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Why does there have to be a point to life?
You are born,you live your life and then you die, thats it thats all. hopefully you'll enjoy the experience.
Or if you prefer not to enjoy it, be sure to whine a lot and tell people how miserable you choose to be.
Antinatalism places a greater value on suffering prevention. On other hand, evil pro natalists believe that harming and causing suffering to innocent people is morally neutral.
Affirming life in face of abundant evil is logically incoherent.
No, antinatalism places greater value on ones own sensibilities and reality over those of others, especially those with dissenting opinions on any value to life, i.e. the "evil pro-natalists" which comprise 99.9+% of the rest of humanity are written off as a caricature of buffoonish submentals.
Your opinions hold weight on the presupposition that evil outeighs good and is the dominant paradigm in human existence, which is opinion and not fact. Incidentally, it is an opinion that the majority of humanity seems to disagree with. You are free to choose not to procreate into a world you view as inherently evil and cruel, as that is your opinion and in the realm of opinion, yours is no more or less valid than someone who believes the world is full of boundless joy. When you try to posit this opinion as irrefutable fact, it runs out of steam quite simply. There is no logical incoherence with deciding that life is an enjoyable or good thing any more than there is refusing to affirm life in the face of abundant good.
You believe that people delude themselves into being happy, while the same can easily be said about one who steadfastly refuses to see life as anything but miserable and futile.
Life has no point. Even if we were immortal, it wouldn't change the pointlessness of existence.
No matter how hard you try to find objective meaning in life you won't find it.
There is no purpose in life, only distractions. We only have entertainment, to kill boredom, filling time,escaping momentarily from the stark emptiness of existence. All people do is trying to create subjective illusory meanings for their lives from one of their hobbies.
It could all be summarized as the overexploitation of several different forms of entertainment, just to try to escape from the fact that there's actually no real escape.
Sadly, this is largely true, but I try to look at it in less bleak terms.
There is no inherent meaning of life; only what we make of it ourselves. We have to create the meaning in our lives. We can do this by doing something we enjoy, find socially redeeming, etc. For some this can mean helping homeless persons or animals, for others it can be scientific endeavors to enhance our understanding.
There's no universal meaning that applies to any and all persons. Each of us has to figure it out for ourselves. Admittedly this is far more challenging and often frustrating than relying on pre-conceived ideologies like religion, but it's more honest and courageous, and less delusional than religion.
No, antinatalism places greater value on ones own sensibilities and reality over those of others, especially those with dissenting opinions on any value to life, i.e. the "evil pro-natalists" which comprise 99.9+% of the rest of humanity are written off as a caricature of buffoonish submentals.
Antinatalists think people shouldn't be forced to deal with extreme suffering if they can't. It's cruel.
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Originally Posted by 415_s2k
Your opinions hold weight on the presupposition that evil outeighs good and is the dominant paradigm in human existence, which is opinion and not fact. Incidentally, it is an opinion that the majority of humanity seems to disagree with. You are free to choose not to procreate into a world you view as inherently evil and cruel, as that is your opinion and in the realm of opinion, yours is no more or less valid than someone who believes the world is full of boundless joy. When you try to posit this opinion as irrefutable fact, it runs out of steam quite simply. There is no logical incoherence with deciding that life is an enjoyable or good thing any more than there is refusing to affirm life in the face of abundant good.
Abundant good? How many people do you know lead charmed lives of unadulterated bliss? Charmed lives are rare. A majority of people have to deal with considerable amount of suffering, anguish, anxiety, stress, discomfort. Pain and suffering tend to be stronger than pleasure and people tend to overestimate the quality of their lives. The issue is the presence of strong optimistic bias clouding rational judgement.
The way I see it. Those who are afraid to die and do not wish to die have not come to their time yet. Those whose time has come naturally both in the animal and human worlds seem to be fine with it. The idea of not existing can be a little scary but when you think about it. It is the natural order of things so how can it be bad? The pain of death is only experienced by those left behind. We don't know what comes next. A lot of us think we know but no one really does. I think the purpose of life is to live it. Sine you might only get one it makes sense to make the most of it that you can.
The way I see it. Those who are afraid to die and do not wish to die have not come to their time yet. Those whose time has come naturally both in the animal and human worlds seem to be fine with it. The idea of not existing can be a little scary but when you think about it. It is the natural order of things so how can it be bad? The pain of death is only experienced by those left behind. We don't know what comes next. A lot of us think we know but no one really does. I think the purpose of life is to live it. Sine you might only get one it makes sense to make the most of it that you can.
