The Meaning of Life

There has been a great philosophical disservice done to man. The fall of religion marked a turning point in mainstream philosophy. Prior to the modern age of nihilism, absurdism and atheism, we had a scaffolding through which we could meaningfully engage with life. A rule book one might be able to utilize so as to not confront the devastating existentialism that proceeds something like forsaking the possibility of a creator. The disservice has not been done in forsaking the notion that god might exist, no. Rather, it is the forsaking why we felt the need to compose a creator in the first place: Meaning.

I concede that the barren truth very may well be that meaning is a construct to appease the evolutionary accident that is a sentience that begs “why?”. However, constructs exist. Perhaps not outside of the constraints of man; but they do exist. No one would deny the existence of Money, interpersonal interaction, words and their definitions; And yet, they too are constructs. The implicit message that we are being fed is this: If you are religious, heaven holds the goal. If you are not religious, the void is waiting and, likewise, you should do the same. Both messages incentivize stagnation, inactivity, comfort-seeking, nihilism, hedonism and rot. This is what we see. I look around and see the religious wait for heaven and the atheist/agnostic wait for death. Scrolling, eating, smoking, vaping, drinking, decomposing. Everyone is decomposing. We weakly engage with life and we die a nobody that has done nothing and lived a nothing life.

One might be inclined to believe that we engage weakly because it is hard to engage meaningfully. To act like things matter. Indeed, it is very hard. It’s hard to work out every day, it’s hard to work hard in school and in your profession. It’s hard to really love someone. It’s hard to have ambition. It’s hard to expand your intellect. It’s hard to have meaningful relationships. It’s hard to try and it’s hard to fail. After all, if you’re not failing, then you were never trying in the first place. Perhaps, for most of those who weakly engage do so because the alternative is difficult. But there are some. A very competent, hungry and willing some that would engage meaningfully if not for nihilism and religion. It follows that if you cannot justify effort then it is moot to exercise it. Why would a man take care of himself if heaven awaits him? Why would a man act like things matter if they don’t? For the first question, I have no answer. Only sadness and frustration. To the second, however, I will pose an alternative perspective.

It matters now. Who the fuck cares about the end? So what if you sink into the void, doomed to inanimacy in an eternal oblivion? You’re here now and things matter to you! If they didn’t, you would’ve ended it. You will exist until you don’t whether you believe it to mean something or not; and so you are presented with a choice. Live easy, fat, mean, unloving and stupid, and die a man filled with regrets and “what-if’s” reminiscing on everything you didn’t do. Or, live a difficult life where everything you do matters. You work out hard, you read hard, you love hard and you engage with life in an exhausting gratitude. You relentlessly wring every ounce of meaning out of life until you have nothing left; and you die a tired and grateful man whose life you would have chosen to live over and over and over again. You can make life worth living. Must there be a transcendent essence that dictates the meaning of life for you? Are you that meek and suggestable?

I’ll dictate it to you right now. Act like the things you do matter. Act like every moment that you exist is a moment where you EXIST!!! You are one moment closer to not existing anymore and you have chosen to spend that moment doing something that is worth doing. Do that for a life time and you have lived a life worth living. Have some goddamn gratitude for your life and start trying.