<p>So, iyo, building a house for ~85 years for it to break into pieces in the end is not pointless either?</p>
<p>Some people are happy to eat everyday or watch TV. But to me that means flowing with the stream. We are already doing enough of that. A lot of human achievements came as a result of curiosity (aside of those which were accidental discoveries). People generally try to feel comfortable in their lives, and trying to find out what the hell is actually going on brings me more comfort than watching American Idol, eating at McD, or partying to death.</p>
Consider that you don’t need to be too sad that it ends if you’re busy being glad that it happened. We’re animals. We destroy things to sustain ourselves, and every such life form must die for its own species to survive. We’re built to die. We can desperately try to stop senescence and apoptosis, we might be able to build organs from stem cells and activate latent genes with therapy, but we’re going to die anyway. </p>
<p>You’re not going to find a purpose if you look for one.
It is not written somewhere in the universe - because that is just physics and math.
It’s up to you and your imagination to make one up, or just let it find you (ie implicitly induce it by your other decisions).</p>
<p>I thought whoever dies with the most toys wins?</p>
<p>If you believe in “From dust, to dust”, then there is no purpose. You merely help atoms achieve their state of minimum entropy a little sooner. Although the destination may be meaningless, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the journey. It also implies there is no such thing as absolute good or evil. If everything is eventually dust, what is the “evil result” of murdering someone? Nothing, because the eventual state is unchanged. What is the benefit of helping a starving child? Nothing, because the evenutal state is unchanged.</p>
<p>A real meaning/purpose to life can only be found if you believe in something beyond the universe.</p>
<p>The point of life is to learn as much as you can with the first third, build as large a fortune as you can with the second third, and spend the final third donating it to causes you consider just.</p>
<p>You said it yourself - just because we can’t change the destination doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the journey. If we help a starving child, we are letting him “enjoy his journey.” It might not matter in billions of years when everything is dust, but it matters now.</p>
<p>I’ve actually found that the notion of an afterlife makes life meaningless. (OperaDad, this isn’t aimed at you, I know that “something beyond the universe” doesn’t necessarily mean afterlife.) If we’re going to exist forever in some other dimesnion, the time we spend on earth is miniscule, by comparison. Why should our time in this life even matter, if it’s just a short stop before eternity? Some religions teach that your afterlife is determined by how you spend this life. Anyone who really believed that would give everything they owned to the poor (or whatever their religion teaches will ensure a place in heaven) and find the quickest way to die. Why spend more time on this earth than necessary, if you know you’ll go somewhere better when your life is over?</p>
<p>The only way I can see any meaning in life is to believe that it’s all we have.</p>
<p>We are one out of millions of betting planets set up by our offspring in order to provide entertainment to their still meaningless lives. They have found the elixir of youth and the key to immortality. Oh, and yeah if you haven’t already figured this out they’ve found out how to travel back in time. They bet on everything from our lives to what we’re going to eat next. It’s actually pretty cool. So if your great great great great great great great great great granddaughter knocks on your door and wants to say hello to her illustrious ancestor, don’t be surprised!</p>
<p>Causality. In theory, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can affect the direction of a hurricane. A drop of rain at the continental divide is ever so slightly pushed by a puff of wind, that then determines whether that drop of rain ends up in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>A second in your eternal life can be meaningless, or it can make all the difference in the world. What you do in this world can shape the attitude you have for living the rest of eternity.</p>
Shall I pick a character's race, role, gender and alignment for you? [ynq]
some people get pwned in sokoban some people get pwned by kops some people wear hawaiian tshirts some people are wizards some people are evil some people are lawful some people ride horses some people kill their kittens some people escape too early some people pile and pile and pile and pile and pile and some people play the flute and some people fight dragons and some people are dragons and some people eat pancakes and some people run and run and run until finally
There is an altar to JESUS (LOL) here. What do you want to sacrifice? [J or ?*]
J - the Amulet of Yendor named LOLOMG You offer the Amulet of Yendor to JESUS...
An invisible choir sings, and you are bathed in radiance...
The voice of JESUS rings out: "LOLOMG!"
"In return for thy service, I grant thee the gift of Immortality!