Why bother?

[Stoic Beverage]

What stops you from taking up a completely nihilistic view of everything around you? Why put forth effort towards anything, other than to fulfill the needs of reproduction and survival that have been programmed into your brain by evolution? Do you drift along in a meaningless existence, or are you driven by some purpose? What is it?

Okay, say you create some wonderful piece of technology that at once resolves all war, hunger, and thirst. Say you formulate a complete "theory of everything". Both are lofty goals that are striven for by the most ambitious of people, but even if they were accomplished, what does it matter? You're just helping along a species that will eventually die out, and in the grand scheme of things, even by being the most memorable and perfect person in the history of all humanity, you leave no truly lasting mark on anything.

Why give a damn about anything?

Note, I'm not saying this out of depression or frustration. Though I don't really have any goal or purpose that I can yet figure out, it doesn't get me down like I feel it should. I'm just curious how all of you cope with (what I think is) the futility of existence.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Why would a nihilistic view on everything stop you from enjoying your life?

 

[Stoic Beverage]

^
I haven't a clue. It just sort of seems like it should. I'm not so much asking if it stops you from enjoying life as much as whether it robs you of motivation.

 

[EditorOne]

Many of us don't need to embrace a philosophy to lack ambition.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

^
I haven't a clue. It just sort of seems like it should.

Nihilism is a philosophical joke unto itself. If everything and anything means nothing, therefore the ramifications of the philosophy would mean nothing. If a ramification of a philosophy means nothing, the philosophy really has no ramifications. Hence, in all reality it should not seem like it should.

The problem which you have is that you have a high value of meaning of your existence and you can't find or manifest meaning. In reality you're not a nihilist.

Edit:

Many of us don't need to embrace a philosophy to lack ambition.

You beat me to the punch line.

 

[EditorOne]

"Nihilism is a philosophical joke unto itself. If everything and anything means nothing, therefore the ramifications of the philosophy would mean nothing. If a ramification of a philosophy means nothing, the philosophy really has no ramifications. Hence, in all reality it should not seem like it should."

Hey, that made perfect sense to me, I'm getting smarter.

 

[Stoic Beverage]

"Nihilism is a philosophical joke unto itself. If everything and anything means nothing, therefore the ramifications of the philosophy would mean nothing. If a ramification of a philosophy means nothing, the philosophy really has no ramifications. Hence, in all reality it should not seem like it should."

Hey, that made perfect sense to me, I'm getting smarter.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

It's too much work to be a nihilist.

 

[Skinart]

EditorOne makes a variation on my point. I actually find the idea that nothing matters to be very liberating. It means two important things:

1. Suffering is meaningless, it will all simply fade away.

2. Life is completely what I make of it. If nothing matters cosmically, than all the more reason to find things that matter personally and attend to them.