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DisabledAceSocialist [comrade/them] @hexbear.net

Do you think there is any point to life?

I keep wondering why my life turned out to be so hopeless and miserable. Did I do something in a past life and this is my punishment? Is it bad karma? But then karma has never made sense to me. If you murder someone, and karma decides you then need to be murdered to pay for that, it requires someone else to commit murder so you get your karma. The cycle would never end.

Is the New Age idea that we choose our lives before birth true? Do we choose everything that will happen to us in advance so we can learn something from it? Or is that just cope?

Are we just evolved pondslime who mutated into humans by chance and none of this means anything?

Why is life so incredibly awful for so many people?

38 comments

  • Sorry you're suffering. I suffer as well and my perspective is very bleak and probably not comforting in the slightest, so I am going to spoiler it to make reading it an opt-in thing.

    • Honestly, I find this more uplifting than all the karma and Christian/New Age bollocks. If this is true then at least my suffering will be at an end one day. If Christianity is true, I'll burn in hell one day. If karma is true I'll have to live a million more shitty lives. I'd rather it all just be over.

      • Glad it could be of solace. I have the same feeling tbh. Made a former friend cry about it years ago when she was freaking out about there being no afterlife. I told her "exactly, and that's good because it means that eventually the suffering will end!"

  • THE POINT OF LIFE BECOMES OBVIOUS WHEN YOU ARE BITING INTO THAT-A DELICIOSO AUTHENTIC PIZZA PIE

    also talking

  • I don’t think there is a point or greater meaning to life. I think that life is what you make of it. The point of life for me is to seek love, passion, comradery, and fulfillment while I’m here, and to revel in those things where I find them. And on top of that, to help those around me to find the same level of meaning within our relationships and experiences. The meaning of life is to live it as best as possible, and to share empathy and compassion with others to help them do the same.

    • I think that life is what you make of it.

      I really despise this phrase. I don't agree that life is what you make it. In many cases, life is what happens to you. I'm suffering immense effects of cancer treatment, crippled from a stroke, in immense pain every day and have multiple other medical issues, unable to work and reliant on charity while trying to win a benefit appeal. In this state how am I supposed to make a good life? It puts all the blame on me for not trying hard enough when I already try very hard just to get through each day. Conversely people I went to school with who had rich parents with good connections now have top, well paying jobs just because their parents opened doors for them. Their life isn't what they made it either, it was all handed to them on a plate.

      • I agree with everything you’re saying here. The material conditions you’re born into are not in your control and I don’t want to imply that. Hardship is not your fault. What I meant by that phrase is the meaning of life is your own decision to make. It looks different for everybody, we all find fulfillment from different sources. I didn’t mean to imply anything untoward towards you or to dismiss your struggles and I’m sorry it came off that way

    • And I’m sorry for the hardships that you’ve faced in your life. You don’t deserve them, and I know how institutional neglect and abuse can make bad circumstances worse. I hope that things get better for you, and I wish I had stronger words of encouragement to help you along. Solidarity friend

  • I'm sorry you're going through this shit, and I wish I had something which could cut through this and help

    Your questions reminded me of the same questions I've thought about a lot. You raised an interesting question about karma that I've thought about a lot having many Buddhist sympathetic tendencies within me.

    Feel free to disregard this, as everybody has thoughts on the big questions of life and, like dreams, they are usually more interesting to the one hosting the thoughts than to others lol.

    I thought I'd touch on karma, because Biddhism interests me, and I've thought about these questions a lot. Maybe something will reverberate with you, maybe not.

    My own syncretic thoughts on karma are that it is the big cause and effect that all our interrelated actions have on each other - which actually makes if pretty simple and sound obvious lol. But, karma means action (particulalrly volitional action). If you shoot a man, the impacts will reverberate outward and return to you, or a "future version of you" in some form. Not because you deserve it or because the universe keeps tabs, but because impacts like shooting somebody throws violence into the system, and agents in the system will see that violence and likely respons somehow and in some way. The cycle doesnt end, that's Samsara.

    In Buddhism there is an emphasis on interdependence, what's called codependent arising. Nothing happens on its own or is it's own cause. All things arise due to other events. Existence is a big interconnected web, and karma is like how that webs shakes and vibrates around because of all the happenings in it. Karma is a reminder that you can't separate yourself from this web. You're in it with the rest of us; or better said, we're in it together. Even better - we are the web.

    And earlier I mentioned "your future self" that karma acts on. My own personal interpretation of this stuff is to recall that in Biddhism there isn't actually a soul or metaphysical "self". The "self" is an emergent and ever changing phenomena - like all phenomena in that web. The self is always reforming, recreating, and changing with time, and always due to how it is connected with everything else in the web. (It is also codependently arising). Your "self" is constantly being reborn again and again even before you die. Karma acts as a chain of cause and effect that gives one an ability to trace how one self changes into the next self due to the causes and effects of other self's.

    If your self is constantly being reborn while you are alive, and was never a metaphysical "thing" separated from the web, then when new selfs are formed after you die, and one can trace how your present life creates the context for future lives, then it isn't as much of a stretch to think of those future selfs as a continuation of your present self. As long as we are open to some rethinking what our "selfs" really are.

