What Am I Doing Here?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

You have to acknowledge the probability that maybe this is not a question worth asking. It is not because we are able to ask questions that it means that all questions are pertinent. It is not because we are able to use language that everything that comes out of our mouth makes sense.

And you are right, if you think that you have a purpose, then you must also think that everything else has a purpose : dogs, trees, planets, stars and galaxies. Humans have not evolved to ask such questions, but have evolved to adapt and survive. You could say that the fact that we are able to ask such questions is a coincidence, a by-product.

Freedom can be scary, but being human is an incredible experience. Just do what you enjoy the most.

I like this quote : The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. - Einstein

a reply to: Dark Ghost

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

a reply to: PhotonEffect
Can't applaud your post, so, I wanted to thank you for the beautiful insights.

Hmmmm,maybe this will help....errr not.
lol

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
Do you ever ask yourself this question?

Some could say I am merely sitting on a chair by my computer, typing on a keyboard and creating a thread on an internet forum. Others would say I am wasting my time in cyberspace, missing out on "real life" interactions I could be having with other people. Plenty could say I am over-analysing my existence and missing the ride as a result.

I don't mean in the literal sense of describing my exact actions at this exact moment in time in the context of my full life experiences. I mean the deeper reasons behind my existence on this planet at this very moment in time. Why do I exist? Why am I here? What am I meant to be doing? How should I act? Is there an ultimate goal I should be reaching for?

Or is this all random and my musings are simply the result of an intelligent life-form struggling to cope with a harsh realisation? One that suggests that this is all there is and life doesn't get any better. That there is no such thing as spiritual growth and enlightenment, love and compassion, selflessness and integrity.

It seems either everything has a purpose or nothing has a purpose. After all, how can some things maintain a purpose while others do not? Seems paradoxical if true, but then again, so does life in many ways...

Aah the existential ramblings of an intelligent sentient being with the cognitive capacity to marvel at the inevitability of purpose or lack thereof. The sweet paradox of purpose without cause and cause without purpose. All I can say to your illustrious conundrum is their lies a subjective choice to create your purpose along with the billions of others that live in there own little/big box. King of the castle is your right, the kingdom is your mind and how far you expand that kingdom is your choice. I would like to think that all of this whether it be a dream or not still comes from some sort of Logos or pattern etched into eternity. That the assumption of a beginning and an end is merely a primitive observation goose-stepped by the concept of time on this physical realm. What if it is merely a transition coupled with a transformation and although limited by the shell we bare we may seek a new reality to discover as the cycle continues. It may very well be a product of intelligence in our species that cause these anomalies within our lives but sometimes intuition and ''feeling'' are the best choices to adopt to continue being, existing, experiencing, learning,loving,sharing,caring,dreaming,seeing,hearing,loosing,wanting ...............................................

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I think an equally mysterious question is, "What am I?"

a reply to: Dark Ghost

First things first, you really are sitting by your computer, missing out on real life interactions. I am absolutely sure of this. Try to minimize this loss. You will thank yourself on your deathbed. I do not think anyone of us will get old and wish they had spent more time on a computer, no matter how soon the singularity comes. Just saying.

Anyway, it seems to you that everything has a purpose or nothing has a purpose. This is false. Purpose is something which we create for ourselves (or, usually it is created for you). Anything and everything can have purpose. A soldier throwing his live away in WW2, in 1919, might have believed he had a purpose. A father changing his sons diapers in 2014 might believe he has purpose. Both are equal, in terms of purpose. Both have no real purpose, or maybe they do? Both have a subjective purpose.

The purpose and meaning of life is constantly being re-defined. Indeed, life is absurd when you think about it. But we are all slaves to this absurdity, more or less. The best you can do is ask the question, I guess?

originally posted by: MyHappyDogShiner
Since when did everything have to explain itself?.

Since when did everything need a reason to be here?.

Since when did anything need man to explain anything?.

