Hope, Nihilism, Complacency, and Danger

[SailusGebel]

The thread's title is TLDR

Cool words. Very smart.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Cool words. Very smart.

Maybe they were TSDU? (Too short, didn't understand)

 

[SailusGebel]

Maybe they were TSDU? (Too short, didn't understand)

They?

 

[TsumiHokiro]

They?

The words.

 

[SailusGebel]

The words.

Huh? I do not understand you.

 

[Voidiris]

The thread feels now like a (internet) meme.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Huh? I do not understand you.

TSDU.

 

[SailusGebel]

TSDU.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Whoever recoined nihilism from "yay, we get to decide what matters ourselves" to "buhuhu, nothing matters because I have no universe affecting purpose" probably should have tried your idea instead.

I'm pretty sure the "decide for ourselves" was the cope for "nothing matters".

Why? People hope to hit the lottery. Often this just means they flushed two bucks away.

Progress has been happening for 12,000 years now. Why would it be impossible?
Entropy affects everyone. Everyone changes, just usually for the worse.
Of course conflict will continue. Why is conflict bad? Calm seas never a skilled sailor make.
I don't see how any of this will have an effect of the likelihood of change. Furthermore, what is positive and negative change?
Why is one preferred over the other?


I find great glee in the face of overwhelming odds. Speak for yourself.


I can see change happening regardless of the amount of hope I have, if I have eyes that see. As for improving someone else's life, true, but the fact is, things usually only change at threshholds. 99.9% of the time, your thank you will have no effect. If won't move the needle, as they say.

And... History of misery? What misery? You mean life? yeah, living is pain. What's your point? If you felt no pain, you wouldn't do anything. You'd be a mushroom.

And yes, I'll try and do something if I think it will work. In this case just "hoping" it will work is nonsense. I prefer to "know" it will work.

If I fail and die, it's the end of my world.



No.
You are describing, caring. If you care, you will take action and sometimes people care too much. You need to care to love and you need to care to hate. What you describe isn't hope, or a result of hope. You are describing wanting something so much to the point of delusion.


Because it sucks. It's not fun, and a waste of time. First-hand experience here. You can read my posts elsewhere for details. I have no desire to repeat myself.



AHHHHUUUGGGGHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!!

"Nothing I do matters!"

Okay. So, let's see. If nothing matters, then what you do doesn't matter and what I do doesn't matter. So both have a value of ZERO. So, if what you do is JUST AS IMPORTANT as what the president of the US does? THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN VALUE?

If you say no, you are LYING.

So, since one is more important than the other, one has MORE VALUE. If it has MORE VALUE, then it has VALUE NOT EQUAL TO ZERO. If that is the care it MATTERS.

Just not enough.

The human mind suffers from how it self-motivates. You do something, you succeed, you get dopamine. Then, over time, doing the same thing gets less dopamine. You have to DO BETTER or do something new to get dopamine. This is called LEARNING. Unfortunately, it leads to a situation where people come to the conclusion as the dopamine wears off that "NOTHING MATTERS BECAUSE I'M NOT GETTING MY FIX."



That's the problem. It's not pointless. it FEELS pointless. Because you get caught in the trap of trying to find meaning.

I'll let you in on something. The reason for life. Ya ready?

Life makes order.

That's it. That's life's purpose. To make order. Life is order, death is not. Life fights entropy creating ever more complex order out of chaos. THAT'S IT. In a nutshell.

"That sucks."

No. That's the answer, you just don't LIKE IT. In short, this is, "Make the world better than you found it." Because life that doesn't do this winds up dead. Now, life disagrees with what is order. This disagreement is usually solved through the process called DIGESTION. Anyone who thinks life is supposed to be peaceful and little hearts shooting out of you as you contemplate your navel is an idiot. Life is about creating order and fighting with other forms of life to make your form of order the SUPERIOR form of order.

It's called evolution.

This works for DNA, this works for Memes, this works for you, this works for ideas. Anything that reproduces and creates order in defiance of entropy is a form of life and its purpose is to make more order. THAT'S IT.

and let me jump ahead to the arguments I know you are going to use.


"We're just chemical reactions and nothing matters."

