All of BertM's Comments + Replies

Okay. Not sure what the reason is for the negative points on my last 2 replies. I will admit my response to this article was fuelled by my own frustrations. But still I do not see where my logic fails when I say: "Life is objectively without purpose afawk. The rational thing to do is accept that."

For the past 30 years I lived a life without meaning, purpose, passion, importance, you name it. Still, I feel no need to end it, nor does that mean I cannot enjoy things. But what that does do is make me feel lonely. I see everyone around me, everywhere... (read more)

I am sorry. I must word my argument/question very badly because we are drifting away from my gripe with the article. Perhaps I'll just close with explaining how I experience life:

Life just is. Life just tries to keep alive. To keep alive, humans (and other animals) feel good/bad in certain situations.

To me, nowhere in this, there is anything important, useful or goal-centric. Since we are aware, cognitive beings, we struggle with reconciling our survival-instinct with the fact it is all pointless. So we invent things like cricket, money, importance, life p... (read more)

To me, they are the same things... human concoctions; words for things that do not exists anywhere else but in our imagination. Then again, I hope I am wrong about that.

The text states:

Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant.

It should have read:

Some of these things are important to you. Some of them are unimportant to you.

But even then it still implies that things that are important and unimportant exist for you. It is a statement of fact where no fact exists.

The best way to have phrased that would be something like:

You can mak... (read more)

I take "important" to be a human invention. Which is, like you say, not universal. Each importance is individual and at best shared by a group of people. As such I would argue it is a belief which does not relate to an 'objective' reality. I suspect that everyone needs a false belief in order to have a drive to live because reality puts us in a catch-22 (programmed to survive, but death is inevitable).

I am not saying we should demand a universal, objective importance. What I am saying is we must demand rationality and truth. There is nothing wron... (read more)

Here’s the truth. We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.

What is important though? Isn't that just subjective as well as illusionary? Purely objectively speaking (if such a thing is possible) everything is relative, even importance e.g. what is important for me, might not be for you, what is important in 1765 might not be impor... (read more)