A point to life is an unnecessity.
Or “MU!”, your choice.
And now I have to cheat and look up the three great-grandparents I can’t name. I do know that two of them were murdered, and their killer’s sentence was commuted by “Ma” Ferguson.
Whereas I find it axiomatic. If you map time as its own dimension then every different point in space and time is unique. This is true utterly independently of what’s in the moment and time - the space-time continuum gets all the credit.
It’s exactly as fascinating as the fact that if draws a grid, none of the squares in the grid are in the same place.
That said, if it’s a choice between marveling about the bog-standard march of time and differentiation of place and experiencing existential despair, then I can see how staring at a wall and admiring its infinite differentation of physical position would seem appealing. For myself though I prefer a more enjoyable antidote to ennui: hedonism! 
I think he’s saying we’re inconsequential and forgettable, despite uniqueness. Neat!
Great. Now I’m hungry for a nice piece of fairy cake.
I’m pretty sure it actually doesn’t.
I’ve never been able to figure out how “we have molecules” is supposed to be inspiring. Even if those molecules have spent time in outer space.
(Actually our molecules still are in outer space, if you think about it, since the planet we’re standing on is. They aren’t currently in a star though. Which is probably a good thing.)
Not at all. Your problem is that you view the puzzle as an outside viewer. You impart meaning to cardboard and ink. The problem is that given the constraints of the OP, there is no puzzle. There is no viewer. Having kids or beinh on a design team for a nuclear weapon might cause some random chemical releases in your brain, but that’s it. Your failure to do those things would result in other random chemical releases. There is no puzzle or goal at the end, You don’t fit just right into the world, your actions do not change the value of the end point. If you were to be the father of popes, kings and presidents or if you were to become the architect of the next grear genocide, the universe cares not one wit. You’re a gravitational ripple around a small planet around a small sun in a small galaxy in a small corner of the Universe. In the scale of the universe, the bombing of Hiroshima is no different than how we would see a flea biting a vole in Estonia. It’s even worse because at least we could conceivably observe and care about a flea, the universe can’t even do that to us.
What is the purpose of mildew?
I have no idea why anyone would think being sentient would give them an intrinsic purpose.
I would answer this by pointing out how miserable most of us alive today would be living in AD 1000.
And considering how these improvements happened: people in the ensuing years worked to make things better.
What more purpose do you need than that?
Quite a few of us are miserable right now and you really have no idea what the feelings of 1000 AD persons were. Reading their poetry or the Exeter Book or its ilk, their emotions seemed largely like our own. Questioning fate, loving others, pride of their abilities. We certainly have more things and I’m not decrying vaccines and antibiotics, but I question the idea that my purpose is to make sure that some random naked ape 1000 years hence will have a bigger house. I have no more obligation to him than Caedmon had to me. I certainly wouldn’t posit that Caedmon’s purpose was to make sure I could stare at a screen instead of plough a field.
What interest do you have in the welfare of people 1000 years in the future?
Hmm? That you have empathy? It makes you feel good to contribute to the welfare of others?
Or, wait, that you have pride? It makes you feel good to be important to the future of others?
It makes you feel good?
It all comes down to what makes you feel good.
Hedonism, people. It’s the base of all action, and the true purpose of all. To do things that please you, make you feel good, make you feel good about yourself. That’s what it’s about.
So work on discovering vaccines and antibiotics. I would wager that if you went back in time to 1000 AD and gave them penicillin, many people’s feelings would get a lot better.
Or making better violins, or airplanes, or other cool stuff. Or protecting the weak from crime and injustice. Or teaching poor people to read and write.
If you don’t care about people besides yourself, then my suggestions probably do seem stupid and naive.
Let’s pretend that what you say is true, that my purpose is to make some guy’s life 1000 years hence better. There are two issues. The first is the existentialists objection. I have no idea what the outcomes of my actions will be. None. Right now, I am a predictive modeler. I guess about the future and inform decision makers about those guesses. Now, those guesses could be used to predict demand and allow hiring to provide a good product OR they could be used to exploit our consumers. If the latter, then have I failed in my purpose? It would have actually been better if I killed myself. Do I just best guess? The Internal Combustion Engine is a great example of the folly of this line of thinking. George Brayton was surely not intending that his action would lead to massive environmental damage that will result in the suffering and death of millions and be an existential threat to humanity. He probably said, “Hey, this will make a few lives easier.” Was his life purposeless then?
If we say, “It’s based on intention.” Then why? If Salk invented the polio vaccine because he wanted to get rich, does his life then lack meaning?
Your hedonism argument fails the visceral smell test as well. When people use this argument, they largely connote something along the lines of ‘eat, drink and be merry.’ Go on vacations, love your spouse and kids, bungee jump or what-have-you. Where it fails us that those aren’t the only things that bring happiness. The heroin addict example above is one objection, but so is the Idi Amin objection. Amin killed over 100 thousand people. He raped and tortured his way through his country. He led a horrible regime that will go down in history as one of the most brutal in existence and… he seemed pretty happy. He died of old age surrounded by loved ones. So, does that mean Amin followed his purpose and did well? The world is obviously worse for his existence, but he was happy, so why should he care about a sea of dead bodies?
