Atheism and the meaning of life - what drives you?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't think it's necessarily nihilistic - more like vague.  I can see how "experience itself" may have no meaning.  Experience is a thing, a utility, it's circumstantial, and without a referent ..meaningfully empty.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean.

For most of life there is no such thing as experience. I'm not a professional, obvs, but suicidal ideation or feelings of worthlessness and a lack of meaning tend to be interpreted as signs that a person is having a rough time.

But you agree that experience itself could be rationally considered meaningfully empty, so I don’t think it follows that I, or you, are necessarily  having a “rough time.” Perhaps it’s simply that that rationally derived conclusion about experience provides added context to how I’m informing myself with regard to the value of having any experience at all. 

Once you add referents, it's very explicitly about something, and wouldn't qualify as meaningless any longer..even if whatever meaning it has doesn't satisfy a category I'm starting to think is going to end up being True Meaning™.  

---

As for whether or not a person is having a rough time..sure, there could be people out there to whom a genuine report of complete meaningless wouldn;t be a rough time...but it doesn;t seem like here are many people like that - and the supposition on the part of therapists that a person expressing suicidal ideations and feelings of meaningless, worthlessness, or perhaps even hopelessness (what is hope without those things?) isn't going to be turned into something irrational on account of one very novel bit of psychology.

I suppose that I know that I do something; laugh with my kids, enjoy a nice glass of wine, go to the beach, spend time with my mom, etc. I’m just not sure that those things are the thing x that I doubt. Does that make sense?

-and there it is.  You recognize that you're doing the thing.  It's not that you doubt that thing or doubt that apprehension or in fact have no access to it at all, it's just that all of that meaning (and whatever else we might come up with) isn't True Meaning™...whatever that is.  

Maybe it isn't, but the position is no longer that life or experience has no meaning, but that it lacks some other thing, also called meaning.  Tell me more about that.  

I mean, if humans went extinct, we’d simply be extinct.

Not simply - alot would happen if we blipped out - things that..from the misanthropes pov..would be good...but does this make sense if there is in fact no meaning?

No one would be left to have an experience or an opinion about it one way or the other.

-and just like unexperienced or unobserved meaning or events anywhere (for any reason), a bunch of relational things with consequences to a greater whole would still be happening.  

It would just be an inconsequential fact of a universe that does not concern itself with us or anything else. Is that somehow, inherently “bad?” Why? Why is it unfortunate that the dodo went extinct? It certainly is no inconvenience to dodos now. While there may be environmental consequences for species extinction, there is nothing intrinsic about extinction that will bother the individual thing that went extinct. I honestly can’t tell if I’m terribly crazy or terribly wrong, lol.

It would be a very consequential fact for our little rock.  Universally meaningful?  The most important thing that ever happened anywhere anywhen, no...but still not lacking in meaningful content.  So, here again True Meaning™ - a shadowy category of meaning that apparently has no contents but whose emptiness can be used to dismiss catgeories of meaning that do have contents and aren't empty.

Whether or not a thing has meaning doesn't hinge on whether or not you or I care about it.  We're definitely good at not giving a shit about things that mean something..and we don't even have to be extinct to claim that attribute (though it may very well end up being why we go extinct). I doubt that you'e crazy or wrong, just that you haven't found whatever satisfies you as True Meaning. Maybe the world doesn't have any of it. I say the same thing to people who insist on god-meaning. This is an extreme example (and not necessarily representative of whatever category of meaning you mean to describe)..but consider a person who grew up dreaming of being very important. Unfortunately (we're the omnipresent narrator of this little play), he's going to be a janitor. Now, maybe he's a janitor at nasa, or some medical research facilty, and his own tiny part keeping the facility squared away moves along some immense discovery or life saving medicine. Was there meaning and satisfaction to be had here....? Sure, and maybe somebody else would have seen it - but not our new imaginary friend. He was angling for Very Important Meaning. Never got that, specifically. I'm not sure that he can rationally claim, then, that life has no meaning, on account of that. He may have even missed out on his own Very Important Meaning just one building down.

I mean, I gave examples of what drives me..but I assume that other things drive other people..and that a person can very much not be into whatever drives me. Not being into what drives me doesn't make those things less or not meaningful, just as my not being into any number of other things doesn;t have the power to strip them of whatever meaning might be found. Ditto, too, with all of the universe.

Similarly, what makes it bad for dodos to have gone extinct is going to vary depending on the interest of the people you ask. I'm sure we can come up with all sorts of reasons why we try to avoid extinctions. All of those justifications hold for human animals if they hold for the others.

I don't think that people appreciate what it means to suggest that life has no meaning, logically. It's a very strong claim..that literally everyone everywhere and at all times is wrong with regards to any potential claim of meaning. God meaning? Maybe not. True meaning? Maybe not. Universal meaning, absolute meaning, important meaning, observed meaning.....I could go on forever. I liken it to saying that we doubt the existence of ice cream because we don't believe in one flavor. IMO, it would be more accurate to just say that we don't like some flavor (or whatever flavors are available to us) or we wish that some particular flavor that isn't available to us, was. All of that is possible in a world full of meaning, too.

---

TLDR
In sum..perhaps...you have your laughs with your kids, enjoy a nice glass of wine, go to the beach, spend time with your mother - all of this is likely to strike you as meaningful and its unclear why it wouldn't qualify as such, but there's something else you want, something else you seek, some other thing that would need to be in play before you felt that life had True Meaning. Any ideas on what it is, even a hint?

For all the shit I give god botherers, they usually have something in mind. Ala.."yeah sure life is full of this and that - but if no one punishes the wicked who got away then what was it all for?". That's an ask. I'm guessing yours might have more down to earth aims, lol. In the end it may be the case that life doesn't have whatever it is - there's no one torturing the dead, for example.