Asklemmy

people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why?

Why not? Happiness comes from what happens while we're still alive. It's ""just"" a question of finding those things.

Because life is it's own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It's only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose -- we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach -- who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

In my book, it doesn't have a purpose, everything only matters for a brief moment in your life. "This too shall pass", for better and for good.

It's the everyday drudgery, miseries and annoyances that make the good times worthwhile. Just like you never appreciate the sun more than in a place that gets very little of it.

I currently live in a country that enjoys a very high standard of living and where people really do enjoy the good life. Yet weirdly enough, a lot of the locals are depressed and keep complaining. Why? Because they don't realize what they have, because it's their everyday normal.

As for what's the point of living, if you don't want to fall into the easy fallacies of religion, I suggest you simply enjoy your life while you can. You were born with a finite number of hours on this dirtball and they're ticking away, so make sure you spend as many as you can with your loved ones having a good time. Because when the clock stops ticking, it's over.

What's the point? Nothing. Congrats.

Yet (...) people still manage to catch a glimpse of happiness. Why? Fuck if we know. Chemical shenanigans on living organisms.

Whatever you decide to make of it, which is an incredibly beautiful thing.

What do we owe to each other? For coexistence without inherent meaning in an afterlife, is the only source of moral good the social contract that we've made with each other to coexist peacefully? What are the bounds of that contract? What are the terms of our coexistence?

If something happens after we die, what’s the point of it all?

No matter if anything happens after death or not, or what happens, we can not know and we don’t seem to be able to comprehend it either way. So we can not know if what we have got is comparatively good or bad. The only thing left is to make the best of it. Because why not?

If there's no point, why not have fun?

what else can you do? we are because we am

Learn. Evolve. Improve one's mind. Understand more of the universe. Gain a greater understanding of one's place in the universe. Grow beyond what we understand and comprehend existence at this point.

I prefer not having a meaning of life.

Imagine having a real purpose. Then the question would still be "why", but you'd also have that obligation to do.

It's up to you to create your own purpose in life.

In my view, connection with others and the happiness and joy we can find in that is the reason for living.

It's what makes the world so terrifying that there are so many broken people who just want to hurt and dominate others and have no care for depth of connection. Because they are wasting their lives on accumulation of power and are painfully obviously deeply sad and broken people.

Sam Altman has his own issues, but he's dead-on when talking about someone like Elon Musk:

“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy,” Altman said. “I don’t think he’s, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.”

So find people, find connections with them, make your life about your connection with others. That's my suggestion. Love is scary, but also freeing. Will that be a struggle with the obligations we face? Sure, but not impossible, especially if you do your best to set clear boundaries and focus on your family and friends as opposed to the soul crushing job you work to be able to take care of yourself.

One of my favorite films is Dead Man. It's a "buddy movie" about the importance of friendship and the unlikely places we find it. Two men who have been rejected by their respective societies find friendship, trust, and kinship in each other. I think this may be worth a watch for you.

l duno

The point is to pass on your genes.

People in the future will wonder the thing. Kind of like a cosmic rickroll

A) There is no point.

B) The point is whatever you want, whatever you value.

C) Somebody keeps living after you, so "the point" is to pass things forward because "something" happens, to somebody else after you die. We inherit everything from our ancestors.

D) How should I know?

While happiness might need reason, life doesn't. I find that, in a way, we live in a probabilistic universe with enough attractors that allowed things to form. Among them were humans, now also building some things with/against the odds, and subsequent self-image/sense of importance.

You can still suspend thinking about the inevitability of death and inherent lack of meaning to feel or create something. It does require one to choose and get comfortable making choices that are beyond right and wrong (not in a moral sense), however.

I don't know if there is one answer for why people can still feel happy despite it all, and I suspect there will be different reasons. One reason could be that they've just accepted the futility, focusing on what makes them happy. Or maybe they've accepted that pursuing universality/objectivism when it comes to subjective things is impossible. Or maybe even that no matter which option one takes to view life, one cannot escape delusions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVbKHNNWOUg

Give it a try of you really want to know...

Why does there need to be a point to it all. We exist, and we can set our own goals and create our own purpose in life. That's what self determination is. Personally, I find happiness in doing things that I find meaningful or interesting.

Because the alternative would be having no happiness at all.

There is no purpose but to be alive, or rather, you make your own purpose.

"If nothing we do matters - then all that matters is what we do."

if one's life was just loneliness, failed relationships, and soul-draining work it might appear pointless

maybe there is lots of other things to do?