Dukasaur wrote:Well, science is an exceedingly useful tool. The one real drawback to it is that the more you understand the universe, the more you understand how pointless everything is. We really are nothing more than mindless animals. All our rationality doesn't change our path one inch from our programmed mandate to eat, drink, fight, and f*ck. Even if you're the world's greatest scientist, about to win the Nobel Prize, what does that mean? It means your Neanderthal brain is excited about being lauded and feted by your peers, because then they will give you the choicest cuts of the bison and access to the most fertile females.
Even if by some amazing feat you were to overcome your base instincts, none of it will matter. Eventually entropy claims everything. The universe expands, and eventually not even the simpler forms of matter will exists. Most people can't hope that their deeds will be remembered two weeks after their funeral, but even those who have accomplished greatness are not remembered more than a few decades by anyone except a few specialists in their field and students forced to (temporarily) note their existence in order to pass some kind of examination.
We "oooh" and "ahhh" over the "timeless" nature of the pyramids, but the 5 to 6 thousand years that they have stood is but an instant in geological time. Even at that, they are in piss-poor repair. All their treasures have been stolen, all their facing stones are gone, and even the structural stones on exposed faces are heavily worn and crumbling on the corners. And that's after a few thousand years. In a million years they'll be hillocks of sand. "Timeless" my fat ass. And in a few trillion years even "sand" will be a concept no longer capable of being framed, as fermions are too far apart to even form bosons.
Faced with the utter hopelessness that an honest assessment of reality brings, why shouldn't one retreat into a fantasy world of narcotics, religion, or computer games? If you're capable of the monumental self-deception required to believe in a personal God, you're well on your way to a happy and well-adjusted life. My God's bigger than your God! Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!
Maybe because you are asking the wrong questions? Who says those are the questions that you need to ask? Maybe our "whyyy?" is helpful for some things but it's bad for us in big quantities?
"Damn it, why can't we eat rocks for food, rocks are free"
This is not unrelated, we must accept our responsability in life. The moment we accept we are responsible for ourselves all those questions vanish, and we face life in a more meaningful and optimistic way. It's a matter of attitude in this case.
And this responsibility I'm talking about you can find about almost everywhere, from philosophy, different psyco-therapies approach, new counseling approaches, different religions, even in shady self help approachs.
I'd recommend reading about it because the way we take that concept, "responsibility" is different of what it really means. The moment you understand it it hits you.
