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

by Robert Pantano

The great cosmologist Carl Sagan said, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height.”

In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense. Nothing about this life is simple or clear, and from the perspective of the stars, nothing down here on earth—including us—matters all that much to anything beyond itself.

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.

At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty, which do not exist. We should look to the universe often, not solely for answers but for perspective;

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,”

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. Paradoxically, we must recognize that through a certain quality of pessimism, we can better arrive at a more reasonably optimistic experience of life.

To give up on life entirely would be like refusing to play a game because we lose sometimes, as if the game would even be worth playing if we knew we were going to win every time we played. There is courage in facing the realities of pessimism and there is strength to be formed in its name. We must be pessimistic about life’s conditions in order to face their realities, but we must also be optimistic about our ability to face their realities and form strength, meaning, and experience through them.

In the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.

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.

Perhaps what we should and only can do is to try to enjoy the process of playing with the blocks of philosophy like children playing with toy blocks for no reason other than the curiosity and fun of it; not because in the end the blocks will provide something that stays up forever, but because we inevitably will take the blocks down, put them away for a little while, and then play with them again on another day, in a different way.

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.

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.

If darkness creates light, silence creates sound, beauty creates ugliness, good creates bad, does forcefulness not create non-forcefulness? Does man not create nature? Does consciousness not create unconsciousness? ‘Human’ is part and parcel of nature, and so, how could humans act in any other way? How could manmade material or action ever not be natural?

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 eliminating or recalibrating one’s desires and attachments. The fourth and final Noble Truth contains the steps Buddha believed were necessary to do so.

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.

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. We are stuck inside the body, captives to it, subject to its faulty and fragile mechanisms that do and will break, keeping us bound in space according to its condition—until it finally turns itself off, and us with it. And what’s more, our body controls much of what we choose to do with it—how we move it, where we move it, and why. 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.

But if so, which part of the brain, which area, which spot? Can you find it? Can you feel it? Can you locate it when you close your eyes or point to it if you took a brain scan? No. Consciousness is who we are—how we identify ourselves through experience. But consciousness is, when distilled down empirically, a strange, empty awareness, malleably undefined and inexorably connected with everything that makes and interacts with it (and doesn’t). You are not the master of your mind. You are not the servant. You are both and neither. You are your thoughts and the lineage of every bit of history that they touched to get to you. You are the words you are reading and the mind that is automatically processing them. You are the mind that will forget them in some amount of time. You are everything you’ve heard and perceived. You are everything you’ve never heard or perceived. You are everything you’ve ever hated. You are everything you’ve ever loved. You are what’s inside and what’s outside your mind and your body. And you are none of the above. If you exist, you cannot be free. If there is no you, you cannot be contained by anything.

Where is our conciousness? Is it located somewhere in our brain or are we an entity that transcends the mind and body?

Like the desire for perfect, unending happiness, the desire for complete and absolute freedom is impossible.

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.

When we persist with the belief that things outside of ourselves or things in the future will provide us with a form of ultimate happiness, we exchange the real moments of our lives for ones that do not exist.

We become dependent on things outside of ourselves that we cannot control, and we endlessly run on a ...

There is nothing wrong with working toward and achieving wealth, fame, or power, but in the Stoic’s mind, these things are merely to be enjoyed if they do work out, but not to be depended on for one’s happiness. Because, if one is dependent on them, one’s happiness and peace in life are especially susceptible to being inconsistent, taken, or never achieved at all.

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.

It is now that we must find time and it is now that we must find happiness if it is either that we are seeking, because if we do not focus the lens through which we view life right now, everything we see from this moment forward will remain out of focus.

A key principle of Stoicism is understanding that if the only thing we can completely control in life is our internal domain, and we cannot truly control anything external, then one should try to maintain an awareness that the things we are concerned about could and very likely might happen, that life will contain moments of tragedy and sharp turns, and that we should be prepared for these moments both mentally and practically in any way we can. But equally important is recognizing that many of these sorts of catastrophic moments can’t be predicted nor controlled, and thus, after a point, worrying is pointless. Once one has done everything that is rationally and realistically preventative, one should work to revert their attention back to the present, leaving all additional concern about the future for the future. Awareness and rational preparation have value in the future at low cost to the present. But worrying about what one cannot know nor control in the future has no value to either, and comes at the cost of the present.

Moreover, we tend to assume the worst. We tend to worry not only about things going wrong, but the worst cases of things going wrong. However, how often does this actually turn out to be the case? Seneca wrote, “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” Epictetus similarly wrote, “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

Even if you end up facing the worst-case scenario, you would likely still be some form of ok. The ingredients of your being that have gotten you where you are, that have given you what you’ve experienced, will still remain.

To paraphrase the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, while one still breathes, one still has hope. At least, in some form.

