- Joined
- Aug 13, 2020
Almost all of the cosmos, being nothing more than an enormous quantity of utterly dead matter, seems to me to be completely irrelevant to the meaning of my life. I don't ask the rocks in my garden about how meaningful my life is.
Even so, why does the fact that the universe is so big mean anything? If Earth and its inhabitants miraculously became a million times larger while the rest of the cosmos remained as it was, or if everything else in the cosmos became a million times smaller while Earth and its inhabitants remained the same size, I would not feel that my life had therefore become a million times more meaningful, or in fact any more meaningful at all.
Or when they talk about how life must not have any meaning because we're all gonna die. Saying that death diminishes worth and, thus, that infinite life would have had more worth does not mean that a finite life has no worth at all. A finite life may have a value that is not absolute, yet nevertheless substantial and sufficient because things can be temporal and valuable.
Or that because we all end up dead our lives are the same. Of course, if we examine only the aspects in which these two people are similar, completely disregarding those aspects in which they differ, the two appear the same. But it is unclear why we should disregard all those aspects in which they differ and focus exclusively on the aspects they share. Sure a beach bum and Ceaser may now be dead but it would be odd to consider their lives as similar in meaning.
I feel as if most Redditors desperately want life to have no meaning because it gives them an excuse to do nothing. It's a coping mechanism for failure.
Even so, why does the fact that the universe is so big mean anything? If Earth and its inhabitants miraculously became a million times larger while the rest of the cosmos remained as it was, or if everything else in the cosmos became a million times smaller while Earth and its inhabitants remained the same size, I would not feel that my life had therefore become a million times more meaningful, or in fact any more meaningful at all.
Or when they talk about how life must not have any meaning because we're all gonna die. Saying that death diminishes worth and, thus, that infinite life would have had more worth does not mean that a finite life has no worth at all. A finite life may have a value that is not absolute, yet nevertheless substantial and sufficient because things can be temporal and valuable.
Or that because we all end up dead our lives are the same. Of course, if we examine only the aspects in which these two people are similar, completely disregarding those aspects in which they differ, the two appear the same. But it is unclear why we should disregard all those aspects in which they differ and focus exclusively on the aspects they share. Sure a beach bum and Ceaser may now be dead but it would be odd to consider their lives as similar in meaning.
I feel as if most Redditors desperately want life to have no meaning because it gives them an excuse to do nothing. It's a coping mechanism for failure.