(February 8, 2015 at 8:53 am)Nell Wrote: Hi there, so this is my first post here. I won't bore you all with the details, but I've been on the way to deconversion for some time. There's one thing I struggle to get my head around though, largely because of my religious background (Catholic) I'm sure but it is something I do think about a lot.
Life. Living. What is the point of any of it?
No I'm not posting this while slitting my wrists to a Hawthorne Heights/Linkin Park mix, and it is something that crosses my mind whenever anything good or bad happens now. You built a sandcastle? What's the point? It's going to be gone when the tide comes in. You finished reading some novel? Well wasn't that a fine waste of an hour.
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Have any of you got an answer or an idea, because I can't come up with one.
I am a bit baffled by this, as you seem to answer your own question. But rather than just stating it outright, I will ask you to think back to your Catholic days, when you thought there was some point to life. What, with that mindset, was the point of building sandcastles? People do it all the time, fully knowing that they will not last. Even Catholics.
I get the impression, though, that you never enjoyed building sandcastles yourself, or you likely would not have used it as an example. So, try again with something you enjoy. If you like fine wine, think about it as an example. What is the point in drinking a glass of good wine? After you are finished, the wine is gone. Or if you like music, what is the point in listening to a great piece of music? When the piece ends, it is no more. Of course, for me to give a proper example for you, I would need to know what you enjoy doing. Hopefully, you can provide the example for yourself.
Notice, with all of this, it is the same, regardless of whether you are a Catholic who believes that there is some purpose to life, or someone who believes that there is no purpose to life. Most of life is such that it does not matter at all if there is any ultimate point or not. Indeed, it is those who believe that there is some point or other to life who are most likely to miss out on opportunities to build sandcastles (which, of course, is now being used as a metaphor for whatever you enjoy doing). That is because they waste their time doing things that they believe will further that ultimate purpose in life, which is a total waste of time, since there isn't any point to it all.
This reminds me of how some people complain about the idea that death is the end, and that there is no afterlife. To me, that is a very strange thought. If there is an afterlife, as in traditional Christianity, you should be worried, for your entire life, that maybe you got something wrong and will end up in Hell forever. But if there is no afterlife, then there is no "mistake" that one needs to worry about committing that will cause one to be there. Not to mention what Epicurus said about this:
- Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.
My advice is to go build a sandcastle. Or if you prefer Voltaire's advice,
- "All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden."
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
