Pointlessness meaningless. Meaninglessness and the meaning of life

If you think about it, a huge amount of what

we are used to striving, what we are used to achieving, in fact

pointless. It makes no difference whether we achieve this or not...

Alexandra Marinina. Feeling of the people

You are looking for meaning, but you create such nonsense that you can’t even come up with it.

Franz Kafka. Process

Meaninglessness as a personality quality is a tendency to words and deeds that are devoid of meaning, content, reasonable grounds, do not express thoughts, are absurd, unconscious and inexplicable.

A knight walked through the desert. His journey was long. Along the way he lost his horse, helmet and armor. Only the sword remained. The knight was hungry and thirsty. Suddenly in the distance he saw a lake. Barely able to stand, he moved towards the water. But right next to the lake sat a three-headed dragon. The knight gathered his last remnants of strength, drew his sword and began to fight the monster. He fought for days, then he fought for two days. He cut off two dragon heads. On the third day, the dying dragon fell onto the sand. A dying knight fell nearby, no longer able to stand on his feet or hold his sword. And then the bleeding dragon asked: “Knight, what did you want?” - Drink some water. - Well, I would drink it...

Pointless fight. Pointless actions. A meaningless life. All of this is, by and large, metaphors. Each action has its own power and leads to certain consequences. It is impossible to do anything meaningless. When we do bad things, bad fate, bad karma is created. When we do good, reserves of piety are accumulated, that is, bad karma is worked off or good karma is created. Although we often act unconsciously, this does not change anything. Karma takes into account our every action, like good accounting. This gives it meaning.

A person does not come into this world to satisfy his physiological needs. Life presents him with certain lessons that he must learn. A person must work off bad karma and earn good karma. This is a minimum task. Reincarnation is a re-examination. Reincarnation means that you stayed for a second year, that you are not worthy to go to the spiritual world. In a new incarnation, if a person has not mastered some material, his soul will be incarnated in a different form. The meaning of life is to get closer in your development to perfection, to God, that is, to take the path of spiritual development.

O.G. Torsunov writes: “Some people think that there are meaningless actions that have no power. Find at least one such action in your life. When you go out into the street, do at least one action so that it is meaningless and has no power. Just spit on the ground - this means an insult to Mother Earth, you will be responsible for this, suffer according to the law of karma. What else to do, what's pointless here? Just get up and don’t go anywhere - it means: a waste of time, for this a person will suffer according to the law of karma. It is impossible to do anything meaningless. Every action has its own meaning."

Therefore, meaninglessness as a personality quality manifests itself in the subjective assessments of others about the absurd, inexplicable behavior of another. What is not clear is meaningless. Take, for example, empty talk. If they are not aimed at building relationships, then they are meaningless. A subjective, biased assessment of the past turns it into nonsense. Hermann Hesse wrote:

What was only yesterday is full of charm,
Awakened the mind and excited the soul,
Suddenly it turned out to be meaningless,
It has faded, faded and faded.

Very often the Master was asked what would happen after death. The master never answered such questions. One day, students asked why he kept avoiding answering. - Have you noticed that those who don’t know what to do with this life are interested in the afterlife? They need another life that would last forever,” answered the Master. - And yet, is there life after death or not? - one of the students did not let up. “Is there life before death - that is the question,” answered the master.

Lada Luzina in her book “My Corpse” writes: “The main thing is not how you live, but why. Masterly acting, expensive costumes, brilliant dialogues, a twisted plot, enchanting effects - cheap if the performance has no idea. I have never been afraid of death. Death is not the worst thing in our life. I was more afraid than death of living my life meaninglessly.”

Life without the desire to achieve happiness is meaningless. Rasul Gamzatov in the poem “And then what?” writes:

“Tell me, eccentric, what are you dreaming about?”
“I want to hug a thin beauty!”
“Take the beauty, and then what?”
“Then I want to play a wedding!”
“But the wedding was played, the house was built.
What then?”
“I want to raise kids!”
“The kids will grow up, and then what?”
“Then I want them happiness and mercy!”
“Your light of happiness illuminates the roof,
Well, then, how little do you want?”
“Brides for sons, daughters - grooms!
Grandchildren and grandchildren are the consolation of old age.”
“Well, everything has come true, and the house is full of grandchildren,
What then?”
“Probably separation,
But if you always think: “What then?” –
We will have neither children nor grandchildren!”

Leo Tolstoy and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov considered life meaningless. An amazing fact for Russian literature, full of cheerfulness and optimism. The first one wrote in “Confession”: “My life has stopped. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and I could not not breathe, not eat, not drink, not sleep; but there was no life, because there were no such desires, the satisfaction of which I would find reasonable. If I wanted something, then I knew in advance that, whether I satisfied or did not satisfy my desire, nothing would come of it... I searched in all knowledge and not only did not find it, but I was convinced that all those who were just like me , searched for knowledge, but found nothing in the same way. And not only did they not find it, but they clearly recognized that the very thing that brought me to despair - the meaninglessness of life - is the only undoubted knowledge available to man.”