Why does the operating system matter? If you were a computer simulation, would you be any less "real"? Anything can be used to store data and as long as that data has feedback and output, it can be a form of life. You could be a series of rocks on a beach. If you are close to the water, that's zero. If you are further away, that's one. The entire universe is a series of rocks on a beach and God walks along the beach, running a program in his mind to decide if a rock gets moved closer to the water, or away, or stays where it is.

Thus all of reality is binary code and represented by pebbles on an infinitely long beach.

It wouldn't change anything.

To us, inside the Pebble code, we wouldn't notice, or care, as long as it runs properly. You could be chemicals in your brain, neurons firing, a computer simulation, whatever. That is just bitching about your OPERATING SYSTEM. If you want to say nothing matters, you had better come up with a better excuse than, "I PREFER UNIX."

I'm sorry you don't LIKE the answers, but the answers are there. They are rather simple. The universe isn't that complex. I think the problem is, you think the universe should be massive and amazing and wonderous when... in reality... it's rather simple.

Knowing how the sausage is made, as they say, ruins the experience of sausage.

Maybe, what doesn't matter, is trying to figure out what matters.

Instead, just make the world a better place you found it, not because of GOD, or because of some higher calling, or because of philosophy, but because ever since blue-green algae started shitting oxygen everywhere, it's what life has been doing, and it's worked out just fine so far.

Why rock the boat?

If God, by his own word, said he would not interfere in our lives, then that means that God does not affect outcomes, so it is perfectly fine to exclude him from any calculations.

Because since life began, life has made increasingly more complex forms of order. It is what life DOES. Why? Because the opposite doesn't work. We have lots of examples of that. If you don't want to make more order, there is someone else who will.


Sometimes you need to do this. Why do you assume it's a bad thing? OH, you think the Nazis should have won? We didn't like their idea of order and corrected the mistake. Sometimes Life gets into arguments about how order should manifest, but we work it out in the end. Sometimes it's by being "negative", whatever that means.


Yes and yes. If you didn't exist, the universe would be different. That matters. Even if just a little bit.


Maybe. Again, doesn't matter. The answer to the question doesn't change the outcome.

It existed before, you just don't like the answer, so you pick a new one. That's fine.

Does he? I define love as loving someone, which usually means INTERACTING with what I love, but that's just me.

I love Objective truth. Do you? Even when it hurts?

WTF? Truth changes, because LIFE CHANGES. Truth never changes. what is this nonsense? Truth changes all the time because the universe changes. Dude, I know you LIKe the idea of absolute permanence, but the idea of Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence...

That's on you guys.

Infinity doesn't exist. There are no infinities. The universe cannot exist with Infinity. Mathematically you can show THERORETICAL infinity, but there are no examples of it in this world. If there are no infinities, then I'm sorry, god doesn't exist as you think he does. He has to be finite, or there is no room for you.

THAT IS WHAT INFINITY MEANS.

is there a god, Maybe. Possible. But as you imagine him? No. So tell me, what will you do if you find youself before him and he isn't perfect? What if he is flawed, because he has to be or there is no place in the universe for you? What if, the only way God and you could both exist is if he limited himself to make room for you and was now less than perfect?

My god, what pressure to put on someone. YOU HAVE TO BE PERFECT OR EVERYTHING MUST BURN BECAUSE WITHOUT YOUR PERFECTION I HAVE NO REASON TO EXIST.

Dude.... chill out. Take it down a notch. I'm just saying, don't get your hopes up so high. Isn't he called "The father"? Maybe... just maybe... he's like your dad. And dads try very hard, but dads aren't perfect. What you gonna do if the past 2,000 years was just God going out for a pack of smokes?

I'm just saying that maybe it's fine if everything isn't perfect, that things end, that maybe, in the end, entropy might win. Maybe, it was never about the destination, but the journey.

Right now, you are on your journey. Maybe you will die and your journey will continue, or maybe it will end and come to naught.

The answer to the end of your journey doesn't change anything because right now, you are STILL MOVING ALONG. Maybe just do that. Leave the world better than you found it and keep moving forward because humanity has been doing that shit for 12,000 years and it's worked out fairly well so far.

I mean, just look at this internet thing you guys came up with. That's just NEET!

Consider being more concise with your replies, reading such long ones is a chore.
Replying to it is also a chore since there are so many little points I could address. But I have got to simplify it to big ones.