    And my own interpretation is that you could make that argument to various degrees for all selfs. All selfs, people, entities, lives, nonlives are just particular temporary instances of this larger web, popping up here and there from time to time because of the ripples. One self shakes the web, causes a ripples, makes a new self over there. Is it the same self, or a different self? Idk? Is the rain the river where it lands, is the river the sea where it flows? Maybe our concepts of "this" thing vs "that" thing have always been a bit fuzzy.

    And usually these ripples suck for us. But that's because so many people act out of the illusion thay they aren't the web. That they are discrete things in it but not of it. So they don't care if their shaking hurts others on the other side of that web. "It isn't me, so it isn't my problem," most think. But this "Buddhist" way of thinking (and other mystical traditions have similar approaches) try to get us to reconceptualize what a "self" is to remind us that we are much less separated than we'd like. Not even on just a cause and effect, but on a deeper "what is the substance of self" kind of way.

    There is a danger to blame victims for their troubles with karma. But I like to recall that, again, we're in it together. Noone is free until we are all free. Victims of settler colonialism don't deserve it, but settler colonialism happens because of the delusions of settlers. Because of historical developments the conditioned the existence of settlers. And we all share a world, all are in the web, so justice requires a universal struggle.

    For me, I merge this with a Marxist thinking in many ways. Capitalism develops from previous historical conditions, like the self does. Capitalism will continue to evolve and change into a new mode of production, just as my self will continue to change and evolve into new ones in the future (as long as I realize the self isn't a static soul like thing).

    Samsara is this huge never ending evolution of this web, and that means that collective action is needed to solve our problems. It means the only way to a better world is solidarity and love. Realizing that we all aren't separated egos in the way Capitalism wants us to believe. Realizing that others we meet are a part of us just as we are a part of them.

    And in the schools of Biddhism I'm more familiar with, once one becomes enlightened and reaches Nirvana you realize that Nirvana was always Samsara this whole time. You were always the web

    • It seems like the struggle will never end then. At least not for thousands or millions of years.

      • Yeah.. it certainly feels like it will take a long time. There can be improvements sometimes that come quickly and feel like out of the blue, but often it does seem slow. And it seems this way for so many. There is a type of suffering that permeates this place. Fostering love for ourselves and others in the struggle, and doing what we can to build the struggle with others can help give life that sense of meaning. But this current moment makes it hard, it takes a lot of effort and this system definitely acts against those tendencies. Always easier said than done. I hope you find peace comrade. Wish I had more to offer that was helpful.

  • There is a point and purpose to life, determined by the concrete historical conditions of your life: your place in history and in class society.

    As a member of the working class and as a human, you have specific rational self-interests in the form of things you want to obtain and things you want to avoid. These interests align with the other members of your class, so that what's in the rational self-interest of the working class as a whole is the same as what's in the rational self-interest of each member of the working class. And the most effective methods of fulfilling these interests can be determined scientifically, using the rational power of the human mind. Fighting to advance your own self-interest, through advancing the collective self-interest of the class you belong to, at the place and time in history that you were born into, is a clearly defined and non-arbitrary 'purpose' to have in life.

    And as history shows, the collective action of millions of people, fighting as partizans of the working class, can bring about enormous victories - improving their living standards, tearing down unjust structures and making society more inclusive, and creating miraculous wonders never seen before in history. The only reason life is so awful for so many people is because we haven't won yet. But in some places we, the working class of the world, are winning and life is improving, so sometimes when I'm feeling hopeless I watch this video. I think my favorite part of the song, which I've never seen in other versions, is the final verse:

    Which is correct, all we have to do is win and then we can finally see the red sunrise at the dawn of human history, that is, history written through the conscious choice of all humanity.

    As to the question of why any of this is happening at all, here is what I think: at the beginning of the universe there was only energy in the form of photons of light. Through a series of dialectical interactions with the other fundamental fields of the universe, that light was transformed into physical matter, which then in turn began interacting dialectically with itself - through gravity, accumulating into stars; through atomic forces, transmuting into new chemical elements; through the dialectical evolution of the balance of those two opposing forces, causing supernovas and releasing the new elements back into the universe.

    As these elements accumulate, through random interactions new molecules are formed; as these molecules accumulate on the watery surfaces of planets across the universe, eventually, at random, some of them may form into cell membranes, enzymes, RNA, DNA; as cells accumulate, at random, some of them may mutate in a way that joins them together into a single organism; as organisms accumulate, they randomly mutate and evolve until eventually, by chance, a conscious being may come into existence; these beings may develop intelligence, form societies and create new forces of production; the operation of these forces of production may split society into classes; these classes develop, the forces of production develop, the contradictions between the class structure and the power of the forces of production develop until at some historically contingent place and time, the workers gain control and start building communism.