The hedonism argument is actually the opposite of your “for posterity” argument. They only coincide when posterity makes you happy. When it doesn’t, then what?
Er, the ‘for posterity’ argument wasn’t mine - I was actually sort of disassembling it and using it for parts. Mayhap read a bit more slowly?
As for the fact that hedonism doesn’t always produce outcomes that are optimal for persons who aren’t the hedonist in question, your refutations are only a refutation if you presume 1) that there’s an objective requirement that happiness be maximized for all, and 2) that people aren’t idiots.
Starting with the second, it’s entirely possible for people to make terrible choices that make them unhappy in the long run. Good, proper hedonism isn’t about burning your bridges because the smell of the burning wood makes you high. It’s about doing things that maximize your happiness in the long run. It’s about going to work because you enjoy what your pay buys you. It’s about obeying the rules because a better society is better to live in. It’s about helping others because seeing them be happy makes you happy.
Which brings us to sociopaths, and the first point. The subject under discussion isn’t what’s best for society. It’s about the purpose of living - the ‘meaning of life’. And while it’s all well and good to spout ideas based on your personal philosophical beliefs, there’s not really a grounding to any of them besides “I think it would be neat if these were the rules.” There’s not actually any power out there that makes uniqueness important. There’s not actually any force out there that says it’s good if society is pleasant, or even if humanity survives. None of these ‘meaning of life’ answers have any basis in physical reality.
Except two.
- Humans have a biological imperative to reproduce, and thus they should.
- Humans have a positive reaction to positive feelings and emotions and thus they should seek such feelings and emotions.
And how does the first ‘meaning’ express itself? How does the imperative work? By making us happier when we follow the imperative.
It all comes down to hedonism. At the biological/psychological level.
Now, if you happen to have a dude who derives pleasure from making things harder from others? Pol Pot, Trump, that dude next to you who likes a smelly aftershave? That’s problematic and makes things harder for people, but it doesn’t change the fact that the assertion “Everbody should be nice and polite and make things better for people they don’t know” has no basis but personal opinion - specifically in your hedonism. It’s what makes you happy, but there’s no particular reason for anybody else to accept it as their meaning of life if they don’t care about such things. It, unlike hedonism, isn’t universal.
I’m a believer in free willed version of Eternalism. The past, the now and the future are all equally real. Your life is a tapestry. Just because it has a beginning and an end doesn’t mean it stops existing. Make it as beautiful as possible.
senoy, I’m honestly interested in your answer to the OP, and I’m not sure I’ve seen it yet.
There is no purpose, humans are funny , we evolved and got smarter and began to think so much that it actually worked against us for some, so consumed with thinking and not taking action we freeze up, don’t reproduce and don’t carry on our genes.
It’s funny to me how knowledge of the lack of any real meaning to life liberates some individuals, while enslaving others.
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Hedonism is still an ethos. The only “pure” ethos is anarchism. You don’t have an answer to the question of Why should I let people be hedonistic?
As far as the OP goes, you are already a huge winner of a genetic lottery. Enjoy it. The odds are a quadrillion to one that you were born instead of some other combination of egg and sperm. All of those other combinations lost. Are you better than them? They would give anything to be you. And then there are the cells who never get to be eggs or sperm!
I think the more interesting question is Why is there something instead of nothing? I do not have a satisfactory answer to the question. The answer is irrational with gods, God, or no god at all. Why does matter exist, why does energy exist, why does our universe have a sense of order? When there could be nothing at all, no matter, no energy, nothing? And yet, whatever we are, there is something. Our existence and everything we know is utterly irrational.
As far as your existence, well, as far as we know, time and matter are infinite. No matter how steep the odds, given infinite time and the smallest chance of success, the dimmest probability will happen infinite times. So you’ll live again - infinite times! Bummed you didn’t make it on Wheel Of Fortune? Well, given infinite time, you already have and will ad nauseum! Boring!
The fact we search for meaning means a lot. Why do we not live superficially, as dogs do? Because it’s not enough for us. We crave more. You can say, “There is no more,” but it’s intriguing to me that across time and culture, we seek meaning.
I’ll second Andros’ recommendation to read Victor Frankl. Of the many things he said that I’ve found helpful, two stand out in the context of the OP:
I can’t find the second one, which I was sure was in Man’s Search for Meaning. I’ve spent the last 20 minutes looking for it to no avail. but it was something about the depression people feel on weekends, when they don’t have their weekday busyness to distract them and they become aware of the emptiness within. The way I see it, enjoyment of the moment dies with the moment; if it were enough, nobody would lie in wakeful angst at the hour of the wolf, pondering the why of existence.
True, in the long run it is proton decay, but the OP was also worried about not having an impact. And we all have an impact even if we never become president, write a best seller or win a Nobel prize.
That is unless you don’t credit that other people have feelings and emotions which are valuable in the moment for them. Thus my reference to solipism. Giving pleasure to other people in the moment makes life worth living, and I’m not talking only about sexual pleasure. (Though that is pretty good also.)
If someone is only causing pain, I could see why they’d see that life is not worth living. But no one around here is like that, are they?
Yeah the universe doesn’t care. You could make ever star in a galaxy go nova and the universe won’t give a shit. But people care.