Because it means that nothing humans build matters and even if we beat all other obstacles and colonize the galaxy it’s all for nothing.
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I like that one.
I never discovered the meaning of life, but have definitely changed my point of view. I now think the belief that life is meaningless is a consequence of epistemic arrogance, not a rational conclusion. How can we say existence has no meaning when we don't really understand existence in the first place? There's way too much we don't understand about the universe, the laws which govern it, and even ourselves to draw any firm conclusions.
I do know that hundreds of great thinkers have spent many collective man-centuries considering and writing about this question, and come up with far more interesting output than if they'd just punted on the question. I think if we punt it says more about us than about the question itself.
I'm partial to what is arguably Nietzsche's main idea, or how I interpret it anyway: that as society's belief in religion wanes, we've barely even started to discover what we're really here for. The greatest challenge in our era of civilization is deciding whether or not we're ready to find out.
Do we need to understand something to assert if it has meaning or not?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-life-a...
Update: That may be a bit harsh, so here's something to balance it: there's a sense in which what has been achieved is timeless, regardless of what the future brings.
How is that obvious for "entirety of all earth life"?
Writings and works, almost certainly lose their effect (but not a guarantee). But kids go on to have more kids until they don’t. That impact stretches out until it doesn’t, maybe not forever but also not necessarily a narrow window.
I am the consequence of thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of individual contributions (genetic and otherwise). Sure the sum ended up in me, but how changed would I be if one of those changed? Who can know. Yes, we are all the consequence of innumerable contributions and choices since the very beginning of time, but that means that as we stretch that time back each individual elements quickly loses meaning and becomes static.
But if you do believe that each contribution matters then great news - your little contribution to the universe's heat death will be there on display for all eternity and the fact that it can't actually be observed because of said heat death will also be due to your contribution, so no worries as you're still important at the end of the all things.
You might say ‘I would be here but with a different genetic makeup’ or some such. But that is basically nonsense. You are, at the very least, the sum of the PARTICULAR causal sequence that made you.
You claimed that essentially no individual contribution is there after 100 years. That isn’t true. I am not suggesting the contributions are clear, good, special, or even ‘matter’ in some grand sense. They don’t have to even be linked to the originator. But that doesn’t mean individual contributions aren’t there.
Scale matters. Plato contributed to humanity. Plato contributed to the heat death. One of those is infinitely more interesting than the other.
I didn't, I claimed they didn't matter, which you are agreeing with.
Sure, scale matters, and that's also my point. You aren't Plato, you probably aren't going to be the next Plato, and that's OK. Plato matters today, but he won't in a million years, and that's infinitesimally small compared to the time-span to heat death.
And again, if your individual contribution matters, you don't have to worry about your contribution not mattering as the heat death of the universe will be your legacy.
I am saying things matter.
Individual contributions matter along the way and they easily and often last longer than many lifetimes. Not just like Plato. ‘Mundane’ reproduction of humans matters to all future individuals that result as a consequence.
This is true even if we all end up dead and the universe ‘ends’ in a perpetual entropic fog.
We are the ones that create meaning in our actions. It's not given to us by the universe, it's up to us to decide with our consciousness. Meaning will always be on the scale of human lifetimes. The ultimate fate of the universe is irrelevant to that.
There is a nonzero possibility that "human lifetime" becomes unfathomably long eventually.
This is your opinion. Most people are religious and derive meaning from an outside source.
People who are religious believe their lives are meaningful even if the physical universe ends. In fact, for some mainstream religions they are counting on it eventually ending.
Liberating, isn't it?