Since mankind.

Since mankind asked the question.

Of course, we are not necessary. Not truly.

sums it up, imo. my secular side, that is.

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
Do you ever ask yourself this question?

Or is this all random and my musings are simply the result of an intelligent life-form struggling to cope with a harsh realisation? One that suggests that this is all there is and life doesn't get any better. That there is no such thing as spiritual growth and enlightenment, love and compassion, selflessness and integrity.

I sometimes think my entire life has been focused on this question and in doing so, haven't made any progress in any one particular direction. I'm very introspective and my current interests are constantly, constantly changing.

The way I look at it is, that YES this is all there is and I don't believe in an existence of spiritual enlightenment that suggests certain people as being more "in the know" than others regarding some cosmic understanding. While there is basic enlightenment of how you deal with life's challenges, we are merely bags of bacteria with physical necessities being our only true needs and there is nothing beyond.

While I haven't believed in love(true love between people - not counting love for children or pets) in quite some time, there are multitudes of examples of compassion, selflessness and integrity in this world.

What you're here to do, is simply up to you. If you're struggling with a feeling of successful inadequacy, here are some considerations for that:

Consider all the billions of people, past and present.

How many spent their entire lives doing mundane work in factories, farms, herding sheep, mining etc?
Some have spent a lifetime never leaving their homes.
Thousands have given their whole lives to religion.
Some devote their time on Earth to addictions.
Others have spent the majority of their lives in prisons or captivity(one can be wealthy and still in forms of captivity as well!).
Still others are plagued with health issues throughout their existence.
People in 3rd world countries rarely leave their village communities and many spend their entire lives devoted to those physical necessities I mentioned above.

I have spent a great deal of time gaming and being on the internet. I look at it this way. Not only have I learned more from the time spent on the web than ever before in my life, but it's actually quite a unique existence if you consider all of time.

People have been scholars and warriors and raised families for centuries upon centuries. Never before in human existence have we had lives that could be spent this way. These last 30 years of time have been the only sliver of time where humans could spend time on computers. The last 15 or so have been the only time the internet was really a viable time sink. We're a part of an exciting new way of life that no one, in all the previous generations could experience.

I used to want a large family and none of that happened for me. I'm ok with that for a couple of reasons.
A: I wouldn't want to bring kids into this society at this point.
B: People have been having kids since people were around. How many have spent a lifetime playing video games?
I no longer see having a family as an exciting life goal. Instead, I get to do what I like a lot more without the burdens of responsibility.

So, you need to determine what YOU'RE ok with in your short life of all of human existence. If it's the big money success you're hoping for, then you need to understand the sacrifices that will come with that. I've often dreamed of big money and going the distance for it only to find myself thinking "Even if was ridiculously wealthy, I'd still spend most of my time in a room playing video games if I could, maybe some travel" So, why not just cut to the chase and enjoy myself without the high stress, time-devoting lifestyle the big money path often requires?

Understand your possible regrets. Picture tomorrow being your final day in life.
What do you wish you had done?
Are you angry and sad that you've spent your life like you have?
What would you try to do if you had been given more time?
While it's a somewhat gloomy approach, it can help put things into perspective.

In the end, I really don't see the majority of human accomplishment amounting to much in the cosmological time scale and I'm certainly not convinced the human race will leave any impression whatsoever once we're gone other than some quirky fossils should they ever be discovered. Bleak, I know, but, there's been no evidence as of yet that surmises otherwise.

Do what you want. Do what you enjoy. Just be the person you want to be while you're here. Don't feel guilty about any choices like this and limit your later regrets.

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
Why do I exist? Why am I here?

It seems either everything has a purpose or nothing has a purpose.

Is it not obvious that every thing or action has the purpose that the person doing it decided?

I cannot assign a purpose on something you are doing.

Your title question "What am I doing here?" you've got to answer yourself. You can't blame somebody else if you haven't figured out what your own purpose is.

