We're all going to be dead in 100 years.

I understand. And I completely agree with you that we are insignificant.

However, knowing that, what should our plan of action be? Should we become depressed and kill ourselves? Should we do whatever the hell we want?

We're here to basically procreate and carry on the human race, but as the the world (and especially this country) is ridiculously overpopulated already, everyone on this thread could never have kids and it still wouldn't matter because the human race is not going to die out any time soon. Even if it was close to dying out, we have artificial means to allow it to continue.

Your plan of action should be to live life to the full for yourself and for the people around you. I'm not really sure what the point of your second paragraph is.

I'm not sure what the point of your thread is.

But seriously, the point of the second paragraph is saying why we exist. So if you want a reason, there is it.

You don't understand the point I'm trying to make. Yes, your actions are significant to your own life and the lives of people you directly interact with, and yes, certain people, such as Obama, have a greater impact on society than we do. Consider it above the level of society and Earth though and everything's insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, I don't matter, you don't matter, Obama doesn't matter, the human race doesn't matter, the Earth doesn't matter. The Earth could be destroyed tomorrow and it's impact on the universe would be incomprehensibly tiny.

If nothing matters, why not end it? If you actually think that you might want to talk to someone.

Just because you don't matter in the grand scheme of things of the universe doesn't mean things shouldn't matter to you, nor that you don't matter to anyone else.

With that kind of attitude we might as well forget sustainability, etc. and live to the max, because it doesn't matter after all, right? Screw pollution, what do I care if it destroys our planet. Screw being nice to strangers, I won't see them again, what does it matter?

Yeah but to us, Earth and what happens on it it very significant. That doesn't mean it needs to be to a little man sat on Mars or that it needs to be to someone in a neighbouring galaxy, but to us it is significant and therefore it matters.

You're effectively saying we may as well not do anything as we could all die tomorrow. Well yes, we could, but if we always assume that and that we never need to bother with exams, or helping someone else, or voting, or trying to find that cure for cancer- however unlikely- then nothing would ever get done and we would all die anyway!


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It is exactly believing in what the OP said what makes us not develop into a better world.
Listen, the world is massive, the universe is even bigger. But YOU are the center of your own universe. There are billions of centers to this universe, each of us being one of those. It is ridiculous to think that just because we are smaller in size than other galaxies makes us insignificant. What should we do then? Go throw ourselves off a cliff? 'Big' and 'small' things are relative to what you consider 'small' and 'big'. To me, someone 'big', massive, as a matter of fact, is someone, no matter how small in size that person is, who cares about others and does charity. His size is not great, yet his actions are. Sizes do not determine the role and impact we may have on the outcome of our world. If every part of the universe believed it was insignificant (assuming planets could think), the universe would not exist. However, it is unity, it is the collective, what forms the universe. You, me, we are all part of this collective. Have you ever thought about what we're made off? Write now you are typing on a keyboard. Every key in your keyboard will be made of millions, billions, trillions of atoms. If they all suddenly believed they are 'insignificant' and hence refused to be part of the collective, the key would disintegrate, it would no longer exist. Ie, billions of apparently 'insignificant' things have decided to break something billion times bigger than them.

I'm not denying the importance of society as an integrated whole and I'm not saying that it needs to be significant to a 'little man sat on Mars' to be significant to us. I'm saying that just because it's significant to us doesn't mean it's significant in the grander scheme of things.

My point is that everything is insignificant. Drawing scale comparisons with the rest of the universe just helps to illustrate the fact that our impact on the universe as a whole is absolutely minuscule.

"If every part of the universe believed it was insignificant (assuming planets could think), the universe would not exist."... erm what?

What?

im trying to tell you that people who have achieved more than you and me

You make a valid point, but what matters to one person may not matter to another, or what matters at one time may not matter at another- this doesn't mean it's pointless, it just means the circumstances are different for different people at different times.

For example, if a man in my town was killed in a car crash it would be a briefly sad event for me but fairly insignificant. But if this man was my father- as he might be to someone else- it would be very significant. That doesn't mean that it shouldn't matter, it should, it's just that to me it doesn't happen to make a lot of difference.

The other thing you're effectively saying, or others on here are, is that we can't make a difference. But the truth is, however small or large, we can. If I shot Barack Obama (which I obviously have no intention of doing!) then there would be some new American president elected and there could be any number of events all over the world sparked as a result. Similarly, if I were to find a cure to cancer (which again is unlikely...) then that would make a huge difference to the world and peoples' lives in it, both of the sufferers and their families. So we can make a difference!


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But that's not true is it? We may be dead but what we do in life is going to be talked about by our descendants, like Einstein, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie etc. and if you're not being mentioned then you're insignificant compared to those who are being talked about. I'm not trying to put you down but that is the way I think when it comes to this argument about how our generation will all be dead eventually. It doesn't make living in the present any easier but you can still be a failure.

is the grief of people of someone who last their father three thousand years ago relevant?
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
that was written two thousand years ago, and both guys and everyone who ever knew them are of course forever lost and never coming back, is his grief meaningful compared to the grief people feel now, or does it not matter now?
as for changing things, same thing as with the grief thing, in the words of ted, sooner or later no one gives a ****.

So you're happy with a life of mediocrity? That to me is sad.