"The idea of not existing can be a little scary but when you thing about it. It (sic) is the natural order of things . . ."
Are you sure "It is the natural order of things"? Maybe to exist, in one form or another is the natural order of things.
Whereas I agree that "to make the most of it that you can" is important, in itself that is a pretty ambiguous goal. It can mean to help as many people as possible to one person; to kill as many people as you can to another; or to totally ignore other people to yet another.
After being conceived, we DO "live it." THAT much is unavoidable.
Jesus knows what comes next, and he told us. Again . . . the Resurrection changes everything in terms of what we think we understand about life and death and "what's it all about, Alfie?" And there is VERY good reason to believe that the Biblical account of Christ's life, death and resurrection was a real historical event. Read "the Case for the Resurrection of Jesus" by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona.
I don't think we go into "non-existence" at all. Our consciousness continues on. The body is just the way we navigate through space and time. It's just a vehicle for the deeper us, consciousness. Those who are more spiritually aware, let's say, I think go to higher "planes" after death, some go to "lower" planes. Like here on planet earth, people of certain caliber/pursuasion hang out w/ others like them, and so forth. Same there. If you're a real low-life here you're not going to a higher plane there. It doesn't work like that I don't think.
But, if you believe we go into non-existence, then, yes, everything would be rather pointless!
Last edited by Nanny Goat; 05-25-2014 at 11:22 AM..
I've struggled through existential depression for quite some while in my early teens (now in my late teens/early adulthood) and I've come to the conclusion that I simply need to go through the process of living life as it is and create meaning for myself, i.e. setting up goals to reach, do things that I enjoy doing, explore and anticipate the future and possibilities, etc. I don't know and can't know for sure if there's a greater purpose or meaning to life, I've pondered but it has only made me depressed and unmotivated. There were even moments where I wish I was never born, but for some reason I kept thinking that if I was not born as me then I would have been born as someone else. It probably has something to do with my tight grasp and awareness of my personal essence.
I'm not going to argue about whether souls exist, but if there's a good reason that it doesn't, it's definitely not because of how we do not have memories of being conscious before we were born. You have no memories of when you were very young either but that doesn't mean that you were not conscious or doesn't exist at that very moment. There were actually records of very young children having memories from 'past life' and eventually forget about it as they get older, and while there are other factors to take into account like the credibility of the story, it's still something quite meaningful to think about if you're a fence sitter.
Antinatalists think people shouldn't be forced to deal with extreme suffering if they can't. It's cruel.
Yeah, and I agree, which is why I believe in voluntary euthanasia for people who sincerely cannot deal with extrenuating circumstances of their lives, though I hardly advocate this as an aspiration-worthy response to the issue. I believe that people should be free to pursue whatever happiness does not infringe upon that of others. You've already expressed your belief that happiness is merely an unnecessary delusion from the reality of suffering. I simply disagree.
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Abundant good? How many people do you know lead charmed lives of unadulterated bliss? Charmed lives are rare.
Yeah, I don't think that Unadulterated bliss as you put it, i.e. the absence of any negativity, are common by any stretch. However, I don't believe that anything short of a life of nothing but sheer pleasure is worth living.
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A majority of people have to deal with considerable amount of suffering, anguish, anxiety, stress, discomfort.
I don't see that to be the case.
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Pain and suffering tend to be stronger than pleasure and people tend to overestimate the quality of their lives. The issue is the presence of strong optimistic bias clouding rational judgement.
"Everyone else enjoys their lives to the point that they don't realize how much it sucks." A solid philosophical foundation if there ever was one.
How can one "overestimate the quality of their lives" when they are the only person who experiences and lives it? Yet again , you have no special abolity which grants you status as the sole arbitrator of life's valuation.
The way I see it. Those who are afraid to die and do not wish to die have not come to their time yet. Those whose time has come naturally both in the animal and human worlds seem to be fine with it. The idea of not existing can be a little scary but when you think about it. It is the natural order of things so how can it be bad? The pain of death is only experienced by those left behind. We don't know what comes next. A lot of us think we know but no one really does. I think the purpose of life is to live it. Sine you might only get one it makes sense to make the most of it that you can.
Well sure, but the idea of nonexistence never to exist again is one scary thing. I have panic attacks over it.
Look at this recent shooting in California. I mean one day you could get killed and then your consciousness is gone and gone permanently. It's tough to accept and deal with. It could happen to us at anytime, any place.
Scary.
I am optimistic about an afterlife, but at the same time the concept seems unlikely.
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