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

To try to resolve one’s excessive worrying requires one being worried about one’s worrying, at least to an extent. One can’t use worry against worry to eliminate it. And so, realistically, despite Stoic ideas being so obvious and perhaps simple, in practice, we might always remain trapped in some amount of unnecessary worry, as this is inextricably linked with the human condition. As a consequence, perhaps our goal should be reducing unnecessary worry, rather than removing it entirely. Perhaps by accepting that one will always feel unease and that this is a natural part of the tragic backstory of human life, paradoxically, one might worry a little less about worrying as a whole. If we shouldn’t stress over what we can’t change or control outside of ourselves, perhaps at a point, we shouldn’t stress about what we can’t control inside of ourselves either.

if we are fortunate enough to worry about something that is potentially not survivable happening to us as opposed to trying to survive something that already has, it is perhaps worth trying to be ok while we still are.

Life Is Not Short, We Just Waste Most of It The Philosophy of Seneca It’s not that we have a short time to live but that we waste most of it. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

we tend to be frugal and prudent with many aspects of our life. We tend to hoard our money and possessions and whatever else we can get our hands on, and yet, when it comes to time, we rarely guard it or evaluate carefully how well we save and spend it.

“Men are thrifty in guarding their private property, but as soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy,” wrote Seneca in his essay and letter entitled On The Shortness of Life.

For Seneca, to hope to live for oneself finally in the future is to wait until it’s too late. Rather, to make the most of time is to make the most of today.

To be busily engaged in doing nothing is not valuable productivity, and to spend one’s free time doing things that are of no real personal value is not well-used leisure.

The most valuable use of leisure, in his mind, is philosophy—time spent on intellectual reflections in which one recognizes, feels, and observes deeply the life that is being sifted through in each moment.

The study of life and time helps us, in his mind, deepen the experience of the very life and time we are studying, allowing us to fill ourselves with wisdom, wonders, and connections from life’s most potent access points.

Wasted time or well-spent time is all the same when viewed from a sufficient distance, and it is only the individual who can examine, consider, and determine the best way to balance and claim their time in each moment. And, of course, all anyone can ever do is try their best.

What makes the sad song that I listen to when I’m in my worst of moods work is that it validates my feelings and transmutes them rather than denies them.

In his novel, Breakfast of Champions, American author Kurt Vonnegut writes about an imaginary conversation between two yeast cells: They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

there is a ring of layers that comprises our self: our outward, social personas, our conscious layers, our unconscious layers, and then a core, true self at the center of it all, which when one goes through the process of uncovering and integrating every layer into consciousness, a sense of completeness, harmony, and vitality is experienced in the form of a truer self.

However, he also recognized the sheer difficulty of this for the majority of people and suggested that the average person should simply make their best efforts to let go of ideals of happiness and pleasure, and instead, focus on the minimization of pain.

And in terms of Schopenhauer’s suggestion that one should turn against the Will through an ascetic process of self-denial, if all of life operates through the Will, to turn against it would seem to merely be the Will turning against the Will for reasons that favor it. There

Reference "one thought can change You forever" in Roberts book "the hidden story of every person and other short stories". The idea of determinism is that everythung in life and tbis universe is pre written, like fate compared to free choice of will. To put if as an analogy in he reference, think of it like a video game in story mode. The story is already written. But you can choose how you play through a pre programmed set of options and rougtes and weapons and tactics (think like genetics, upbringing and environments and other factors that are predetermined in our life). The "Will" or this external force predetermines your life. Everything that happens to you in your life is predetermined, even if you choose it. Something caused you to choose it right? Ougtside factors like experiences cause your desires. I believe this helped me grapple with the idea that God gifted us free will, yet he knows how everything will play out. Like a video game, he wrote the story so there is only one outcome or way to finish. But we can choose how we play, and we can choose to enjoy the experience as we go.

In slightly broader terms, Nietzsche sets up the overman to function as a sort of idealized version of oneself—an image of a perfect and powerful being who has overcome all their fears and deficiencies, which one can and should set goals to strive toward. Of course, as an ideal, it cannot ever truly be reached, but that is functionally the point.

It is important to note here that his notion of power does not necessarily refer to physical strength nor power and dominance over others, but rather, power over oneself. Psychological and spiritual strength in the form of self-mastery and continuous growth represents the ultimate synchronization with the will to power for Nietzsche, and thus, the ultimate synchronization with life itself. The desire and striving toward the ideal of the overman serves as perpetual fuel for this process of self-growth as one works through a continuous cycle of self-dissatisfaction, self-improvement, and self-rediscovery, over and over. For Nietzsche, this process, which he would term self-overcoming, is fundamental to answering and resolving the problem of meaning and value in life. So long as one establishes one’s goals of growth in the name of what one deems to be an idealized, life-affirming version of themselves, the process transmutes the suffering of life into something worthwhile and personally redeemable—a sort of alchemy of the spirit that affirms life in the face of its inevitable suffering.

“If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how,” Nietzsche wrote.

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? “The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far,” Nietzsche wrote.

One of the most powerful minds of modern history seemingly collapsed under the weight of itself.