Helping people is an apt example. Let us say that we believed helping people is the highest good we can do. To that end, everyone in the world decided to maximize as much time helping other people as possible. Life itself would be absurd for the individual. Helping people for simply the sake of helping people, in itself makes no sense as it NEGATES the very reason for helping people. The very reason for helping people is not so they can then help other people at all times, and those people help other people at all times, etc. but rather so that the people being helped can then enjoy their individual pursuits and goals (whatever that may be). Simply helping people is not the full story of the ethical value of helping people, rather it is helping people, so that they can pursue other stuff, otherwise it is an absurdity of simply helping, so others help, so others help, etc.
However, circling back to the completion idea, the other goals and desires and pursuits (other than helping people.. the individual ends and goals people have of all varieties) are also absurd. — schopenhauer1
What do you think it means to ‘survive better’? — Possibility
To live is not only to survive, yet it seems that you equate the two, as if there were nothing else to the act of living except not dying. — Possibility
The human organism was never designed to survive on its own. It has instead evolved to make maximum utility of awareness/interaction/relationship with everything in the universe - including itself, its history and its future - as a fundamental requirement of its survival, let alone its ability to achieve anything beyond that. — Possibility
What evidence is there that this feeling serves any other purpose? — leo
Yes you understand. The drive to help people seems just like another survival tool we are equipped with, it doesn't necessarily help directly the one helping survive but it does benefit those who are being helped, who can then engage in activities that would help themselves or the tribe survive. If we had zero drive to help others, we wouldn't be helped and we wouldn't survive as well.
In the end everything seems about survival. Only to die in the end anyway, and that's the absurdity. — leo
Well, yes and no. My main point there is that helping people is not the end in itself. Helping people so they can then pursue other goals outside of helping other people would make more sense. However, I broadened the idea a little and said even the other goals outside of helping other people are absurd as well. All human activities are absurd. It's built into our existence. The whole point of surviving, comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking that is. — schopenhauer1
What kind of evidence are you looking for? — Possibility
Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there is a point in spending great efforts in understanding the world other than it being an instance of us being survival machines that attempt to understand so we can predict better and increase our chances of survival, evidence that there is a point in exploring the universe other than it being another instance of us being survival machines attempting to spread as much as we can like an invasive species, evidence that helping others feels good not just because evolution selected it as a trait that made our species survive, evidence that love isn't just another meaningless drive whose only purpose is to make us reproduce and preserve one another, evidence that there is more to existence than just it being one big survival game until we die, that we aren't just puppets controlled by our feelings whose only purpose is to keep us alive until we die. — leo
If it's true, then what does it mean that we are bothered by it? Wouldn't our desire for something beyond all of that ultimately be some masked version of the same 'will-to-survive' that it finds so offensive as a foundation? — old
Maybe a better word than absurd would be arbitrary. Your model of human motivation, relying on adaptive mechanisms underlying social intentions, presupposes an arbitrary origin of motives like empathy. Heidegger's approach ditches what I call the 'adaptive cobbling' account for a thinking of endless transformation of meaning. Rather than absurd or arbitrary, life is uncanny, anxious. — Joshs
Yes, but what makes the other goals absurd? Behind every goal there is a feeling, a desire at the source that gives rise to the goal in the first place, the desire gives the meaning to the act. Helping people or looking for more comfort in itself is not absurd, it is only when these activities are put in relation with the fact that all they serve is to increase our chances of survival, and with the fact that the end result of all of this is to not survive anyway, that the whole of existence becomes absurd, as it is all one big effort to guarantee our survival and yet die in the end anyway. — leo
Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there is a point in spending great efforts in understanding the world other than it being an instance of us being survival machines that attempt to understand so we can predict better and increase our chances of survival, evidence that there is a point in exploring the universe other than it being another instance of us being survival machines attempting to spread as much as we can like an invasive species, evidence that helping others feels good not just because evolution selected it as a trait that made our species survive, evidence that love isn't just another meaningless drive whose only purpose is to make us reproduce and preserve one another, evidence that there is more to existence than just it being one big survival game until we die, that we aren't just puppets controlled by our feelings whose only purpose is to keep us alive until we die. — leo
I think one of the traits we have in our survival toolset is not wanting to pursue pointless endeavors, yet once we find life as a whole to be ultimately pointless we enter a deep conflict between our will to survive and our will not to pursue life, and that's what bothers us and that we see as absurd. — leo
I want to believe there is something more after death, but I can't get myself to believe it without seeing any sign here in my life. And me reacting that way is probably yet another trait in my survival toolset, not to believe in something without seeing evidence first. — leo
Life is very much different depending on what we believe. I think I could ponder these questions forever and still be as lost in the end. I am really lost, and afraid about a lot of things. I want to live, but I live in fear. When we feel good we don't look for meaning, we've already found it. It is when we stop feeling that absurdity appears and meaning is nowhere to be found. — leo
I don't know what it is we are looking for beyond all that, maybe it is just another survival tool, that keeps us living and wondering and reproducing, — leo
Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there is a point in spending great efforts in understanding the world other than it being an instance of us being survival machines that attempt to understand so we can predict better and increase our chances of survival, evidence that there is a point in exploring the universe other than it being another instance of us being survival machines attempting to spread as much as we can like an invasive species, evidence that helping others feels good not just because evolution selected it as a trait that made our species survive, evidence that love isn't just another meaningless drive whose only purpose is to make us reproduce and preserve one another, evidence that there is more to existence than just it being one big survival game until we die, that we aren't just puppets controlled by our feelings whose only purpose is to keep us alive until we die. — leo
A few times in my life I have felt connected with something beyond. Once the feeling passes it remains as a distant memory, it seems like it was a delusion, but on the moment it is as real as anything else we deem to be real, yet it cannot be communicated in a way others can comprehend since it is so different from what we are used to experience. Some will interpret it as a psychotic episode, others as a true connection to the beyond. But we can never really be sure. Maybe the only way to access it is to somehow let go of our fears and certainties. Or maybe it is yet another survival tool that shows up to save us as a last resort. I want to know for sure, but maybe that's what prevents me from feeling it again. — leo
Life is very much different depending on what we believe. I think I could ponder these questions forever and still be as lost in the end. I am really lost, and afraid about a lot of things. I want to live, but I live in fear. When we feel good we don't look for meaning, we've already found it. It is when we stop feeling that absurdity appears and meaning is nowhere to be found. — leo
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