When you go looking for capital-T Truth, as far as I can tell, you probably throw out afterlives and reincarnations and universal “should"s and humanoid Gods and you end up with the cold hard fact that you are a critter on this planet controlled by a large pile of neurons. And then, doesn’t it seem like life reduces to just trying to get through this existence in the least painful/most pleasurable way possible?

Everyone hates to say “life is meaningless” because that sounds bleak, so we try to shoehorn some meaning into it. But when it comes down to it, don’t we talk about beauty and goodness and stuff because it would be more painful to deal with a life in which we didn’t pretend that we were doing something other than trying to squeak through life with a minimal amount of pain?

(one could accuse this poster of vaguebooking. don’t worry, I’m fine, just honestly curious.)

Comments:

Cheryl - Nov 2, 2012

I agree. We may just be critters here to fart around… but I am pretty darn happy with life right now and that’s good enough for me :)

Brian - Nov 1, 2012

If it makes sense to you that what you were before you were born was a complete void and that at some point in early childhood a consciousness erupted out of the nothingness into your childmind, then I think that does make sense.

If not, there’s probably something more to it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a lot to do with farting around.

Dan - Nov 1, 2012

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Before I was born, I guess there were a bunch of atoms that would eventually come together into what we call “Dan”, but they weren’t all in the same place so we didn’t call them “Dan”. (slightly before I was born, there was also an idea in everyone’s mind of what their new son/nephew/etc would be like, so I sort of existed, but let’s not complicate things here.)

I wouldn’t even say that a consciousness ever erupted - or, to be (slightly) less snarky (sorry!), I don’t think that consciousness is anything special.