# IS life a curse? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040 "2016-10-29T18:40:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![HeXen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/141 "2016-11-06T23:21:13Z")
Depends on your outlook or if you think it’s possible for there to be some form of existence after death. If there is none, then seems life is a blessing, if there is then a curse assuming the afterlife has no such pain and suffering. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/142 "2016-11-06T23:25:13Z")
You can’t make meaning where none exists and never did, you can’t only fool yourself otherwise (that’s what it seems like to me). One cant override the truth that Is existence, that all is without meaning. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/143 "2016-11-06T23:42:40Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > You can’t make meaning where none exists and never did, you can’t only fool yourself otherwise (that’s what it seems like to me). One cant override the truth that Is existence, that all is without meaning. Speak for yourself. ---
**Author:** ![DrForrester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@DrForrester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrForrester)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2016, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/144 "2016-11-06T23:49:04Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > You can’t make meaning where none exists and never did, you can’t only fool yourself otherwise (that’s what it seems like to me). One cant override the truth that Is existence, that all is without meaning. I don’t know if you intended this to be funny. But, my goodness… You should get a talk show or run for president. I’ve been giggling for at least 5 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/145 "2016-11-07T00:15:06Z")
> [@DrForrester](#): > > I don’t know if you intended this to be funny. But, my goodness… You should get a talk show or run for president. I’ve been giggling for at least 5 minutes. It’s not funny, it’s true. You making meaning is like throwing something into the void and expecting it to stick. You get nothing in the end. You can’t make meaning, only fool yourself into believing you did [Making Meaning in a Meaningless World: Five Ways that Won't Work - The Scriptorium Daily](http://scriptoriumdaily.com/making-meaning-in-a-meaningless-world-five-ways-that-wont-work/) ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/146 "2016-11-07T00:25:44Z")
What do you want, someone to agree with you that life is a crisis and has no redeeming value, and then you’ll go away? All right then. You’re right. Life sucks. It’s pointless and has no redeeming value. Happy? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/147 "2016-11-07T00:48:52Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > I especially found Campus to be wanting with his solution. I suggest your grasp of this particular author may be lacking. Just a hunch. > [@](#): > > It’s funny you say that because I was going to equate making meaning with sand. No mater what you make it’s just an illusion and all goes to dust in the end. It’s not as sandbox so much as a desert. No matter what you do it’s meaningless. Here’s one thing I love about life. _You don’t get to decide for me_ whether my life is meaningless or not. Just like I don’t get to decide for you that it is. If you choose to flounder in a meaningless desert, that is your prerogative. Just don’t pretend it’s the only option when there are billions of people who see life otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/148 "2016-11-07T14:57:35Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > It’s not funny, it’s true. You making meaning is like throwing something into the void and expecting it to stick. You get nothing in the end. You can’t make meaning, only fool yourself into believing you did [Making Meaning in a Meaningless World: Five Ways that Won't Work - The Scriptorium Daily](http://scriptoriumdaily.com/making-meaning-in-a-meaningless-world-five-ways-that-wont-work/) Life literally is shouting into the void. It’s your job as a human being to find meaning in that brief period of existence between the bookends of oblivion. You’re wasting everyone’s time trying to convince people that their life is as meaningless as you find your own. Nobody cares a god damn what your opinion is on the matter, and to the extent that people have engaged with you, it’s only to point out to you that you’re wrong. Now, it may well be a meaningless exercise, to you. But if you are as convinced of that as you’d have every one believe, you’d have given up trying to find the answer a long time ago and we wouldn’t be having this same conversation, ad nauseam. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/149 "2016-11-07T15:04:51Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > What sucks is that life as we know it is the end result of three hundred years of scientific, technological, medicinal, social and cultural evolution (I do not believe agricultural society advanced much up until the industrial revolution). The industrial revolution went backwards in many ways, as did the Enlightment. It’s a pity I don’t have any reason to believe **Machinaforce** can read Spanish, because he sounds just like Segismundo in La vida es sueño, minus the verse. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/150 "2016-11-07T15:58:58Z")
> [@](#): > > “All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.” > > REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. > > “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—” > > YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. > > “So we can believe the big ones?” > > YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. > > “They’re not the same at all!” > > YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. > > “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—” > > MY POINT EXACTLY.” –Terry Pratchet, _Hogfather_ ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/151 "2016-11-07T16:04:05Z")
To the OP - read Kurt Vonnegut’s _Cat’s Cradle_. It deals with many of the themes you are wrestling with. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/152 "2016-11-07T17:34:03Z")
