/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13514388]

>Never knew or cared about what I'd be when I grew up
>Just did as I was told to have a quiet life
>Hit puberty
>Suddenly become aware of the absurdity of the position I find myself in, being alive
>Read a lot over the next 15 years
>Talk to many people and discover a lot about the world
>Always spend a lot of time on introspection
I still feel life is absurd, I feel no more knowledgeable about my position or confident about my place or purpose in the world. If you put me in front of my 12 year old self, I'd have nothing to say to him. Nothing changed.

[Anonymous No.13514405]

you are supposed to form your worldview when you are 12yo and stick to it your entire life you idiot

[Anonymous No.13514410]

>>13514388
>>13514405
>doesn't have a plan of what schools he' going to go to, what person they're going to marry and what job they'll take by the time they're 8
Never gonna make it

[Anonymous No.13514413]

>>13514388
1. what do you mean by "life is absurd"?
2. what do you mean by "purpose in life"?
3. how can you say "nothing has changed" after saying "Talk to many people and discover a lot about the world. Always spend a lot of time on introspection"

[Anonymous No.13514460]

>>13514413
>what do you mean by "life is absurd"?
Well everything else in the world just "is", it just exists and that's the end of that line. A rock is a rock, a dog is a dog, a house is a house. But humans have the ability to look at everything in a way nothing else can. We're the odd one out, the anomaly, we don't fit in and our existence in a universe where everything else just "is" is absurd. The very fact I can be walking along and think "I'm here, I'm HERE on this planet right now. I'm alive, me, whoever me is" is absurd.
>2. what do you mean by "purpose in life"?
The thing every human is in search of. Meaning in a meaningless universe.
>3. how can you say "nothing has changed" after saying "Talk to many people and discover a lot about the world. Always spend a lot of time on introspection"
Because nothing changed. My outlook on the world, what I want to do with my life, the things I do, the person I am, none of it changed. If I was put in the body of my 12 year old self, no one would know the difference.

[Anonymous No.13514487]

>>13514405
Céline unironically said something along those lines. To the extent Céline ever said anything unironically, that is.

[Anonymous No.13514494]

>>13514460
>We're the odd one out, the anomaly, we don't fit in and our existence in a universe where everything else just "is" is absurd

That's what we instictively think, but we don't have access to others' species inner experience. It's very possible animals have their own way to be puzzled and dumbfounded by the world they live in without engaging in rationalization.

[Anonymous No.13514504]

>>13514494
They'd have to have consciousness, and no animal so far has shown any behaviour to demonstrate consciousness.

[Anonymous No.13514525]

>>13514460
First I would say that every creature, every thing even, is "the odd one out". I have yet to find a thing that is not in some way weird: weird because it exists, weird because of its form, weird because of its history, weird because it is outside myself, but inside a world it and I are both part of, weird because I see it, weird because it does not see me, and if it does see me (an animal for example): weird because of the way it sees - and so on. So first of all, life is strange if you look and think about it in a certain way. At the same time, many people dont think about life in this way at all: rock is rock, but what am I?
Now I dont think we can have a really meaningful conversation about this topic (or any topic) here, because I dont know you, dont see, smell, hear, feel, touch you. So what I would say instead is, secondly, that even so life is very strange and often incomprehensible, you should not let this drag you down: it is what it is, many things I dont understand, many things that are strange and scary, but also many things that are beautiful to look at, to smell, to touch, to talk to, to think about.
Which leads me to your point about not knowing what to do with your life. You said in the OP that you spend a lot of time on introspection, but introspection is only going to get you a certain distance in changing who you are and what you do. I think it is safe to say that the time for you has come to change your approach: stop spending your time on introspection and start spending your time on actually doing some of the things you have thought about, and other things you have not thought about. Big changes come from a pragmatic standpoint, not a theoretic standpoint (this is what I have found to be true atleast for myself). So if you say: "I have thought about it so much, but nothing has changed", than stop thinking about it and actually change some small things, step by step. Do what you find interesting or worthwhile. Even if you dont feel "love" for a certain hobby and only enjoy it sometimes, this "sometimes" is better than nothing.

In general: try to be positive. If you cannot be positive: try not to think negatively - focus on the thing you are doing right now. If you have nothing to do: find something to do, no matter what. If what you do makes you miserable: can you change the aspect of the thing that makes you miserable? Change it - if you cannot: do something else.

[Anonymous No.13514569]

>>13514504
May I introduce you to dolphins? They will conquer us anytime now.

But seriouly you missed the point of my post. You don't need consciousness at all to be puzzled or feel inadequate in your world. Having a feel for when you belong and when you don't is a given for any territorial animal, and that feel accounts for a lot of human existential angst. We can rationalize and verbalize that feelings, but the feeling itself predates us.

It's a problem of perspective, we think one needs self-awareness and language and ratiocination to not fit in because that's how humans deal with not fitting in. So naturally we claim that animals are incapable of it. In the process we confuse the human response to inadequacy with the inadequacy itself.

Of course a killer whale won't ask "why is it like this", but a killer whale also has emotional centers in the brain that have no equivalent in the human brain. So it will feel things we can't even imagine. And it can leads to terrible maladjustment to the environment, that why killer whales for have been docile for years suddenly slaughter a trainer they were by all accounts fond of, for seemingly no reason.

Similar mistakes have been made with humans in the course of history. The Church literally had a formal dispute to decide whether the american natives were humans. And it is not hard to imagine a 17th century capitalist claim that African don't understand value because they don't have banks. We are always more tied to our own situation than we imagine, and that leads to improper generalizations.

Instead of asking "why are humans the only ones who do that specific human thing" (a circular question that contains its own answer), we should ask "what is the general form of that thing which in human takes the form of existential crises, and are there animals who have something modeled after that general form?".

I used the word form for convenience here, it's not necessary to use a platonic approach here.