If the universe is meaningless, and all the things in it are equally meaningless (ourselves included). How is it possible to create meaning? How can a meaningless thing or action within a meaningless system have any meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1?
Think of it this way: does a pretty, shiny rock on the beach have meaning on its own? Not really. But if a human finds it and loves it, and it brings joy, now it has meaning. And that human treasures it and passes it down generation by generation, and now it has even more meaning. And now someone looks at this rock and thinks about their great, great, great grandmother finding it on the beach, and thinks about their great, great, great grandchildren receiving it in turn, and it brings them joy, and the meaning continues to increase.
The universe is a pretty, shiny rock that humans have found.
That is an assumption in itself. No one is obligated to act under that premise.
> How is it possible to create meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1?
We perceive meaning all the time. This thread came to be because many people hold some meaning or another to the topic, the thought of discussing it, or something else along those lines. There is no reasoning to this phenomenon. It is not even an axiom, something taken to be true and not provable (or disprovable). If we didn't ascribe meaning to things then this conversation wouldn't be happening. I don't live in a world without meaning because I just don't. I couldn't imitate a bacterium if I wanted to. Now it's just a matter of whether I find it permissible for me to act on personal desires.
No, it is not. By definition, "[t]he universe is often defined as "the totality of existence", or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist."[0]
If we hold that everything is without meaning, we cannot hold that anything has meaning. It would be a contradiction.