> [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](#): > > –Terry Pratchet, _Hogfather_ One of my favorite quotes as well. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/153 "2016-11-07T23:09:02Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I suggest your grasp of this particular author may be lacking. Just a hunch. > Here’s one thing I love about life. _You don’t get to decide for me_ whether my life is meaningless or not. Just like I don’t get to decide for you that it is. > > If you choose to flounder in a meaningless desert, that is your prerogative. Just don’t pretend it’s the only option when there are billions of people who see life otherwise. They can see what they want but that doesn’t make them right. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/154 "2016-11-07T23:11:55Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Life literally is shouting into the void. It’s your job as a human being to find meaning in that brief period of existence between the bookends of oblivion. You’re wasting everyone’s time trying to convince people that their life is as meaningless as you find your own. Nobody cares a god damn what your opinion is on the matter, and to the extent that people have engaged with you, it’s only to point out to you that you’re wrong. > > Now, it may well be a meaningless exercise, to you. But if you are as convinced of that as you’d have every one believe, you’d have given up trying to find the answer a long time ago and we wouldn’t be having this same conversation, ad nauseam. Why is it my job to do that? Who says so? And people haven’t shown me to be wrong. They just keep parroting that one has to make meaning, but I say that doesn’t actually make life meaningful. It just makes nothing in the end, or at best an illusion. No one has proven that you can make meaning or that such an act isn’t itself hollow and meaning less. It’s like lying (making meaning), how long can you keep it up? ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/155 "2016-11-07T23:27:16Z")
The OP could try ayahuasca. Compare it to this: you’re thirsty, and just subsisting on the water in your food. You’ve heard other people talk of water, actual water, that they drink . From a cup. You’ve never drunk water, and you think they are lying or exaggerating about this " drinking water" thing. Well, taking ayahuasca is like being caught by your legs, and being thrown in waist deep pure, clear water. Would you believe in the possibility to quench your thirst, then? Substitute water with existential meaning/ universal life’s love, here, I’m not good with parables. Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met Tapatalk Pro ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/156 "2016-11-07T23:47:15Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > The OP could try ayahuasca. Compare it to this: you’re thirsty, and just subsisting on the water in your food. You’ve heard other people talk of water, actual water, that they drink . From a cup. You’ve never drunk water, and you think they are lying or exaggerating about this " drinking water" thing. > > Well, taking ayahuasca is like being caught by your legs, and being thrown in waist deep pure, clear water. Would you believe in the possibility to quench your thirst, then? > > Substitute water with existential meaning/ universal life’s love, here, I’m not good with parables. > Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met Tapatalk Pro A drug experience is still rather meaningless. But because it’s so powerful they mistake the It for meaning. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/157 "2016-11-07T23:49:38Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > Why is it my job to do that? Who says so? > > And people haven’t shown me to be wrong. They just keep parroting that one has to make meaning, but I say that doesn’t actually make life meaningful. It just makes nothing in the end, or at best an illusion. No one has proven that you can make meaning or that such an act isn’t itself hollow and meaning less. It’s like lying (making meaning), how long can you keep it up? What we’re saying is “You are right, but so what? Deal with it and move on.” ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/158 "2016-11-08T00:32:23Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > They can see what they want but that doesn’t make them right. Very apt comment. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/159 "2016-11-08T00:45:38Z")
**Machinaforce** I don’t understand what you are trying to get out of this thread, several posters have agreed with you that life is indeed objectively meaningless when you break it all down. But then if you respond to these posters that agree with you about the meaningless of life, you just say but that just seems so hollow or some variation thereof. You also asked in your OP > [@](#): > > Why do we continue to struggle and stay alive? Well you’ve pretty much answered your own question if life is meaningless, it follows that everything is equally meaningless both directions. It is just as meaningless to struggle and stay alive as it is to not struggle and stay alive. I mean what are you really asking, why do people get out of bed in the morning and go to work? Well they go to work to get money so they can buy and do things. Why do people eat, which makes them continue to live in this pointless life? Well people get hungry, being hungry feels bad, those darn meaningless chemical reactions, biological processes and hormones are to blame again. Just because my hunger is meaningless doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel bad or goes away, I still eat so I can feel stay alive and feel good. Why don’t people kill themselves, I mean life is meaningless? Well by that logic, killing yourself is equally meaningless. I do things to feel good or be happy, it doesn’t matter to me if my happiness or physical pleasure is meaningless because it doesn’t make me any less happy or feel any less good, I accept that life is meaningless but I don’t feel hollow inside, it just seems like for you personally, although you acknowledge life’s meaninglessness you can’t come to grips with or cope to the fact emotionally, maybe your brain chemistry is just different than mine, I don’t know. I believe you said earlier that you feel joy, you must presumably eat food and keep yourself alive, which are meaningless feelings and actions, yet you continue to do them, something motivates you to stay alive, whether it is rational or not. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040/160 "2016-11-08T07:26:21Z")
I don’t know why I keep going at this point but I do. It’s like I want to die but I’m scared about what happens next so I don’t. Both ends are not bearable. The unknown of death and it’s finality or the void of life. Make me wonder why I hold things like morals if they are just subjective? Or justice? Why bother to help others? Why save lives? Why do all that? If there is not point or meaning to it all ultimately, then why do it? Why should we do it? Why value such awards or recognition of others when in the end they are just hollow praise based on little more than subjective values we just made up to feel some illusion of significance? Why fall in love at all? If it’s al subjective and made up why follow any of it? What makes one way more right than another? If there is no inherent meaning or justice then why bother with what’s “right”? How can we say we must improve when improvement is just a subjective term? It doesn’t make sense at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-a-curse/770040.md?page=9)