First, you claim that God does not interact with Mankind.
Evidence against your claim: The Bible
God not only interacts with us throughout history but even to this very day.
Maybe he has not interacted with YOU, but perhaps that is because you do not want to interact with Him.
He has revealed how He wants us to interact with Him.

Second, the theory of evolution is not fact, but an interpretation of the evidence.
Evolution stems from the foundation of Atheism. What, you think science doesn't support or validate the Bible? Perhaps you are just ignorant on the matter. Or, maybe people are using deception to hide from the truth of God.

Third, I am having a hard time differentiating your foundational worldview from that of a Nihilist. I mean your arguments for why we should do things are as hollow as theirs.
"Truth changes" ? I thought you loved objective truth, then you say something like this. Moral relativism ultimately means no morals matter.
"Life is about the journey," I thought you said it was about asserting your order as supreme.
You are just doing the same thing they are: defining reality from your own understanding.
When you realize that God is the one who defines reality, meaning, purpose, etc, then that is when things are going to start making coherent sense.

 

[SailusGebel]

 

[Zirrboy]

I'm pretty sure the "decide for ourselves" was the cope for "nothing matters".

And a welcome alternative when faced with those who would do what by their own standards should be desecration of the almighty with presumption about its aims to sate their need for higher calling.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

It is too late and there is no hope. Climate change will kill us all, if we don't kill ourselves faster. The world is dying and it is all our own fault. Most of us are too busy killing each other to even care. In the face of certain death, the shadows of anger and hatred are proving ephemeral and empty. The fires of justice die down even between enemy soldiers, and war becomes merely a job. When the world is dying, there is only room for grieving anymore. So many people are screaming. I don't even have to hear them; primal shouts of fear and pain and anguish and grief and despair are echoing through my soul. What have we done...?

 

[Voidiris]

Second, the theory of evolution is not fact, but an interpretation of the evidence.
Evolution stems from the foundation of Atheism. What, you think science doesn't support or validate the Bible? Perhaps you are just ignorant on the matter. Or, maybe people are using deception to hide from the truth of God.

Funfact Charles Darwin was somewhat a Christian.

"Truth changes" ? I thought you loved objective truth, then you say something like this. Moral relativism ultimately means no morals matter.

There are two definitions of truth, the objective truth and the subjective truth. He is talking about the subjective truth or in other words what a person accepts as reality, people will change and the facts that they see as truth will change too. Moral relativism shows that there is not one morality because everybody can find their own morality, those that don't care about morality (like me) won't make their own morals.

First, you claim that God does not interact with Mankind.
Evidence against your claim: The Bible
God not only interacts with us throughout history but even to this very day.
Maybe he has not interacted with YOU, but perhaps that is because you do not want to interact with Him.
He has revealed how He wants us to interact with Him.

Isn't that too just a interpretation of the evidence? I struggle to see a difference.

 

[PieCoNsUmEr]

Thank you all for sharing you opinions (and meme perspectives). I have a lot of thoughts, and tend to talk at the people around me a bunch. So seeing an musing of mine get deconstructed, and argued about is cool.
To clarify my perspective on the topic, I’m going to first add some background. I’m a simple person who can get stressed easily, and amused easily. I can look outside, think about how there should be snow at the moment, and ruin my mood. I get happy when I eat. At the same time, I have a mind that never shuts up, and respond to being overwhelmed by thinking even. I waste a large amount of mental/emotional energy. I believe that at least for me, doing small stuff should be the minimum, while trying to improve your skills and knowledge. This last part is rushed because I’m tired

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Funfact Charles Darwin was somewhat a Christian.

I have heard of a deathbed conversion but am unsure whether that is true or not. Is not of great interest to me.

There are two definitions of truth, the objective truth and the subjective truth. He is talking about the subjective truth or in other words what a person accepts as reality, people will change and the facts that they see as truth will change too. Moral relativism shows that there is not one morality because everybody can find their own morality, those that don't care about morality (like me) won't make their own morals.

No, his point is that everything is changing, there is no permanent truth. So, I compared his idea about truth to moral relativism.
Perhaps this issue comes down to our different use of the word "objective". To me objective and absolute permanence are synonymous. Something only true for a short time is not objectively true, maybe only partially true.
His worldview is built upon evolution and change also affects absolute truth, which I do not agree with. Some things do not change no matter how much time passes.