"Why are you here?" Ask the ones who put you here, how do you expect us to know them or ask them?

The only reason that a human fetus doesn't sit in the womb and wonder this exact same thing is because its brain is not developed to the degree where such a concern would be possible.

And that's the only reason why.

At this stage of human gestation, your brain is capable of such a question. In both scenarios, the situation for the human is exactly the same, and the only difference is the degree of development that's been accomplished.

Because we have a very different experience of gestation at this stage of overall development, we've isolated it as intrinsically separate from the inter-womb gestational stage of development. Then again, if we'd been capable of such a thing, whilst in utero, we would have declared that stage as the whole of life as well.

We're each gestating, and our "purpose" is to complete that gestation as successfully as possible. That's a hell of a job in itself.

originally posted by: NorEaster

We're each gestating, and our "purpose" is to complete that gestation as successfully as possible. That's a hell of a job in itself.

Develop in to what exactly? That's the question.

I think what you're doing here is just breathing, consuming and in some cases, reproducing.

You exist simply because you happen to have been the quickest of the sperm that was racing towards an egg.

The point of it all I have yet to figure out though. ~$heopleNation

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Life is essentially pointless... I drink a lot...

originally posted by: Dark Ghost

It seems either everything has a purpose or nothing has a purpose.

Although your nick is "DarkGhost" and you have the all-seeing-eye as your avatar, I will still reply to you - perhaps you are just a victim of the ongoing, almost omnipresent brainwashing and indoctrination.

Are you saying that purposelessness has a purpose to it?

I have been suffering this sort of existential crisis for a long time now. It's like, anything and everything on Terran life seems so trivial, pointless, fleeting and not worth experiencing or doing.

Even if you can have the most amazing experience of your whole life, with lots of people or in solitude, tomorrow, it will be over. Or after a week, month, year .. at SOME point, it will all be over.

So what was the point of even having it?

Someone critisized playing World of Warcraft with the argument that the game is not real, and when you stop playing, "what is left"?

Well, the same can be asked about a lot of things. When you eat chocolate cake, you have fun for awhile, but afterwards, what is left? What is left of the great experience you had a week ago?

When you compare playing World of Warcraft to life, you can draw a lot of parallels. You are playing an unending game that doesn't really have any deeper meaning or purpose (or at least, so it seems). You gather stuff, you 'level up' so you can be better at the quests, the rewards of which is to get more stuff and level up, so that you can be better at the next quest, so you can get more stuff and level up so ..

It's like a neverending circle. Sure, you get to explore a bit. You kill a lot of monsters. There's a structure and 'meaning' to it, but in the end, it's just a game, nothing is gained, nothing is lost, and in the end, it has been trivial and meaningless, except for the brief sense of joy/achievement/fun you experienced.

But isn't the real life the same? You have to take care of your (always too small amount of) money, so you can buy the things that are necessary for the maintenance and continuing existence of your character. You have to maintain your body, so you can keep going, so you can maintain your body. You collect a bunch of useless stuff, and meet a lot of jerks on the way, who either help you or don't - some may even ban you from certain circles.

It's exactly the same. And after you leave the planet for good (we all do - people call it 'death' usually), what is left?

What is gained? So, you levelled up by doing a tough Earth-incarnation - isn't this exactly like leveling up in World of Warcraft, by doing a tough quest? So next time you incarnate, you are a level 25, when before this incarnation, you were just a level 23. What's the point?

Sure, I know all about Karma and all that stuff, but I have my own questions about even that, and that doesn't really help with the overall purposelessness of everything. And especially it doesn't help with the "Earth-purpose", or lack thereof.

What can be an 'Earth-purpose'? Can it be something you can do? Can it be something that has a beginning and an end, and then leaves you empty after it's over? Can it be a human, animal, a social group, a legacy of some kind, that continues, after you are gone?

