The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

The philosophy of Stoicism suggests that the universe is indifferent to what we want from it. Buddhism says that life is suffering. Existentialism and Absurdism say that we are stricken by our need for meaning in a life that is inherently meaningless. Christianity proclaims that the condition of humankind is inflicted with temptation and imperfection.

A helpful philosophy first realizes and admits the sad, troublesome, and often tragic conditions of our life, and then attempts to grapple with and overcome them so that we might live in spite of those conditions.

Pessimism counterbalances the ridiculously overly optimistic expectations of the culture we live in and helps us adapt out of the deeply detached, unrealistic perspective that we likely formed as children. It reminds us that things won’t always go our way or always be that nice, but rather, things will go wrong a lot, but despite this, we can still be ok.

Perhaps there are no ultimate answers in philosophy, perhaps there never will be, but there are no ultimate answers in music, in art, in a beautiful landscape, or in a conversation with a friend, and yet, I know of no one who does not find value, insight, love, and solace in all of these things.

Central to Taoism is the idea that everything is in a continual state of flux, ceaselessly changing and adapting. Thus, no single idea or thing is to be attached to. Nothing is to be forced in or out of place. All is to be permitted to run its natural course, subject to the one, constant, unchanging truth: everything changes.

Essential to Taoism is living according to the Tao. Put more simply, it is living in accordance with nature. Lao Tzu suggests that one can accomplish this by accepting the fluctuation of everything and giving up rigid judgments, attachments, expectations, and our efforts to control our lives. In doing so, one becomes more closely intertwined with the natural order of things, taking on a sort of fluid, intuitive, and harmonious relationship with the natural world.

In the same way that a bowl’s emptiness allows for it to be filled and made useful, for Lao Tzu, emptying or stilling the mind allows actions to unfold more effectively.

Siddhartha would engage in the extreme, radical spiritual practice known as asceticism, which involves a complete renunciation of earthly indulgences and pleasures in an attempt to loosen the attachment of the body to the physical world, and in doing so, free the self.

the general story of the Buddha arguably always remains the same at its core: it is a story of us all. It is the story of growing up, becoming curious and tempted, seeking to move out and beyond the borders of the sheltered reality maintained by our parents, society, and our underdeveloped psyche, beginning to discover life’s contaminated horrors for the first time, and the extreme lengths we often go to in order to try to understand, overcome, and escape them.

The Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that life is fundamentally suffering. No matter who or what they are, all living things are bound and connected by this intrinsic existential quality of suffering, in its broadest sense.

The Second Noble Truth argues that this suffering is a consequence of our desires and attachments.

The third truth, in a revolutionary way of thinking for its time, goes on to claim that since suffering is a product of attachment and desire, one can personally overcome and end suffering by elimi...

The fourth and final Noble Truth contains the steps Buddha believed we...

In broad summary, it essentially calls for the practice of wisdom, universal compassion, moderation, self-knowledge, and reaching enlightenment, or Nirvana, through non-attachment and the elimination of desire.

Buddha argued that our external world is in perpetual, unattainable flux, and consequently, so too are we. We are but collections of constantly changing interactions between the world and our thoughts, and thus, the idea of a fixed, independent, identifiable self is a delusion. This is essential to understand because it suggests that the self that we are trying to satisfy, escape, or eternalize never even really exists in the first place. Rather, the capital I that we describe is merely a state of emptiness constantly being filled and emptied by the succession of each moment.

In general, life is uncertain, confusing, and paradoxical. As hard as we work against this, it mostly remains so. No matter our efforts, every time we believe we have some understanding or control over life, like water in the palm of the hand, the tighter we squeeze, the more it eludes our grip.

One of mankind’s greatest longings is complete freedom. One of mankind’s greatest limitations is the inability to ever truly be free.

We generally do not see the body as a ball and chain because we associate part of who we are with it and only know of existence through it, but it takes no more than a sick stomach or migraine to realize just how heavy this corporeal weight is, how stricken and limited by it we are.

Being told when to eat, when to go to the bathroom, when to sleep, when to wake up; that is the daily routine of a prisoner, not a free human being.

In the Stoic view, we exist in a reality that does not care about our opinion of it. We cannot ask it nicely to remove the chaos, suffering, hardship, and uncertainty, nor can we will ourselves onto it with force in order to do so. However, Stoicism does not suggest that we are helpless victims of the world. Rather, Stoicism claims that there are two domains of life: the external—the things outside of our mind, which we cannot control—and the internal—our mental reactions and interpretations of the external, which we can control.

Stoicism argues that the sign of a truly successful person is someone who can be ok without the things he or she typically desires or depends on for comfort. Wealth, materialistic abundance, fame, and power have no value in a happy life if the person who possesses them has not yet learned to live properly without them.

Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius was, in his time, the most powerful person in the world. He had access to anything he ever wanted, yet he wrote, “Almost nothing material is needed for a happy life for he who has understood existence.”

In the piece of classic literature entitled Letters from a Stoic, the Roman statesman and renowned Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”

Starting from birth, we seemingly run, if not sprint, through life, racing out of every moment, unsatisfied with what life is and constantly looking to the future for what life could be if we could just obtain something more or different. Our cultures overwhelm us with the reinforcement of this idea, convincing us that our duty is to achieve, buy, own, and live perfect, unaffected lives. This delusion, however, frenzies us with an anxiety that we are then told, by culture, that we can rid ourselves of if we just achieve a few more things, make a little more money, be a little more popular, and buy a little more stuff, creating an endless feedback loop of unsatisfied hunger.

we must define our happiness not by what we own or achieve, not by how others see us, not by some bigger picture of life, but by how we think and see our self and live our own life through what we deem virtuous and relevant.

