On nihilism, belief and defining your own purpose… | binary-chaos
What’s the point in being a non-believer? Well right! That’s it. First because being a non-believer (or for those need labels like to call it, an atheist) is not a thing, it’s a lack of thing; and if you don’t define purpose given to you from an external source, where do you get it from?
And here’s a question for you… Are you sure you are a nihilist? I think if you truly were, your love and compassion for friends and family would either be false and empty, and be purely habit at this point; or, you aren’t really a nihilist, but assume you are because you haven’t figured out how to define your own purpose. Even family and kids and relationship structures are easy enough because those ideas were there to begin with and you had no need or reason to construct them for yourself.
Many converts to being a nonbeliever have a serious existential crisis of this very sort. It’s like… Oh wait! You mean i have to decide on my own what has value, what is real, what is truth, and what the fuck the point in doing it is? Well that’s a bit fucking hard! Why would i want to spend my time and energy doing that? Doesn’t that just bring pain and despondency? Doesn’t that just show me that humans really are disgusting and dirty and essentially just meat sacks on a spaceship floating in empty space? And for what?
For what!? For you to ask… For you to define… For you to create your own purpose. A big confusion comes in still thinking of things in terms of goals. That the reason to do a thing is to accomplish a thing. When there really is only one thing we ever do, no matter what it is that we do… It’s to change perspective. It really is the only thing we can do.
In my mind time itself is only opportunity cost for the change in perspective. The only thing that actually ‘happens’ is that you see differently. There is no ultimate goal. And as long as we keep focusing on there being a final purpose we will always feel empty and see it as pointless, because we never actually get there. This is why belief is so powerful. It takes away the responsibility of having to define purpose for ourselves. Having the excuse of God, Heaven, fear of hell, etc… Means you don’t have to choose, define and justify your own existence… Or even existence itself for that matter. Somebody or something else does it for you. And thinking there is a final solution to a big problem makes us think there is reason to act. But when you let go of those reasons others give you that reason is lost.
Letting go of the idea that things have to be a way, or have to have a reason, lets us ‘be’. In the process. The reason is that we can define whatever purpose we want and that is all that’s needed. But it requires us to take the weight of consciousness onto our own shoulders. And the last thing the average person on this planet wants to have to do is actually be responsible for being a conscious being. It can drive a person mad.
Originally published at https://www.binary-chaos.net.