I don't think anything Earthly can ever give you a purpose. You can travel, you can get married, reproduce - and yet still have the emptiness in your soul, and ask yourself: "NOW what?". I mean, you come back from your travels, you either divorce or whither, especially with time (either because of what 'age' does to you, as a woman, or what a nagging wife does to you, as a man). And always you are at a point where you can ask "NOW what?"

You can keep busy for awhile with "work" (usually damaging, unhealthy, dangerous (work is the biggest killer) contributing to the world's problems, at least because of commuting, if nothing else - making some corporation or government richer and more powerful so they can enslave their 'citizens' more efficiently), or by raising your kids wrong, while even keeping a dog and raising it also completely wrong, while making it poop all over the places where people would like to walk.

But after the dog dies, the kids grow up and move out, then you come back to the question: "NOW what?"

It's just another quest completed, another level upped, another useless bunch of stuff collected so you can get better armor and better weapons for your next, meaningless quest.

I have asked the question about the 'meaning' for a long time, and the best people can come up with are some kind of commands as to what you should do to or how you should treat other people, or just a short list of how to maintain the physical (the most animal part of our 'whole', that's not really part of us, we are just visiting and using it) body and reproduce.

That's their meaning. They honestly think reproduction, so that someone else can also maintain their body and reproduce, so yet another can maintain their body and reproduce, is some kind of "meaning". To me, it's a meaningless loop.

It's like you have to work so you can keep alive so you can work so you can keep alive so .. it's a meaningless loop that I have no tolerance for.

The meaning, obviously, cannot be about the physical body. We are eternal beings, the physical body isn't. It has a limited usability, after which, it has to cease to exist as a physical body - it can turn to other things, but you can't use it anymore.

But we have to go on.. continuously, ceaslessly.. until..?? I don't know.

I have tried it "all" (of course no one can really try it 'all'), and none of it is meaninful. Women get old and naggy, wrinkled, and monstrous, no matter how sweet and innocent they may seem when young (that's just a LURE - why do you think monestaries don't allow women in, and why they were even invented? Sure, nuns exist, too, but that's not the same).

Cars, money, big houses - it brings no more happiness or meaning than the same thing in World of Warcraft, and it's just as unreal (if not more). Money has no REAL value, it's just that people think it does, and that illusion gives it usability. But even if it did, you can't take your money with you when you leave the planet any more than you can bring your money with you when you leave World of Warcraft. Then you have to ask again: "NOW what?"

Sure, Astral World will be very heavenly, and a good place to 'heal' and do all kinds of fun and exciting stuff, but in the end, we will probably all stop and ask: "NOW what?"

It's like.. what should I be doing? Should I feel guilty that I am not feeding the poor? Or, would I just be destroying their lives by feeding them, since they chose these difficult, starving lives, because they did horrible deeds in their previous incarnations, and are now cleansing their mistakes, paying for their deeds, so they don't have to carry that guilt in their consciences for the rest of the ternity? Wouldn't I just interrupt this cleansing process and make their lives completely meaningless?

What is meaningful? If I give money to someone, how do I know they won't use it for something evil? What if they buy booze, cigarettes, drugs or a gun with the money, and use those things to brings more evil into the world?

And even if they won't, so what? What could they be sending their money on that would be so meaningful? If they fill their stomach, it will soon be empty again. So what was the point? If they go to the movies, they will just feed a rich corporation and encourage them to make more crappy movies.

Well, you get the point, I think. You can't basically find an escape from this question, no matter where you go and what you do. Is sitting in an office cubicle, writing some TPS reports and trying to seduce innocent people to buy your crappy product that no one needs REALLY better than just sitting at home, staring at the wall, playing a video game, watching television or listening to music?

You can walk in the nature, you can write letters, you can compose music, you can paint nature sceneries all you want, but in the end, you have to come back home, sit down, and ask yourself: "NOW what?"

I don't have an answer, though.. but I think the ONLY meaningful thing we can really 'do' here is ..

