Why do some people think life is meaningless?

[heavens-champion 1,893]

Why do some people think life is meaningless?

[ExplosionMare 18,007]

I don’t know, maybe enough bad things happen to people that they don’t see the positives to life anymore. Maybe they think life is such a struggle that it’s hard to continue fighting their obstacles.

[The Recherche 29,965]

You may need to be more specific with your question; all things considered, I don't personally see any inherent meaning to life, and while others may empathize, they may also interpret this in an entirely different fashion. For example, while I do not believe life has a prescribed meaning, I see this as incredibly liberating, while others may find it harrowing. Worst case scenario, others may have the mindset of "life is meaningless" as a justification for suicide, due to how much has gone wrong in their lifetimes. No matter how you would like to slice it, there are always different interpretations of any given mindset or philosophy.

In summary, there is no central reason as to why other view life as meaningless, as that can mean something different for any given person.

[CheeryFox 23,811]

Maybe because of the daily grind or they can't find real meaning, etc. 

[Olly 1,008]

What is meaning? where does it come from? to me, meaning is created by us. Without us, nothing can be bestowed meaning. If your life has no meaning, you have to give it one.

 

When people say this it's because they've lost or don't have something that they feel would give their life meaning. 

Edited January 26, 2019 by Olly

[Monsoon 1,648]

I think life is meaningless because I never wanted to be here nor do I have any desire to survive 

[Rainbow Dash 1,471]

Nihilism mayhaps. Depends on what they mean by meaningless. Like...do they mean life is pointless? Or that theres no real meaning in life?

Life is meaningless? Yes and no. If you have no meaning in your life, ya. If you have something worth putting up a fight for then no. Is life pointless? Also yes and no.

[They call me Loyalty 1,941]

They may not understand yet.

[TBD 17,228]

Imho,it's because people don't have other better things to think about but they're own self-pity.

[PaulBron 173]

I guess the universe and existence is meaningless, but the life who we got here in earth have some mean, because we decide what to do in our life, sometimes the dreams we had in mind go wrong, and then we need search other thing to replace and etc... 

Edited January 26, 2019 by PaulBron

[Treeglow Flicker 13,017]

It pretty much just comes down to the individual's perspective and experiences. A person's attitude on life can change on a whim. One moment they can feel like it's all just tiring and then suddenly, something happens to change all that. Happens in the reverse too. I've had my own fair share of ups and downs, but to be honest I've never found anything to be meaningless. Not from my perspective anyway. I just haven't found life to be that lazy or dull. Always some devil in the detail somewhere. One thing leading to another that suddenly links back to a past unexplained event that makes it all clearer. For me anyway. Individual experiences may vary.

[Hardway Bet 96]

Well, speaking objectively, the only purpose of life is to propagate itself, but...

[Oleks 1,983]

I think that the very concepts of meaning, purpose, reason, etc. are human constructs that have little to do with reality, so life has no meaning "by default". But you can always choose what to live for, and the possibilities are huge. That's what makes life great, IMO.

[Xe__or 4,376]

I can't really give you a 100% true answer, but what I feel is that maybe people misundestrand what "meaning" is; what I believe is that we should give our life its own meaning, we should get to choose (with outside factors of course; let's be realistic, no one chooses 100% freely) what we want our life to be; which direction it should go, etc. Maybe people refuse to see a meaning because of how small humanity actually is to the rest of existence , making us, well, meaningless; but I don't believe that to be the right way to look at it. I mean, sure we are small, but that doesn't mean we are without meaning. Thousands of things can give life meaning: ideology , religion, morality, work, etc... 

A human doesn't always get to choose what he is, but in each weakness we find strengh. It demands effort however, and a lot of people do not have the will to keep that effort going

[Guest]

For many people, this feeling comes because they are not enjoying their life, or they feel they are failing at every step. It's a subjective feeling though, so there is no one "catch-all" explanation.

[AveryGamerDude 4,640]

Because they've lived terribly a lot of their lives.

