Never needed that: I like life because I know I will die soon and nothing I do matters. That is the thing I would've liked to know earlier.
- Kurt Vonnegut
"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
~ Alan Watts
Also different animals kill each other all the time. It's part of the cycle of life. I don't get why you have such a negative perspective.
Thinking about continuing humanity is a coping strategy and I can assure you it's more effective than HN rationality when my kid is screaming about their cheerios etc
True overcoming of the ego is where it doesn't even bother you if things have meaning or not, since there is no separation between your body and the rest of the world. True overcoming of ego is indistriguishable from true giving-in to ego. Is the ultimate act of letting go.
After this you can choose to raise kids, choose to pursue a career in tech and a hobby in arts. Just because it won't matter you will do it, because now you can choose meaning if you wish. Just because it doesn't matter it does matter. You become the creator.
I can't tell you how you go about your pursuit of freedom, or the pursuit of what it means to live free.
I can tell you what it means to me. I'm free when I can choose everyday to pursue what it means to live free. I'm also free when I choose the limitations in this pursuit, because I don't want the anxiety of the hyperpositive when everything is possible. I'm also free when I consider the other, my kin and when I choose to serve them. I'm also free when I ask for strength to change the things in my life that I can, and for wisdom to accept those things I can't change.
Wish you luck in your journey.
Maybe it's clearer in the form of a question: how are you completely sure you are NOT enlightened if you don't know what it is to be enlightened?
Someone kicks you in the shin, it causes pain. If it triggers a whole internal loop of fear and worry and anger and revenge and trauma and suffering, then you've hit upon your ego which you're unable to let go of. If your internal experience isn't sticky, then before you know it, the pain has dissipated and you're on to whatever the next present moment brings.
That internal loop is what there is to "fix".
Brilliant!
And this is why there is nothing to fix, because it doesn't change anything external. If it doesn't change anything external, if it's only an internal loop, it's the same as the ascetic attitude that Nietzsche describes. You can beat yourself until you're in line with your expectations for your ego, or you change your whole relationship with yourself, more accepting of your flaws and more trusting that you are able to overcome this internal loop eventually, but not today.
Many reasons for that, but most I've seen could be summed up as "women expect men to change in marriage, and men expect women to not change", and it fails all over that statement in relationship over time, when kids and responsibilities come knocking at the door of your free time and energy.
When there's an imminent danger of the human species ending because of a lack of babies, we can talk about the other point.
I’m not Henry VIII, just some rube from Indiana. Our family is nothing special.
…or the human species
Nor is this some post-apocalyptic future where children are scarce.
School districts around me are closing schools because there aren’t enough kids to fill them.
It sounds terrible, but I'm inclined to agree with him the children would be better off if there really were child auctions.
Raising kids mostly feels to me like I have a horrible heroin addiction. Loads of cash and time, reduced access to jobs, increased risk of intrusion by authorities and I struggle to see any personal benefit but lots of personal losses. Nonetheless my brain has tricked me somehow into it, at some basic biological level, and it seems this trickery at least at the population level is a necessary condition of life to the point free will is a total joke to consider as part of the equation.
At an individual maybe there is some selfish choice but at a population level having a kid is about the biological equivalent of taking a shit -- people don't take a shit because they are selfish they do it because it is biologically required and humans simply evolved to match this requirement.
in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"
so this isn't about kids. you've made up your mind about all reality.
This is false equivalence, taking heroin isn't a biologicals imperative, reproduction is obligatory to life.
My thesis is humans have no real choice at a population level not to reproduce, your fallaciously equate that to a reductionist view on everything else including things not obligatory to life.
The big discussion is why have kids. And your position then is we're wired to, just like taking a dump.
It's not a good argument in my mind because the position voids every decision. There are no decisions. No free will. We can discuss that, i suppose.
edit: saw your update. I don't know I think it tracks. Asking why does someone do something implies a choice, to argue it's not a choice is a different argument. A good one even, but it's different.
>I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.
Why is an interesting discussion, but not identical here. The charge I was responding to was specifically addressing selfishness.
I am totally open to the idea one can act selfishly both under the pretext that there is or isn't free will, which moots any attempt you're making here to shoehorn the argument into that.
i don't think this is reductionist btw. Philosophy tends to make people eye-roll. These are unanswerable questions! Discussion is the fun part.
Selfish non-choice. Ex: The fetus takes nourishment from the mother, even in the case she would rather abort and doesn't consent to the continued hosting of the fetus.
Selfish choice: Ex: I must take a dump, but the place I choose to take a shit is on my bosse's chair because I don't like that his is better than mine.
Non-selfish choice: Fireman is driving home after his shift ended, saves baby from fire.
Non-selfish non-choice: Woman involuntarily starts screaming after witnessing an unrelated car drive into a lake. Passers-by hear the scream and alert emergency services.
It's some kind of weird hubris when people think they've awakened to some grand truth that life is suffering and therefore reproduction is cruel.
Is life full of suffering. Yes.
Is life full of joy. Yes
All are true.
Feel free to not answer if it's a painful thing.
If/when we disappear, meaning itself might get erased from the universe. In that sense nothing means anything.
In another sense, if we are the only source of meaning that’s potentially the most rare and precious thing imaginable.
Giving a shit is literally our superpower. So give a shit about something because meaning only exists when we bring it into being. And it only exists as long as we make it exist. Far from being depressing this might be the most uplifting thought possible. Because it makes you fucking matter. As much as you want to matter. (And as little)
Parenting is the ultimate exercise in giving.
There may be more than a comfy little pool to swim in :)
https://www.andrews.edu/services/development/annual/the-joy-...
Because there are lots of fun things you can only do when you are alive.
To abuse your metaphor a bit...
I get the sense that some people see the "nihilist pit" (or somesuch) as a dark scary thing (it is). Maybe they have gotten lost in it a little bit, did not like the experience, got out, and so advise everyone else to avoid it, too.
Other people have spent more time in the pit, whether by choice or the lack of it, gone deep down, and found the bottom. And that can be a wonderful, freeing feeling, to get to the end of that hard journey.
I guess for my own part, at the bottom of my pit, I found that there is something to stand on down there. It was an absolute relief to find, life-affirming, and has helped me ever since.
YMMV of course (: Different people are different.