So is it hedonism then? The “experience” of being alive cannot have real purpose if none exists. You cannot “inject” purpose through distraction of fleeting pleasures if no actual purpose is there to begin with. This is inescapable.
You are wedded to the idea that purpose must come from beyond our experience. We make our own purpose while we live. Some people are very quick to dismiss hedonism as mere mindless pursuit of bodily ease and pleasure, without realising that it is the one ethical system in which the criteria for discerning good and evil are clear and self-evident. And what do you define as ‘real’ purpose? A purpose defined for you from beyond your existence?
Sorrow, guilt, or gratitude DO require, ostensibly, some actual end to them. You call it a glass-half-full outlook, but it’s really a glass-all-empty one, just with an “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” attitude of distraction thrown in for good measure.
So you choose to see it - and so you must, if you are tied to the belief that purpose comes from beyond our own existence. I am perfectly capable of feeling grateful
for the fact that I am alive, without directing my gratitude
to any person. Life is a reason for for gratitude. If you think otherwise, you’re doing it wrong!
This life is NOT important at all if there is no objective meaning to it.
Whence ‘objective’ meaning? Are you trying to say that our existence must be representative of something else in order to have value? That we are puppets in need of a puppet master and a script?
Nothing you do matters, lasts, or affects anything, because all soon ends with the Sun’s eating of our planet, and then the eventual Big Rip of the universe anyway.
It’s interesting how you conflate billions of years of time into ‘soon’. But then, if you think in terms of eternity, I guess anything short of that is ‘soon’. Of course everything I do has an effect - that’s what it means to be part of a world governed by cause and effect. There might not be anyone keeping a cosmic tally of the effects of my actions, but I can assure you there are many other beings directly affected, for better or worse, by what I do with my life in time. It seems to me that this is enough to be going on with, without worrying about ultimate fates and eternal existence.
It all comes out in the wash, so how could any of it be “important”? And there is no reason to make life better for other pieces of electrified meat; they disappear soon too, after all.
Once again, ‘soon’ is relative to your perspective. Value is found by living in the moment, not by imagining that it’s already over.
Whence comes “value” in this outlook? The electrified meat thinks it’s valuable…a quaint and sentimental notion that has NO place in the atheist materialist worldview.
Life is absurd, and there was no reason any of us had to exist. But that is part of what makes life such a joyous experience, a gift, if we choose to treat it thus. Value is a subjective notion that we apply to things we desire. Thanks for telling me what I’m supposed to believe, by the way. But the fact is that value exists wherever there is someone to do the valuing. What you’re essentially saying here is that we, as human beings, only have value if we have some element to our selves that is at present unidentifiable to any of our senses. That value, meaning and purpose are not ours to seize and create, but are the province of things external to us and our experience. Why must meaning come from beyond us? That is something you have repeatedly asserted, but not explained.
I’ll say it again, Nietzche at least had guts; he took atheism where it inevitably leads.
Atheism does not inevitably lead to nihilism, but to a re-evaluation of everything we are. It’s a different perspective on the world, not a diminished version of the theistic perspective. If you remove the notion of God and eternal life but still cling to the idea that meaning comes from beyond our lives, of course despair is the logical conclusion. It takes no guts to let go and give up. But real courage is required to move forward without a divine being holding your hand - to redefine your notions of self and life and embrace the deep wonder and rich absurdity of your existence.
If this life is all we get, then everything is really a sad trick, and there’s no reason to assign “value” to my own life, and CERTAINLY not to anyone else’s.
On the contrary, if this life is all we get, that is a reason to make what we can of it while we live. I value my companions on the journey - why would I do otherwise?
Total self-absorbed hedonism or suicide; these seem the ultimate rational responses to this conclusion, as all is really meaningless.
Life needs no other meaning than itself. It should not be burdened with the expectation of being representative of a divine plan or a great cosmic order. It simply is.
And, again, I say that the understanding that our actions in this life have eternal consequences and impact on a creation and other creations that were made for an ultimate, real end and purpose, gives true meaning and weight to our actions. It does NOT diminish our experience in any way.
But you
do diminish our experience, by your very words - you consider us worthless if we stand alone, incapable of defining our own value. You believe we are just the actors in someone else’s play.
Carpe diem, carpe morte, it’s all really the same in the end, now isn’t it?
Life is change, and death is just one more change. There would be no life without death.