A.P. Chekhov writes in “The Lady with the Dog”: “What wild customs, what faces! What stupid nights, what uninteresting, unnoticeable days! Unnecessary things and conversations all about one thing take up the best part of the time, the best forces, and in the end what is left is some kind of short, wingless life, some kind of nonsense, and you can’t leave or run, as if you were sitting in a madhouse or in a prison cell. rotah!

Petr Kovalev 2014

I am 28 years old. I've been living in Moscow for 5 years. I work as a mobile computer technician. Married. The relationship with my wife is good. I have struggled with depression my entire life for as long as I can remember. Constant thoughts about the meaninglessness of life. The first time I was in a mental hospital was at the age of 17. There was poor academic performance, depressed mood, lack of any desires and obsessive thoughts of suicide. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I was involved in boxing in my youth. I assume that I have genetic depression, which occurs periodically. Now I'm depressed again. Tired of life. It is not interesting to develop in your profession. I have trouble learning new information and feel like a dumbass. I just want to fall asleep and not wake up. I read a lot of books on personal development and proper nutrition. Nothing inspiring. Questions about the meaninglessness of life come up again. About the uselessness of your existence. I don't believe in God. Although he was baptized at the age of 23. Most likely I will have to take antidepressants for the rest of my life.
Support the site:

Sasha, age: 28 / 10/13/2015

Responses:

Hello, Sasha! If you need to take antidepressants to stay healthy, then take them. See a therapist regularly. I’m glad that you have a good family, there is mutual understanding and respect, it’s great that you work. Surely there are other relatives and friends who love and appreciate you. I wish you health and happiness!

Irina, age: 27 / 10/13/2015

Sasha, well, you definitely need to drive away thoughts of suicide. Try not to think about them, don’t dwell on them or something. Drive away like an intrusive fly. They come and go. The main thing is not to concentrate on them. And poor health can be caused by very different reasons. It’s a pity, of course, that it’s not always possible to go to a doctor and immediately get an accurate diagnosis. Diagnosis is, in general, a difficult thing. But bad things don’t just happen, there are always some reasons. Maybe try going to an endocrinologist and donating blood for hormones? The fact is that the symptoms of some diseases may be similar to depression, but they are not depression. It would be good to rule out thyroid disease. It is responsible for the production of certain hormones that affect mood.

Olya, age: 42 / 10/13/2015

Dear Sasha, your case is not the most difficult, but it requires normal treatment. The most normal thing is in a mental hospital, under the constant supervision of a psychiatrist.. Since you have already been treated, you should have chosen the right (“tick by tick”) antidepressants with mood stabilizers and you had to take them for at least a year, periodically seeing a doctor to adjust the dosage, regardless of the fact that your mood for that period (of taking the medicine) had normalized. Perhaps something was poorly explained to you, perhaps you arbitrarily decided that you no more medications are required... This is a common mistake of “sick people”. Reading books on psychology will not help yourself. The effect may even be the opposite. Your problem is not psychological, but psychiatric. Here on the website, read all the articles about depression (your case is endogenous, as you guessed correctly, genetic) or about MDP (BAR). Everything will get better for you, but to a doctor - definitely!

Lyudmila, age: 65 / 10/14/2015

Hello Sasha! Thanks for the revelation. Understand the mood, we must do it ourselves. Try to do more things that you like, don’t be lazy! I myself suffer from mood swings. Depression is the hardest thing, I understand you. But I need to somehow decorate my life with something other than work. New impressions, not from some kind of shooting game. But for example from walks in the forest.
Or sign up for boxing, go at least once a week. Fishing. Buy flowers for your wife and see how she smiles. =) Life is mostly boring, you have to go to work. Do something that takes energy. And you need to get it from somewhere.
There are many ways, you need to find yours. And you will see, even if not right away, everything will work out.
Antidepressants are only 10%-50%; they only block negative thoughts and emotions.
Therefore, you will have to force yourself at first, and then you will get involved...
Hang in there brother and keep moving forward!!!

Alex, age: 30 / 10/14/2015

Hello Sasha,

Yes, since depressive episodes come and go, perhaps you are right, it turns out that this is recurrent depression (now they do not say whether it is endogenous or genetic, there is a genetic contribution, but it is not very high). we must learn to recognize its comings the sooner, the more effectively. observe the so-called precursors of the episode in yourself. for example, it could be poor sleep, or increased irritability, or deterioration in concentration... or difficulty making banal decisions (what TV show to watch, what item to wear to work today)... or frequent mood swings...
as soon as harbingers appear, it is yours, individual harbingers, you need to act - watch yourself, where the depressive spiral is now screwed - up or down. it depends on the number of positive activities per day and on the social environment. How many times a week do you go out in public? Do you have good friends whom you can call just like that and chat about life? What activities bring you joy? There should be at least 15 of these per day! small but joyful. maybe dance to pop music for 5 minutes? maybe watch the dogs playing? maybe draw? or listen to major classics? or play the guitar? or laugh? or read a comic? about Snoopy?:) dress nicely and walk down the street with an umbrella...
and even if now these activities do not promise joy, they must be done systematically, and then they will definitely begin to bring joy... and thus this will reduce the depth of the depressive episode, delay its onset and maybe even have a preventive effect, the episode will not come at all.