    At no stage is anything directed, nothing is 'pushing' matter towards more complex forms or 'pulling' it towards an end state, but the simple fact that it is possible for any of these things to happen means that, if the dice are rolled for long enough, they will happen - and once they do, they set the new ground state for all future dice rolls. The light from the dawn of the universe is pouring like a waterfall down these stepped pools, swirling and bubbling at each stage until in some random place the sloshing happens to send a little overflow into the next pool. The light swirls there again until it happens to overflow again, and again, and again... and at the bottom, or at least, at the point where the light can start consciously choosing to try and overflow to new levels of complexity, is a sapient being who is a communist.

    Unfortunately, we live in the pool just before that one, where we have to struggle in an irrational society built on an outdated, contradictory framework - but even now there are places that have reached a higher level of complexity, and the advantage those places have by being more rationally organized means that the higher complexity will spread out from there, and inspire those trapped under the old system to tear it down and break free. In the midst of this, you may just be a single individual mote being buffeted around, forced to suffer, and see others suffer, terrible crulties and injustice at the hands of monstrous beasts, but at the same time, as a class-conscious member of the working class of this world, you are an inerasable shining link in the chain leading from the beginning of the universe to a future world that is flourishing beyond all possible imagination under the light of a red star.

    The sudden realization of this, through the synthesis of an astrophysics education with dialectical materialism, into the image of this 'cascade of light', is why I chose this name, and so, even though the suffering in our time, in our lives, in your life and mine, is terrible and sometimes almost unbearable, in my heart I have a tiny little unbreakable piece of hope because ultimately communism will win, and it will win forever, until the end of the time, over and over again everywhere in all of space, because the universe is a machine for turning photons into communists.

  • According to him, all affirmative ethical theories—regardless of being deontological, utilitarian or virtue ethics—end up articulating certain fundamental ideas, which he sums up in what he calls Fundamental Ethical Articulation (or FEA). He calls these classical ethical theories “positive” because their implied starting point is that the human being has a positive structural value, something Cabrera will question. For Cabrera, the human being has a structural lack of value which he or she fights against for the entirety of his or her life by trying to create positive values. . . However, there exists a grave problem which makes practicing ethics—formulated as the FEA—nearly impossible. He names this problem the profound discomfort:

    a) At birth, human beings are endowed with a kind of decreasing being (or 'decaying' being), a being that starts to end as soon as it emerges, and whose final end can occur at any moment.

    b) From the moment they first appear, humans are affected by three kinds of friction: physical pain (in the form of diseases, accidents and catastrophes to which they are always exposed); discouragement (in the form of a 'lack of will' to continue acting, from the simple tedium vitae to severe forms of depression); and, finally, exposure to the aggressive actions of other humans (in the form of discrimination, chatter, gossip, slander, exclusion, persecution, injustice, physical and psychological torture, and even extermination), themselves also subjected to the three types of friction.

    c) Humans are equipped with mechanisms that create positive values and act as defenses from a) through b), which humans must constantly keep active against the advances of their decreasing or decaying being and its three kinds of friction, and have the ability to delay, soften, embellish and forget the frictional emergence of birth.

    Cabrera calls the characteristics a-through-b the terminality of being. This terminality of being is not just linked to our final death, which he calls punctual death (PD), but to the process as a whole, from the emergence of being until its perishing. He names the process of emergence and submission of being to the terminal structure as structural death (SD), something to which we are all submitted to and can't escape. Even if we were capable of inventing a way to live forever as humans, given the characteristics described in the triple friction and the constant creation of positive values (which always end up denying the values of others, even when we don't intend to), we would still be submitted to SD.

    According to him, “(...) the terminal structure of being, the original lack of value of human life as profound discomfort, the always reactive character of our positive values in relation to the terminal structure, and the presence of suffering in its triple structural manifestation, pain, discouragement and, especially, moral impediment (...)” (CABRERA, 2018) requires from us a different kind of normative ethic than hedonism, eudaimonism, deontological, utilitarian, etc, since all of these positive ethical theories end up disappointing the FEA at some point. Exemples: when a hedonist seeks to build positive values via pleasurable experiences, more than likely he or she ends up affecting others negatively, regardless of his or her intentions; when a eudaimonist seeks to be virtuous, he or she ends up ignoring or harming others in their terminality, whether wanting it or not; the deontologist might cause harm to other morally impeded beings—the famous Kantian categorical imperative which prohibits lying even in order to save a human life is a great example of how deontologists may end up harming others by pursuing this type of positive ethical theory.

    Therefore, positive ethics are not capable of maintaining the FEA. Sooner or latter they will fail. When striving for a “good life”, the eudaimonist ends up stepping on someone's toes. While fulfilling a moral duty, the deontologist ends up causing harm to someone. In his search for maximizing well-being or minimizing discomfort, the utilitarian ends up making choices that will also cause someone to be harmed in some way, whether or not he or she wants it. This moral impediment makes Cabrera think of a negative ethic, an ethic which makes the FEA absolute, above life itself—contrary to Nietzsche, for example, who proposed making life an absolute parameter that is above all other things, even ethics.

    https://www.metaphysicalexile.com/2020/11/pessimism-and-antinatalism-in-south.html

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