on to possessions, people and ideas too tightly gets in the way of living.

Living joyfully can mean anything for you. One thing I like is struggling at hard programming problems. The struggle (and eventual success) feels great. The challenge is to accept that however I am - I’ll probably be like this until I die. And at some deep level be ok with that, and live my life enthusiastically anyway.

Do I sometimes spend a week or two playing games and “wasting time”? Yep. Maybe I’ll be like this until I die. The challenge is in accepting that that’s ok.

> We’re all going to die. Every day we live a little and die a little Beautiful perspective there. Thanks for writing this.

The point is that everything is meaningless in the absolute sense but on the personal level, we create our own meaning.

Meaning is mostly self-reflecting. You build meaning by the things you love to do, whether someone is watching or not. If you’re depressed this is the hardest thing to “get” , to give yourself the gift of worthiness and bringing meaning into the world. For yourself, and through that to others.

I don't mean to be depressing, but what is the point of life? Like an ultimate goal or something that you must achieve?

It doesn't seem to be a one, except for the ones that we set for ourselves, which is usually trying to live as better as possible for as long as you can. And this seems fine to me, thinking too much about this can get depressing unless you can be comfortable with the fact that whatever we do in life the end outcome is always death.

Why does there have to be a meaning? Maybe we are just chemical reactions and nearly zero entropy self propagating whorls. Does that change anything at all for you as a thinking, living, feeling being? My point was you find meaning all the time in the things you find meaningful. I suspect that’s all there is, but if you stop and think about it that’s all there needs to be or frankly can be. Any other extrinsic meaning would be at odds with your meaning at the moment.

It's like, what is the point of chess, or any game?

After the life-and-death struggle, we just put the game pieces back in the box, neither having gained nor lost anything in the end - except some joy, sorrow, love and friendship in between.

>And this seems fine to me, thinking too much about this can get depressing unless you can be comfortable with the fact that whatever we do in life the end outcome is always death.

Would you want it any other way?

Point of life: you didn’t choose to be here but since you are, make something out of it. What is the pleasure or the meaning of just wasting it away?

The point is to enjoy every day, instead of trying to do things others consider meaningful. If you like playing games all day, do that.

Whom are you living for?

I don’t think this is wise advice. Something can bring joy for a while but may ultimately bring negative emotions if it becomes too large a part of one’s life. e.g. if it excludes exercise, spending time outdoors, in person human interactions etc. It may also rewrite your dopamine and serotonin reward pathways which can be hard to reverse.

You're reading a lot into what I said, and yes, the things you read into it are not wise, I agree.

I don’t think the point is “everything is pointless”, insomuch as “everything is more pointless seeming than social interactions”.

Social interactions seem to be at least part of the “human motive” for most people I’d guess.

I did mean everything is pointless nakedly. The rest I talked about meaningfulness. There doesn’t have to be a point. Pointless doesn’t mean worthless, but we have a culture that insists everything must have an extrinsic point. There isn’t one IMO. That said, the closest I can identify to a point is to not harm and to know, be known, and enrich others through that.

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