Isn't that too just a interpretation of the evidence? I struggle to see a difference.

Do you mean the Bible itself or my reading of it?

 

[Notadate]

I AM A BIG BALL OF SPITE AND SELF-LOVE! I LITERALLY CAN’T BE SAD FOR TOO LONG! Why? Because I don’t care, I don’t care about the small stuff or even the super bad stuff. Some things I can’t achieve, I can’t do because one person can’t. Or worry about small things. But the stuff I can do, I give my damnest. Stuff that seems impossible? I’ll push myself as hard as I can to achieve what I want.

My name, not saying it here, is the meaning of GREED. I am the greediest little shit around. If I want it, I’ll work my ass off to get it.
-
What I mean is don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t think about big shit you can’t do. But if you wish to achieve it, be greedy as shit and grab onto it. Don’t let self hate way you down, always remember why does that matter, and I AM AWESOME AS SHIT.

 

[Voidiris]

Thank you all for sharing you opinions (and meme perspectives). I have a lot of thoughts, and tend to talk at the people around me a bunch. So seeing an musing of mine get deconstructed, and argued about is cool.
To clarify my perspective on the topic, I’m going to first add some background. I’m a simple person who can get stressed easily, and amused easily. I can look outside, think about how there should be snow at the moment, and ruin my mood. I get happy when I eat. At the same time, I have a mind that never shuts up, and respond to being overwhelmed by thinking even. I waste a large amount of mental/emotional energy. I believe that at least for me, doing small stuff should be the minimum, while trying to improve your skills and knowledge. This last part is rushed because I’m tired

I can relate to that a lot.

I have heard of a deathbed conversion but am unsure whether that is true or not. Is not of great interest to me.

Same.

No, his point is that everything is changing, there is no permanent truth. So, I compared his idea about truth to moral relativism.
Perhaps this issue comes down to our different use of the word "objective". To me objective and absolute permanence are synonymous. Something only true for a short time is not objectively true, maybe only partially true.
His worldview is built upon evolution and change being an absolute truth, which I do not agree with. Some things do not change no matter how much time passes.

Well I didn't read the entire conversation and from your perspective you seem correct and that's the reason why we can't truly agree with each other.

Do you mean the Bible itself or my reading of it?

Yes.

I AM A BIG BALL OF SPITE AND SELF-LOVE! I LITERALLY CAN’T BE SAD FOR TOO LONG! Why? Because I don’t care, I don’t care about the small stuff or even the super bad stuff. Some things I can’t achieve, I can’t do because one person can’t. Or worry about small things. But the stuff I can do, I give my damnest. Stuff that seems impossible? I’ll push myself as hard as I can to achieve what I want.

Extremely relatable.

My name, not saying it here, is the means GREED. I am the greediest little shit around. If I want it, I’ll work my ass of to get it.
-
What I mean is don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t think about big shit you can’t do. But if you wish to achieve it, be greedy as shit and grab onto it. Don’t let self hate way you down, always remember why does that matter, and I AM AWESOME AS SHIT.

My name means emulator, someone who mimics others and it's quite accurate in a memetic way.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Isn't that too just a interpretation of the evidence? I struggle to see a difference.

Yes, different interpretations can and should be tested. I think the Bible has strong claims for being true.
When it comes to literary interpretation, the whole context should be considered when interpreting the message. I don't claim to have a perfect understanding and am open to correction in such matters. Testing helps. I have read the whole bible and study it occasionally.

Thank you all for sharing you opinions (and meme perspectives). I have a lot of thoughts, and tend to talk at the people around me a bunch. So seeing an musing of mine get deconstructed, and argued about is cool.
To clarify my perspective on the topic, I’m going to first add some background. I’m a simple person who can get stressed easily, and amused easily. I can look outside, think about how there should be snow at the moment, and ruin my mood. I get happy when I eat. At the same time, I have a mind that never shuts up, and respond to being overwhelmed by thinking even. I waste a large amount of mental/emotional energy. I believe that at least for me, doing small stuff should be the minimum, while trying to improve your skills and knowledge. This last part is rushed because I’m tired

I hope you find my point of view helpful in some way.