Existential Anxiety

What do you guys think, or how do you deal with it? It seems to me to come from the conflict between the deep seated desire to live and the belief that life is meaningless.

What is /sci/'s 'philosophy' of life, or what motivates you to keep living?

i live because i have an arbitrary plan i would like to see enacted

Try to focus on the sheer pleasure of living, not that living has overtures of irrelevance.

I'm too lazy/cowardly to kill myself - hence I continue existing.  Oh, and ramen is tasty.

#4, that's a good question by implication.  Are suicides significantly suppressed by the sheer courage, effort or determination that it takes to kill one's self?

>>5
To some extent, yes (at least imo).  There are of course, other contributing factors, including one's sense of responsibility to world/family/etc.  The silly religinuts will either say "you will burn in hell for that" or "Allah wants you to do to cleanse the world of infidels" without stating any logical reasons.

I read a lot of theoretical science to keep myself interested in the mysteries of the universe. Without that, I'd have just whittled away in a corner long ago.

>>7
yes, I too have tried to immerse myself in science, math, and programming to try to ignore the fact that I have nothing and no-one to live for.

But it comes to a point where it just isn't enough. Why should I even care about these things, once I'm gone, it will have been for nothing. They seem to be very worthwhile, but only once you have a basic reason for existing.

Basically, I'm a failure at life, very few friends, a suffocating family that i cant get away from. The reason I want to live, i guess, is to see how things turn out, hope that things can get better, and hell, it beats not living.

>>8
Well, I'm sorry to hear about that. What keeps me interested is not the fact that I am living for anything per-say, but that it's pointless to give up on solving the biggest and most important puzzle. Okay, maybe that's a bit too esoteric. Anyway, if you can't find an empirical reason for living then just do what others have suggested and try enjoying the immediate things like waking up and knowing you haven't thrown your life away. It's probably a little redundant for me to mention this but it is good that you already think life is better when you're alive.

I find that being productive gives my life purpose, but at the end of the day, you know you are only living each day in expectation of the end, we all want to know the mystery. And yet we fear it, to jab at this fear, we try to uncover the mystery before we must face it, and end up frustrated. Never truly reaching an answer, forcing ourselves to believe things we have no reason to believe other than us convincing ourselves we should believe them.

Technology and the future are welcoming, perhaps they will find the answer, although I seriously doubt that. We must ask ourselves, would life be that much more meaningful if we knew why we existed? Would we not get bored from knowing what our entire life would ultimately end to, with no voids or questions to be asked?

That is why I find this universe to be a depressing, frustrating, and yet joyous mystery. Without it, we might not ask quite as many questions. And the fun of a hunt is the journey itself, not the destination. However, at the end of our lives, I think we're going to welcome the destination after that long, exhausting journey.

If triteness kicks people in the nads, this thread is like a falcon punch to the general direction of my groin.

I don't believe there is an objective meaning to life, and i don't think that science, religion, or anything else will ever be able to give life an objective meaning. I'm more of an existentialist, we give our lives subjective meanings. I am interested in what gives YOUR life meaning, what motivates you to keep on keeping on?

My hunt for bumsecks is what keeps me going

>>13

Telling emofags to back up their whining by killing themselves.

>>15
the difference being that i'm not whining about how life sucks, i'm asking about your motivation to live. Even someone with a sweet life, has to question what the point of it all is, since everything done in this life will have been done in vain.

Maybe that is our purpose, to live in the moment and not worry about what it all means, to experience, not contemplate.

I just bet, #16, that you aren't bothered by existential angst at the moment you cum.  That's a good basis for why we can freely stop contemplating the vainness of our works.  If you'd just take pleasure in everyday living, then the existential angst will abate.

But >>18, that's oh so trivial, psychologically, physically, and philosophically (which arguably just implies the former two)!!

Erm, I mean, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah OP, just go fap and you'll be fine...

If anyone is seriously wanting to know the purpose of life and wants an interesting guess, read this:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation04.html

>>20 interesting, but meh, its possible that since light is the supposed optimal quantum energy source, "NDE"'s could be regarded as a phenomenal photon reaction instead of religious experiences...

actually I think he was just trippin on some acid

No, #19, that's not what I said.  Just because cumming feels good, doesn't mean solely that we should cum some 'MOAR'.  Cumming implies that life is filled with little events that produce pleasure, and having identified such events, we can not only expand them and dote on them, but also look for more.  To stave off the contemplation of the existential, we immerse ourselves in the pleasures of life.

In other words, learn to want what you have.

Watch I <3 Huckabeees.
Watch The Seventh Seal. (Make sure you get the dubbed version)
Watch Season 2 Episode 16 of Angel. His final speech at the end of the episode is what you need, but context of the episode helps.

>>1

I've never had that problem.  Life isn't meaningless, the meaning comes from how you live -- the people you help, the way you make the world a better place.  That's why you're here. 

>>23 Well I know that's what you meant, but in my existential feigning I played the part of he who gains nothing from physical pleasure.
Clinically and realistically, yeah, finding small pleasures is a great thing.

>>18
hedonism ftw!

>>22
Acid is usually not associated with NDEs, but I get your idea.

>>23
truth

My philosophy on life is detached from the way I live. I know life to be useless and directionless but that doesn't change my day-to-day approach to it.
How can I know something to be meaningless and still enjoy it? Well, humans are strange creatures and we're very good at lying to ourselves.

I have no motivation at all, and there is nothing that is preventing me from killing myself. Why have I not done so? I'm not really sure. Perhaps I have a subconscious feeling that it'll change sooner or later; any such *conscious* thought has long since gone.

Existential anxiety I don't really have a problem with. Existential despair is a much more troublesome thing for me.

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

icons, symbols, meaning, form

life, pain, chemicals, fulfillment

>>30
Ahh a zen koan. Maybe it's because i'm nowhere near being enlightened, but i never really understood any of them... although this one comes close to making sense.

>>31
elaborate?

On a very related note, does anyone know where i can read the full essay by Camus "the myth of sisyphus" online?

I'm really liking the ideas put forth by Camus, the motivation to live, and the absurdity of life.

>>33
http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm

>>32
adjectives. opinions. nouns.

nouns

are

opinions

>>32
>Maybe it's because i'm nowhere near being enlightened,

Here's a fun fact: enlightenment is when you learn something.

>>1
I think it's pretty damn obvious: if life has no meaning, why consider your own opinions valid? If you're feeling anxiety, inspect that anxiety and question yourself as to its root.

If you truly feel that life has no meaning, why find meaning in more of the same old bullshit?

>>37

To fulfil a living creatures incredible innate urge to survive. It's only to be expected. Also, if you're going to exist, might as well do it the 'best' way possible by feeling 'good' or doing something.

I see no reason to not try to give yourself purpose or direction in life so I might as well even though i'm aware at the existential uselessness of me doing so.

>>28
truth

>>30
Those mice must have been tasty too.

>>31
Are you trying to create a bijection between those 2 sets?  The first row doesn't make much sense.

>>38
If you're going to contradict yourself, do it right.

Life is meaningless, so have fun. Your little piddling anxiety is as important as a moth's death.