Following the Stoic way of thinking, to potentially help counter this unnecessary anxiety and bring our attention and enjoyment back to the present, we can remind ourselves that in the future, things might not be ok, but if that is the case, then they must, by comparison, be ok now. And if we are worried that things will only get worse, then, if this comes true, things are as good as they’ll ever be right now. And how foolish it would be to ruin what might be ok now out of concern for things potentially not being so later, especially if one cannot know nor do anything further to prevent it?

We are adaptable creatures, wired to adjust our worries to our circumstances, as well as our ability to remain ok in the face of them. It is of great use to consider and meditate on this idea frequently and with confidence. Even if you end up facing the worst-case scenario, you would likely still be some form of ok.

The French Renaissance philosopher and writer Michel de Montaigne wrote, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

we must live not as if we are one of the ones who will live into old age, but rather, one of the ones who might not.

Seneca believed that one should spend their time fulfilling their duties and responsibilities, enjoying any wealth and fortune that might come of them, but not work for the purpose of social status or material success beyond one’s minimal needs, because beyond almost everything else, he argued for allocating as much time as possible to leisure—more specifically, a particular type of well-focused leisure in which one finds tranquility, introspection, and stillness.

Nietzsche argued that suffering is a good thing that should be leaned into, embraced, and used as fuel toward the amassing of strength and psychological power. Life is in fact inevitable suffering, and so, it is not a matter of if, but for what?

Resenting or fighting against what has happened to you or because of you only brings additional misery into the now, exasperating the problem and creating more to resent and resist. Like pouring the gasoline of regret onto a fire of unchangeable circumstances, we only unnecessarily intensify the flames.

Generally, the term Kafkaesque refers to the bureaucratic nature of capitalistic, judicial, and government systems—the sort of complex, unclear processes in which no one individual ever really has a comprehensive grasp of what is going on, and the system doesn’t really care.

But the kicker, and perhaps most important part is that, even in the face of absurd, despairing circumstances, Kafka’s characters don’t give up. At least initially, they continue on and fight against their situations, trying to reason, understand, or work their way out of the senselessness. But in the end, it is ultimately to no avail.

Perhaps in this, Kafka is suggesting that the struggle to find solace and understanding is both inescapable and impossible. As conscious, rational beings, we fight against the absurdity, trying to resolve the discrepancy between us and the universe. But ironically, we only serve to perpetuate the very struggle we are trying to resolve by trying to resolve the unresolvable. And in this sense, on some level, we almost want the struggle.

We exist with the innate desire for reasons—reasons for what we do, who we are, why we are, and so on. And here lies the beginning of our existential problem. According to Sartre and many others, there is no predetermined meaning or reason to human life. There is no authority figure designing us or our lives. And there is no essence to our existence prior to our existence. Rather, life exists for itself.

If we are not made with a specific purpose prior to existence, we create our purpose through our existence. In other words, through the choices we make and the actions we take in life, we create who we are and what life means.

The byproduct of this, of life’s inherent meaninglessness, is an inherent freedom: the freedom to choose who we are, how we live, and what matters to us. And here we experience the next rung of our existential problem: the anxiety or anguish of choice.

To face up to the abyss, to feel the anguish of choice and potentiality, to bear the weight of self—all are but visceral, humbling, and beautiful reminders of the potency of life running through our veins.

Camus draws a connection between the tiresome and futile fate of Sisyphus and the human experience. However, Camus wrote, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” With this, Camus makes the hopeful yet reasonable assertion that even in the ordinary, repetitive, absurd, and futile experiences of our life, we can and should still find worthy experience and happiness.

we realize that the point is not to eliminate absurdity or find and defend some ultimate truth, but rather, it is to be conscious and appreciative of the things within the absurdity—to look for, find, and create things that are interesting and personally meaningful.

Furthermore, Camus suggested that in recognizing our absurdity, we can better accept and share value with the people around us because we can understand that we are all struggling victims of the absurd.

In the same way that wisdom about the world begins with knowing you know nothing, wisdom of the self begins with knowing you know, at the very least, very little about who you really are.

In infancy and early childhood, we are inadvertently conditioned by our parents, teachers, and other people we encounter to feel like we are the center of all attention, the most important thing in the world and beyond.

In his famous twentieth-century play, No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people!” This line, “Hell is other people,” is perhaps one of Sartre’s most famous quotes as well as one of his most misrepresented. He is not suggesting that other people are inherently evil or bad or unlikable, but rather, that hell is the imposed state of dependance and modification of one’s self according to the integration, approval, and satisfaction of other people’s perception.

. . man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax.

There is no telling if or what comes after death, there is no telling when it will come for you, but you can know that you are alive right now. To fully enjoy the present moment as often as you can and in as many ways as you can, to fall in love with a person, a thing, a moment, yourself, to make the most of everything despite knowing that you will lose it all to nothing, is more than enough heroism.

It is strange and rather terrifying to consider that we can be something for now and nothing forever—but perhaps it is only because of the fact that we are nothing forever that we can be something for now.

the backwards law (originating from Taoism), which argues that the more one tries to remove or escape the negative experience of life, the more negative it becomes. Rather, the more one faces it willingly and intentionally, the stronger and more equipped one becomes—the more meaningful and positive the pain and hardship can be made to feel.