[BastementSparkle 20,312]

Because we're all going to die at the end of it. Doesn't matter if it happens tomorrow, doesn't matter if it happens in 1000 years. I'll die, you'll die, everyone we know will die, everyone we don't know will die, everybody who came before us has died or will die, everybody who comes after us will die, and at that point you might as well have not even existed in the first place. In the grand scheme of things the human races entire existence makes no real difference.

 So life is a pointless, meaningless struggle of boredom and terror and suffering and loneliness and pain to try to keep yourself distracted or give yourself some kind of purpose until you die and then everything you worked for is gone forever anyway so you might as well have done nothing. Make sure to plaster your fake plastic smile on every day though and save your dark thoughts for when you're alone at night in the dark, because if you're ever actually honest about how you feel people will deride and insult you and you'll never have any friends because you're a weirdo who nobody likes. 

[Odyssey 5,713]

10 hours ago, TBD said:

Imho,it's because people don't have other better things to think about but they're own self-pity.

It's more complicated than that. Other reasons people might believe this is because their contributions don't have any impact to society, or that they haven't found what they want out of life but are still looking. Thinking it has to do with people and their self-pity is really bold, it doesn't always have to do with depression.

[RDDash 18,864]

When life becomes routine then it's dangerous.

[Here No Longer 5,270]

From my experiences, it's generally because of how miserable life can get and how pointless it seems.

[Flutterstep 46,287]

Because it is for some people.

[TBD 17,228]

6 hours ago, Odyssey said:

It's more complicated than that. Other reasons people might believe this is because their contributions don't have any impact to society, or that they haven't found what they want out of life but are still looking. Thinking it has to do with people and their self-pity is really bold, it doesn't always have to do with depression.

Self-pity doesn’t have to sound bad,it’s basically when a person’s taking too much time in their misfortune and pushing away what makes them happy or happiness itself, due to...(what you said) Sounds like a ganeral  depression to me.

Edited January 26, 2019 by TBD

[Midnight Solace 5,129]

Life can be meaningless for some ponies because they may not have anything to live for, or anything to enjoy in life. They may have failed at many things in the past, and so they might think they are useless and would have nothing to feel good about. They may not be likeable by others, and therefore they would not have that much support and would feel alone when going through life.

Based on my own experiences, life is painful. And with not having any purpose in life, it can be incredibly depressing for many.

[Luna's Admirer 944]

I feel like that a lot, or at least I used to.

It was mostly because one may cease to see reason to live for, or feel worthless and/or abandoned/left out by others. 

But when I see no meaning in life, I just isolate myself and spend some time with myself and see what else I still have to live for. There's a lot but whenever I see a good image of Rainbow, my worries fade away.

Beside I kinda learned to live with my thoughts and not to worry about that. 

 

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,278]

On 1/26/2019 at 11:22 AM, BasementSparkle said:

Because we're all going to die at the end of it. Doesn't matter if it happens tomorrow, doesn't matter if it happens in 1000 years. I'll die, you'll die, everyone we know will die, everyone we don't know will die, everybody who came before us has died or will die, everybody who comes after us will die, and at that point you might as well have not even existed in the first place. In the grand scheme of things the human races entire existence makes no real difference.

 So life is a pointless, meaningless struggle of boredom and terror and suffering and loneliness and pain to try to keep yourself distracted or give yourself some kind of purpose until you die and then everything you worked for is gone forever anyway so you might as well have done nothing. Make sure to plaster your fake plastic smile on every day though and save your dark thoughts for when you're alone at night in the dark, because if you're ever actually honest about how you feel people will deride and insult you and you'll never have any friends because you're a weirdo who nobody likes. 

Sadly this is the most relatable post for me in this thread. Not even the part about death, but just the futility of my actions in general. It just seems like nothing I do or say truly matters and will never matter. I try to make signatures to give my life some kind of purpose and I know those aren't much of anything. My words also seem to go nowhere eventually, people seem to forget rather easily. I am not rich or famous so I have no power, no influence, and no real purpose. Each year that goes by I become more and more depressed and afraid of the future, because I know that it is just my clock ticking down and my worth diminishing even further. I am not even sure what to do anymore.