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Life Means Nothing and is Going Nowhere. Somebody prove me wrong. Please.

if everything was going nowhere...you would not have a left/right sens neither a North/South East/West?... what about the fibonacci sequence and the golden number?
 
Eventually everyone comes to the realization that life has no meaning. This is usually around the time the glorious glow of childhood happiness wears off, and you become aware you actually have to become something, the slowest of them may even choose to end their life. Yes, some people use religion to deal with this trauma, but when you conceive the true "miracle" of life, you soon realize meaning in itself is indeed naive and childish. Perhaps read some books on existentialism? I find personal drive in the notion of death, however this is a very personal enlightenment that only you can find.
 
A bit late, I know, but I consider the following to be required reading for anyone thinking along the OP's lines:

On the Suffering of the World

If I were obliged to cough up a coherent, empirically grounded 'meaning' or summum bonum of the universe, Earth, natural selection, life itself, etc., I would be forced to concede that the words "agony" and "putrefaction" more effectively communicate my sentiments on the matter than any others. Insofar as the notion of 'The Meaning of Life' itself has meaning, I've discovered that I feel no urgent need to affirm nor deny any grand transcendental metaphysic in order to find myself rest assured in this wretched life. No one had ever promised me success nor happiness in this world, but (in fear of sounding like yet another weary echo of the French existentialists), when armed with the knowledge of my life's essential metaphysical worthlessness, I know also that my life, complete with all its blunders, misfortunes, and glaring imperfections is more-or-less mine to own and mine to create.

But these quaint (or reprehensible, depending upon your individual dispensations) sensibilities confer little value to those in truly dire straits. I'm guessing that the OP came here looking for more than sophistry, poetic waxing, and fortune cookie wisdom. Unfortunately, I have little else to offer than shared personal experience and my reflections thereupon. If what you truly require is an over-arching raison d'etre, I sincerely believe that you're barking up the wrong tree here. Humanity's most well-heeled nervous apparati, from Anaxagoras to Augustine, have had literally millennia to cook up something verifiable, something genuine, something truly convincing, something with universal appeal with regard to the value of continued existence. As far as I'm aware, not one scrap of intrinsic redeeming value has ever been propounded that was not in some way subject to critical scrutiny, reasonable doubt, logical invalidation, or outright falsification. That said, I think that the hedonists and existentialists in this thread are on the right track. Though I know it's a tired maxim, try your absolute best to enjoy what little you can in this blessedly short life in which banality and suffering are the rules and not the exceptions; and perhaps consider making it better for those few others upon whom your own happiness may depend (that is, if you feel like it). And if that doesn't pan out, there's always suicide, I guess.
 
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OP, How could somebody else prove this to you? What kind of deed or word would demonstrate unquestionably to you the direction your life was meant to take?

I think it's all in how you choose to interpret the events that happen to you. In my experience, if you choose sincerely to look for signs in your world of where the you should be headed, you'll see them.

As others have already said, less drugs is a good start.
 
MDAO now knows as well as I (perhaps three times better, actually) that when you hold your sleeping child in your arms, in that moment, it clearly seems there is real meaning and purpose to being here, and we are most definitely going somewhere, as a species.
 
Life is pointless until you make a point of it. Really, I think it's up to each person as there is no set value for the meaning of life. I don't know God though, so I might be wrong.

But what I can say for sure is... the deeper you dig for an explanation of life, the more miserable life gets. Don't we have a saying that ignorance is bliss, mmyeah? So we are all better off just rolling stones in the backyard and leave that science/philosophy crap out.
 
MDAO now knows as well as I (perhaps three times better, actually) that when you hold your sleeping child in your arms, in that moment, it clearly seems there is real meaning and purpose to being here, and we are most definitely going somewhere, as a species.
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Not to be a sourpuss, but I have personally spoken with and read about a distressingly large number of people who privately admit that the foremost emotions that they have felt upon moments such as these were fear, self-doubt, and resentment. Though it may not be the norm, having a kid can fuck you up big time.

I acutely remember a conversation I had with a former coworker who was (at the time) incredibly sleep-deprived following the birth of his first child, an event for which he had received a grand total of three and a half days off. There were severe complications with the birth. Our shift, on average, lasted 9.5 hours. It consisted of heavy, virtually unceasing manual labor. His commute lasted over an hour - both ways. The hospital was at an even greater distance than that. Financially, he was barely making ends meet as it was, making this new challenge (for that is the best word to describe it) all the more daunting for him. Needless to say, I'm of the emphatic opinion that rather than feeling a sense of dizzying, rapturous euphoria at the prospect of a newly-created human life, this man - who I considered to be an ordinary, almost perfectly average guy in terms of temperament - was simply scared shitless. Scared of the responsibility, scared for the health of his wife, and positively horrified by all that could go, or had already gone, wrong. Some omen. Anyway, that is, in essence and in my words, what he told me.
 
it's real hard, scary work. no doubt. nothing sour about that, though. life is those things as well as magical and amazing and utterly awesome. a child just bring all these to the forefront of one's mind. the kid's complete dependence on you is both frightening and exhilerating.
 
the kid's complete dependence on you is both frightening and exhilerating.
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True enough, I guess; though I wouldn't know, myself - and hopefully never will. The prospect of that particular brand of blood on my hands is literally too much for me to imagine. The mere thought of having a hand in perpetuating this god-awful pigfuck of a farce called Human History is enough in itself to give me pause, let alone the keen awareness of the morally questionable gamble that I would playing with a human life that did not and could not offer its consent to be here in the first place...

But that's just me, of course.