.. suffer.

Without suffering, our lives would be pretty much completely meaningless. Think about the conversations people have every single day. What are the topics? How does that improve humanity? Think about the thousands of trivialities they do, read, write and act out? How much time do women spend in front of mirrors or reflective surfaces? How much time do men spend thinking about sex?

But even "productive" work - what do people produce? Ugly, buildings, constructed where lovely nature used to be, more gas so the planet can be polluted more - more airplanes, so the air can be thoroughly polluted from the upper layers to the lowest (not to mention chemtrails), and so people can commute more efficiently to these planet-destroying psychopatch corporations. Endless papers and emails and forms to enslave more people more efficiently, without ever bringing anything useful to the existence.

And even if you have something 'useful', what do people use it for? Everything is pretty much used for the same machinery that "Koyaanisqatsi" showed us in its MILD form over 30 years ago. Or individual, selfish pleasure.

Even if we could find euphoria, I would still ask "NOW what?" What should I do with the euphoria?

Even creative people (though I think we all have the urge and gift of creativity, it's just buried very deep in most, and perhaps just sleeping as a latent power in others), who produce beautiful artwork, paintings, pixel art, music, musicals, books (I won't mention "movies" here, because I have lost respect towards that 'art'form - even the best 'movies' are not something one could ever honestly praise as honestly as a good pixel image or a great painting or piece of music)..

.. even though they produce a lot, and are 'productive' .. the end result is .. "NOW what?"

When they stop creating, when their artwork is finished, what do they do? What's the point of the artwork? You can look/listen to it or experience it, but sooner or later, you will get bored. No one can stare at the same painting forever without getting bored, no matter what a great masterpiece it is.

Everything has this 'fleeting' quality to it, nothing seems to remain the same. And you can't get much joy out of the same thing for a long time. And yet this thing just continues and continues.. your body demands food, rest, urination, defacation, cleaning, shelter.. your soul yearns for something you can't buy from the store. And every day, you have to make a decision of what to do.

(Unless you are a corporate drone, that is - then you are like a WoW player, just mindlessly taking every quest and completing them and returning to take more punishm.. quests)

Real life and World of Warcraft, I ask you all - is it not one and the same?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Lets say someone somehow just figured out the "real definition of life",what would have happened then?!,,I mean what does understanding the real truth do to our lives?...Does it make us any better or more useful or anything at all?...are we going to do things differently for the better? and what is better or worst mean anyways...Things that make me go hmmmm..

a reply to: shapur

Funny how the animals don't bother with purpose, they just live to survive. Maybe we are just here to survive and reproduce as well? However why then are we Humans supposedly more intelligent than the Animals? We certainly are less cruel, just watch a pride of lions devour their prey alive. Course, we have the ability to completely destroy this planet for thousands of years. So I am not so sure about the more intelligent part at the end of the day. ~$heopleNation

a reply to: Dark Ghost

You chose your purpose. Therefore if you have not chosen one you are happy with. Then that is your fault.
Only you can give yourself new purpose or sustain purpose. People may aid you the best they can but people won't breath for you.

We create purposes like machines that can breath for us. But without someone to feed oxygen then they have no purpose until given one.

Very useful things will end up in the garbage because the person throwing them out has decided that its limitations of usefulness has been expired and thus is trash.

You feel kinda like that trash right now. But even meiver and ordinary joes can turn that trash into something of use. Something with a purpose.

So decide what you want to do, But people who can confront the unknown will go much farther than those who do not. There is no paradox for things that have free will-( Changing of purpose) because the free will decides what is useful and what is not. It is only your percetion and awareness of your surroundings and objects that will provide you will new purposes.

Also the spirital/space path is a scary one. So you will have to have your witts about you otherwise you will go insain and think everything is a demon like a majority of the people who make it there. Think of it like reading from the unwritten book of the necromonicon, the concept of reading the pages causes insainity.