Dealing with existential nihilism

[Brian37]

We cannot keep going faster than nature's ability to recoup what we extract. 

We can and are.  You mean not that we cannot, but that we should not, because it's likely to do great harm to our quality of life and our species' chance of survival, right?

The problem is that dicks like Trump are the guys who go out and really actively do stuff.  The philosophers, social scientists, and so on, usually keep their ideas in conferences, Ted talks, and dinnertime conversation.  So we're gonna have a Trump-like world, almost for sure.

You are saying the same thing I am. Yes we should not, but yes we are. Very highly likely that if we don't slow down, our species will end up with more conflict over resources and even a possible nuclear war. Far too much of our species is stuck on artificial constructs and short term satisfaction.

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My opinion of our species is that your hope will only work out if punctuated evolution is possible-- that a single mutation or rapid evolutionary stage can introduce essentially a new species.  I don't know whether this theory holds any scientific weight, but it seems to me that in extreme circumstances-- for example, with ice caps melting and snow being scarce, it seems likely that the color of polar bears could change to brown in just a couple hundred years due to massive pressure from the environment and really harsh selection rules (with also very high compensation for those with early variation that benefits them).


Perhaps a more likely source of punctuated evolution could be an artificially forced culling of stupid and violent through disease or direct genetic modification.

Right now, the problem is that those who COULD save the world are responsible-- they are less power hungry, reproduce less, and so on.  We've clearly, with the election of a fucking orangutan to maybe the most powerful position in the world, and I suspect it's because Americans on average are genetically unable to think and make rational decisions.

Human beings survive. Nukes, planet-smashing asteroids, a bad slip on ice can end it for any and all of us. So let's give up, cower in fear and await our doom, eh? Or better yet, why not snuff it out and get it over with, eh? 

If I don't get to take this ride again I want to experience every bit of it. I used to be more Sartre. Now I'm more Camus. The struggle is the end in itself. And there's some fun along the way, too. 

Evolution by natural selection punctuates nothing. Only the fittest survive. My guess is that it's more likely that brown bears will expand their territory and eventually re-evolve into something like a polar bear than it is for the polar bear to adapt to its changing environment. Evolution does not care who was there first.

"I want to experience every bit of it"........ Yea, but lots of people have that view, and that is fine, we are all individuals. The theist still claims this even with the after life claim. 

When I was younger there was a time when  I wanted to chase things. But what I was doing was chasing other people's ideas and scripts. Now that I am older and wiser don't buy that. What fills the individual is still an individual thing. What fills me is intellectual not places not things. 

I have in my 50 years been lucky enough to be exposed to lots of the world, mostly not from travel, but from contact with people migrating here due to living  a suburb close to diverse DC. Also from having my mom exposing me to magazines like National Geographic World, but also having all sorts of diverse art from Spain and Europe. We had at one point when I was a kid for a few weeks a Japanese college student stay at our house. Not to mention all the travel to Europe and all over the United States. And a lifetime of having diverse co workers too.

I have not been to Hawaii, always wanted to go. But if I never do, that is ok too, because climate and boarders and pretty things, still don't change change we are the same species. 

Don't get me wrong, yes it is your life so sure, do what you want while you are alive. But to me, things don't fill me, interactions with others do. My mom is the biggest example. I'd take time with her over anything else in the world. I am at the point in my life, that what is important to me, especially now that she is not around, is keeping myself intellectually busy. I love being at home, I love keeping up with global news, I love talking to my friends on line and posting on line and debating on line and writing my poetry.

"experience" and "just do it" and "work hard play hard" to me are loaded cliches marketers use to get you to consume. I think it is perfectly ok to experience things by slowing down and taking your time and engaging your brain. Not all of life has to be about sweat and running your body into the ground. I don't mind those who like spending long hours being physical, be it work or play, but I only wish those who think that would stop projecting their own desires on others who don't want to. I am not accusing you of that, this post is more a commentary to anyone reading this.

Be yourself, that is the only way to experience life. We only get one life.