„We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?“ - Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
The idea of having a singular purpose in life is something that certain people are selling you. When you hear people talk about "their purpose in life" they are almost always trying to sell you to join something they deem are important. Most people purpose in life is to enjoy life and live. This can be just enjoying a day to day life doing things you enjoy. So yes you were born to be alive and enjoy it
This completely! There's no inherent purpose to life, it just - is. It's up to YOU to decide what purpose your life should have, if any. To me, simply enjoying the life you have is one of the most noble purposes a person can have. If there was a chance for a person to live a happy life, but they lived an unhappy life instead, isn't that the real waste? So as best as I can tell, the "secret to life" is simply-- do what makes you happy, and try to make other people happy along the way.
Do we need to feel privileged for being born? Can't we just be born and that's it? It feels truthfull to me not to imagine comlicated scenarios around it.
(I suppose the answer is yes, we do need to feel privileged, it probably helps us psychologically, that's what a lot of the religious stuff is about.)
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. What would it change? Or maybe we should ask, how would your actions change if life was an accident? Would you do something differently? Why?
I believe we are all one thing really. Apart of just oneness, and energy doesn't just go away, it dissipates through all things, like puddle in puddles. It's big nothing, and everything, or both or neither, whatever you want. Consciousness is a weird and uncommon state of matter in an empty sea.
You can see divinity spinning your every thought if you truly wished it. But even that doesn't really matter, depends how you feel I suppose and what meaning you attribute, if any.
That's the whole fun. I've learned to appreciate the hell out of it, that's for sure.
It may be just a meaningless accident, we really can’t prove otherwise. But if you radically accept that, you can embrace life for the things we can know about it. It feels good to go outside, to eat, to fall in love. It hurts when your dog dies, or when your friends drift apart. It may not all have a deeper meaning, but it is real. It’s you.
Life isn't exactly an "accident." Your parents had to make a deliberate choice to have sex. Now, there is some sort of probability involved in the chances of pregnancy, which sperm cell creates a new person, and that new person actually surviving all the way to birth and beyond. But ultimately I wouldn't call life an "accident" outside of some very specific scenarios involving the parents. Your parents chose to create a new person, and that new person was you.
The purpose of life? Who's to say? Ask ten people and you'll get ten different answers. Some people spend their entire lives trying to answer that for themselves, others ignore it entirely. It's a question only you can determine the answer for yourself. But my answer to the question will likely be entirely different from your answer.
Maybe I’m just being semantic, but people don’t always make a deliberate choice to have sex (particularly women), and the vast majority of the time that people have sex, they’re not necessarily choosing to create a baby. It’s just sex.
There’s a huge difference between creating a baby and choosing to have a child, and that’s an important distinction.
But ultimately I wouldn’t call life an “accident” outside of some very specific scenarios involving the parents.
We spilled chocolate milk on our clothes then decided to put them in the wash. Then I decided to do some roller skating around the house while your mom did her aerobics routine, and, well, let's just say there was a collision.
You were born for whatever reason you want. If you think you're here for spiritual or religious reasons, so you can make the world a better place, or for nothing, that's all ok. I personally believe I'm here for religious reasons but if you don't agree with that it's fine. There's no point in wasting time fighting over why we're here instead of spending what little time we have enjoying ourselves. Even if we don't have any purpose and are just going to dissapear back into the void we came from we just make it worse by sitting around doing and crying about it.
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