As for my colleague, I doubt highly that words like "magical" or "awesome" were at the forefront of his verbal repertoire at the time that I spoke with him. And while I do sincerely hope that his situation has since changed for the better, I can't help but wonder how many similar people are currently suppressing their sense of painful anticlimax in the wake of what humanity has collectively deemed a veritable apotheosis of purest positivity and achievement, while wondering what exactly they did wrong. I guess that I'm just not as certain as you (and, apparently, the rest of the world) are w.r.t. the whole 'having a child = universally accepted religious experience' thing. Frankly, the way that this image is so casually bandied about in our culture has come to sicken me. How many more children need to be born deformed, life-threateningly ill, brain-damaged, or otherwise hideously mutilated; how many more women need to die in childbirth or suffer the agony of postpartum psychosis and depression; and how many already-extant people need suffer life's intrinsic hardships before someone has the courage to say, out loud, "For many, many people on this planet, having a child is not a beautiful, wonderful, nor a miraculous thing. It is simply yet another rotation of the burning wheel of Samsara, forever turning by our own device?"

But, then again, I don't have kids, so I "just don't understand." For me, the saddest part of it all is that I've begun to truly doubt that there's anything to understand in the first place. I don't mean to argue about such a personal matter, but for whatever reason, this is an issue that's hard for me to stomach. Conversely, I don't purport to pass judgement. I'm aware that everyone has their reasons for, and achieves variable degrees of success in, such ventures. Anyway, I've managed to get way off topic here, sorry.
 
of course if you choose to become a parent you need to be ready for it. it certainly isn't for everyone, and agree that many people simply should take the step unprepared as many do. i'm the first to espouse the precaution that everything parents say about the hardships are not only true, but unimaginably true. i can't count how many times i took on board the advice "say goodbye to your sleep" and still i was ill-prepared for it.

i also wrestled with the philosophical dilemma relating to the ethics of bringing life into this world. however it takes a strongly cynical outlook to not be able to see any value in our species. of all the shit we do, i definitely see just as much light as darkness. the best positive impact that i can do is control how i affect others, and this is most apparent in my influence over the development of my child. nothing in my whole like has come close to the excitement i feel when i think of my son's potential. i think that even if the world is a shit hole, you can either choose to do something about it, or not.

my wife and i, therefore, took precautions from before conception (healthy lifestyles, preconception vitamins (both of us completed full cycles before attempting)) abstaining from intoxicants, etc). whether our preparation and care is part of or a consequence of our attitudes of utter joy in this whole endeavour is something i am not certain of. i guess there must be a chance that one can have as much joy from an accidental drunken knockup, however unlikely. it's all about attitude, really. don't blame the kid if the adults make an unwise choice.
 
wow, i haven't checked this since i posted it like two months ago...
i'm gonna have to make time to read all this, especially since i'm still where i was when i wrote this.
 
If you want a rational hypothesis which could be an answer to this thread : Just check out my last post in the thread "Have you opened up your third eye through meditation/entheogens ?" , for the lazy ones i'm going to copy/paste here the beautiful article that is the key of the post i'm talking about :

http://www.jorgen-magner.com/string-theory.html

Now stop making quick assumptions folks ^^
 
however it takes a strongly cynical outlook to not be able to see any value in our species. of all the shit we do, i definitely see just as much light as darkness.
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I have a hard time subscribing to this view. Even without a certain handful of 'life experiences' to which I find myself involuntarily referring when I hear/read things like this, statistics alone would be enough to convince me otherwise. But, really, I'm sure this topic's been exhausted in like, >9000 other threads on P&S. I believe that the case for so-called 'philosophical pessimism' and the antinatalism that often results therefrom is continually understated as part of ongoing attempt by philosophers, artists, et al. to suppress the uncomfortable notion that their lives and choices could end up being worse than meaningless. Casually stroll through a sizable retail bookseller (say, Barnes and Noble or Borders) and you may see one or two books treating pessimism as a subject, and usually with a shallow, unphilosophical, almost tongue-in-cheek wink-wink kind of attitude at that. The lion's share of 'life philosophy' type books currently on the market offer some measure of redemption or hope for their readership because it is well known that this is what sells volumes. Pessimism may be more of an adaptive, healthy response to this world than optimism, irrespective of the emotional consequences. But then again, I suppose that most of the people who would ever have passionately endorsed ideas such as these are dead by their own hand, so we run into something of a Nietzschean morass here, don't we? "The strong will dance atop the bones of the weary..."
 
well, we're here in any case. it's up to each of us to choose how we manage. i'm happy to walk in a void as long as i'm not looking at/into it. :)
 
Why give a fuck?
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Well, as I think MDAO et al have made abundantly clear, life for many people is simply not worth living on its own terms. If you found yourself in an unendurably painful set of life circumstances with no way out, you would probably begin to wonder why exactly you shouldn't commit suicide. I hate to break it to you, Noodle, but for some people, not every cloud is accompanied by a silver lining, nor does every dark tunnel lead invariably to the light. There exists a common delusion perfectly exemplified by the lyrics of Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops" that every misfortune (and the suffering that they engender) will invariably pass with time. Sadly, such is not the case for everyone.

well, we're here in any case. it's up to each of us to choose how we manage.
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True that. However, there do exist in this world many unfortunate people who choose to 'manage' by way of such unsavory means as suicide or hate crimes. I wish it were as simple as shrugging and saying, "Live the way you prefer, teach by example, etc.," but these maxims are only useful inasmuch as they appeal to those who already share basically similar ethical sentiments with the person who is offering this advice.
 
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