Why is our existence so Eh???

Warning: This is a long rant about the insignificance of our lives... I wish I didn't feel this way, but I do.

I am not searching for a meaning in life. Not a purpose of any sort that must be fulfilled or something that must be sorted out and what we must do because there is no such thing. However, everyday I go through life thinking ack what is the point of all of this?? Life seems so eh. The conversations that people have with other people discusses nothing but the most inane details of their life i.e. phone service, neighbors, beauty products, sports.... : sigh: just seems so pointless to me yet this is what we talk about on a daily basis. I just don't see the point in all of this. Mostly in our existence here.

You can argue that there is no point in anything. We just exist... but then why do so? fear of death? nothing more to it ? just enjoy it? sigh. Biologically, speaking we are here to procreate and ensure the survival of the species. However, we are highly intelligent creatures and procreation in the short run does nothing for us except to increase our responsibility. Having children I believe is not the answer.

I tried so hard to believe in a god some sort of divine entity and have faith, but yet logic and common sense gets me every time so that explanation is out of the loop. For you religious people out there, I am glad for you that you believe it , but please do not "share/spread/attempt to convert me." Religion is great if people would just keep it to themselves and quit trying to sell their idea to others. Again, I am glad the invisible man in the sky works for some people, but it just doesn't work for me. I REALLY REALLY wish I could just believe, but I don't.....

This is where my depression lies, just a overall blah feeling, insignificance. Nothing seem to really matter in this world. I mean if we die, we die it is inevitable. "make the most of your time here" some say but that is not the least bit comforting at all. I feel very lost in this world. Like no one understand me. I am just surprised that most people don't question our existence. They are not bothered by it, everyone just keeps themselves busy with activities and they worry about wedding planning, matching outfits, other people's opinions of them and just general $#%^ like that and in the end none of it matters. I too am guilty of going through life worrying about things like that, but then I just think well who gives a $#%^ anyway it is all the same.

Is there someone out there who has found a somewhat satisfactory answer to the insignficance of our existence? Besides just live it anyway, treasure what you have and other sayings like that. Who else is troubled by this besides me? I have been depressed for 5 years.. and I am still bothered

your life lacks the power of the lord Jesus Christ. lol nah im just joking.

Is there someone out there who has found a somewhat satisfactory answer to the insignficance of our existence?

The insignificance of our existence isn't a question.. why would you expect an answer?
I think you are actually looking for meaning in life despite denying this, and you want an outside the box answer because you are dissatisfied with the obvious answers. good luck with that lol.
People give their own lives meaning, and they feel like they need to in order to go on living. There is something I want to achieve in my life. I don't know why it matters to me, but it does, and that is why I live.
You say that having children does nothing but increase our responsibilty. Then you assume that children have some value for which we must be responsible. If there was no meaning in having children, then we would have nothing to be responsible for; it wouldn't matter what happens to the children. But it does matter to most people.

I too am guilty of going through life worrying about things like that, but then I just think well who gives a $#%^ anyway it is all the same.

Why feel guilty about worrying? Be glad that you can still worry about life's trivial matters. Because if you didn't worry about them you would most probably have nothing to live for. A miserable situation indeed. But try to be happy. You can't want anything else after all.

Yes, I guess I am looking for outside of the box answer...... anyone up for the challenge??/

Responsibility for children because they are human beings and there is such a thing as morals in my book, so why have any kids if you are not going to raise them right, eh?i.e. make sure they are healthy and don't kill anyone when they grow up.

You took my meaning of "guilty" too literally. I meant I too do those things, but I don't feel guilty about it per se lol .

ahh morality. Do you believe in moral laws that are the same for everyone everywhere? Do you believe that those who follow these moral rules ought to be rewarded and those who do not ought to be punished? It is only rational to do what brings gain. If following the rules does not bring reward then it is irrational to follow them. Now do you believe that everyone gets what they deserve in their lives? i.e. someone is paralysed in a car accident because they did something wrong before. Most would argue that life is unfair. If you believe that life is unfair and that people ought to be rewarded for acting morally, then you believe an afterlife ought to exist. And if you continue to act morally, then you hope or have some faith in an afterlife.

That is Kant's moral argument for God and an afterlife.
I disagree with it in some ways because I believe people are fundamentally irrational. Even if an afterlife did not exist, some people would still try to act morally. Another criticism is that behaving 'morally' does have some rewards in our lives. Also, people do not act 'morally' all the time, and this is to maximise on the unfairness of life.

A reason for existence eh? What if such a reason did exist? Would it exist for a reason? Having a reason for existence does not make logical sense because nothing can exist outside of existence. Existence is all that can exist and everything is driven to either prolong or cease it. To be or not to be? That is the question.

I do not believe or hope for an afterlife. I just have morals because its the right thing to do I suppose. Don't do unto others what you don't want others to do to you. In other words, treat people the way you want to be treated. I guess I believe in fairness, although life is unfair I would like to practice fairness upon this world. I guess it makes me feel better to not harm others and leave innocent people alone.

You totally lost me on the last paragraph. Nothing exists outside of existence... well yeah lol I think I am pondering why is it that everything in life we do for a reason. i.e. going to school to get an education, eat to not feel hungry, lie in the sun to get a tan. Our behavior is motivated by our desire for something. Yet, what is the reason we live? I don't know .. to not die? At times death seems a lot better than living esp when depression hits so why are we still here? who the heck knows

sorry if my writing is a little incomprehensible. i share your reasons for moral behaviour, and also do not believe in God or an afterlife. my previous post relates to the purpose of existence. I will now attempt to address its relevance to our lives i.e. why we live. Things can either exist or not exist. When it comes to organisms, living and existing are essentially the same (assuming there is no afterlife) because an organism is alive by definiton. That is to say organisms must be alive to exist. The reason we live is to exist. But there can be no reason for existence (as I explained in my previous post). Therefore everything we do in order to live, in order to exist is fundamentally without reason. Man is faced with only one question at the end of the day. To be or not to be? To live or not to live? How we answer that question is not based on rationality (because there can be no reason to exist). That is why I say that human beings are fundamentally irrational.

'Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.'

That is a quote from the great philosopher, David Hume. Rationality is a slave to our irrational desires; it only works to satisfy them. The drive to live is one of those desires. Our rationality only serves to show us how our actions, such as going to school, taking medicine etc. will prolong or shorten our lives.

If we think about this in evolutionary terms, we are likely to have the drive to live. Organisms must reproduce by definition. An organism can either want to live or not want to live. Organisms that do not want to live disappear from the earth quickly without a chance to replicate. And organisms that want to live produce more organisms which want to live. This is why organisms at any given moment are likely to want to live. So the reasons we live are in order to exist and because we have evolved to want to live and exist. Unsatisfying conclusion, I know.

At times death seems a lot better than living esp when depression hits so why are we still here? who the heck knows

You are right. You cannot explain something which doesn't make sense. But to address the issue of depression and death. People who are in pain may not want death because they do not know what death is; it could be more suffering. And if they do not know what it is, they should not fear it either, because it may be the bridge leading to immeasurable happiness (this is one of Socrates' ideas). So we can never quite say that dying is better or worse than living hence we can never rationally choose to die. We live in hope. hope that suffering will end.

sorry for writing so much, but explaining the reason (or lack thereof) we live is no easy feat.

O ok I get it now, Being is existing and the totality of our existence is irrational because human beings are irrational in that sense. O yes the evolutionary biology of why we want to live, but I guess I am an anomaly as I want to exist, but I do not want to reproduce. Higher reasoning powers of my supposedly superior brain telling me the world is overpopulated and does not need more babies. explain how that got through the gates of natural selection.

As for whether or not death is better or not. I see Socrates argument. However, according to all our senses death simply means not existing. Given we do not see a afterlife, or hear about it ever being told. Death seems to be the cessation of all our problems. So death might be better for some if their life is currently very #######5 and there is no hopes of it changing.

existing is irrational because there can be no reason for it. a reason must be different from that which it is applied to. The only thing different from existence is non-existence, therefore the reason is non-existent.

remember evolution is described as a blind process. there are either haves or have nots, and if haves gain an advantage they will become dominant. the advantages of higher brain function must have outweighed the disadvantages. one can expect side effects and disadvantages in many genetic mutations, but provided the organism becomes more competitive than others in it's species, those mutations will stick around. evolution, being the blind process that it is, may not have the ability to block out certain thought capacities such as the human ability to reason that death might be better than pain, or that it would be immoral to have children.
Furthermore, intelligencein humans is dictated more heavily now by the environment a human grows in rather than its genes. So even those not smart enough to reflect on their existence and behaviour may have children who are smart enough to make this link and vice versa..

Wow, both of you guys are way too TL;DR for my tastes so I'll just speak for myself here.

I for one felt released after coming to the realization that who we are is what is truly insignificant in the grand scheme of things but not what we can do. Our systems of morality and beliefs inherently serve nothing save for our own egos and are always bound to destructive change but what we create by our own hands is almost eternal. For instance, the more I'm told that I should do this or believe in that or that this or that is very important, the more I shrug it off instead because I see it having no impact in my personal affairs.

I used to believe what everyone else believed but then they stopped losing meaning over time because they were just made up by other people. What may have been depressing for some was something of a release for me because with all of these moral chains taken off the world immediately became my oyster. I became free to immerse myself in the world around and to take and create from it what my heart desired.

I don't know about you but once I took off those mental chains, I felt damn near invincible.