Good luck to you!

In this article I will try to cover the topic the meaninglessness of life, and at the same time answer the question of what is the meaning of life is concluded. Paradoxical? The whole point is that man is a relative phenomenon. And life as such is absolute. Let's try to cover the topic of meaninglessness and the meaning of life, both in relative and absolute terms.
Why is human life actually meaningless? Because it passes. Everything is fleeting, fleeting, transitory. We live now and experience myriads of “important” events and conditions. And all this, after a hundred years, will become nothing. Billions of people lived before us. Everything they suffered and enjoyed was gone forever. Who remembers them? Only a few are known, but even those we know only by hearsay. Perhaps for this reason a person craves fame. Thanks to this illusion, he prolongs his life. However, on the planetary and cosmic level, even centuries are just a brief moment. Against the background of eternity - nothing at all. In what meaning of life, if it inevitably goes into oblivion? Sadly? That's in vain! Let's move on.

In order not to beat around the bush, I will pose a direct question. Does life have an objective meaning? Or meaninglessness– the only truth we have to put up with? The answer to both questions, from my point of view, is positive.

All we know is ours about reality. Every thought, concept, idea has meaning. Understanding occurs when we comprehend the meaning of an idea. What, exactly, is meaning anyway? This is the very essence of thought. Meaning– this is the value of the variable, which is our thought. Can we call a thought real? After all, a person is not able to hold it. The very nature of thinking reflects the fleeting nature of life. As soon as a thought comes, it is no longer there. And all we know is only our thoughts about the world. The meaning of life exists at the level of thought, and at the same level it dissolves and manifests itself in meaninglessness.

People tend to believe that the more seriously they take life, the closer this perception is to reality. In fact, this seriousness expressed cosmic sadness our sad personality - like a childish grimace, which we, in our naivety, take seriously as something real, important and trustworthy. The child is crying and he is serious. He doesn't realize how baseless his idea is. Our adult children's games make us worry and take what is happening seriously. This invaluable experience is necessary in order to eventually see that we are free from it and were never truly bound by it.

What is the meaning of human life? After all, we are people, and regarding us, perhaps the right question should sound different. What is a person needed for? And if the world is as limited as it sees it, then man is a random phenomenon, and then there is no meaning. We were born by our parents. However, we were lucky, and the parents were not so selfish as to consider the child their creation, which was created solely for their purposes. After all, they themselves were born and raised in the same way, and allow us to become independent. In a social society, as a person grows up, he begins to realize that now he himself can decide how and for what to live. And this experience of independence hints to us at the meaninglessness of life, because meaning can only exist when we live not for ourselves, but for the sake of something beyond our little personality.

If man was created by God, then , the meaning of life connected with the Creator's purpose. In this case, the meaning that is embedded in our lives is the reason why we were created. And since all the best within us manifests itself as our soul develops, perhaps the purpose of our existence is manifested in its fruits. Perhaps love, which we place at the head of all experiences without any vulgar shades, is that cherished answer. In any case, from this angle, the meaning of life is in the development of consciousness. .

However, if we talk about life as such, on an absolute level it is neither meaningful nor painful. meaninglessness. All this is just the work of the mind. Life as such has a direct bearing on this. The closer we come to an awareness of reality, the deeper the understanding that there is neither good nor bad in either meaning or its absence. There is no real duality in this. All this is the work of our mind here and now.

Pointlessness - the same illusion as meaning, because without meaning it cannot exist. If meaninglessness really existed, we would simply have nothing to talk about. Is the donut hole real? Can we say that a donut hole is such a heavy, doomed state of cosmic sadness? Can we say that it is equivalent to nirvana? Can we say that she is at least something? Or maybe this is a life preserver? When we talk about meaninglessness, all we really mean is dissolving meaning. It still exists, although it dissolves in our minds, so for now there is something to talk about. But as soon as it dissolves, catharsis, freedom and relief sets in!

Pointlessness- this is simply the destruction of our attachment, devaluation, or parting with what made our life meaningful at one time or another. It’s hard for us while the attachment is crumbling. During this time, we experience sadness, loss, and emptiness where the objects of our affection once were. But when attachment is already destroyed, we gain freedom. When we lose, we experience the loss, but when we let go of the meaning completely, the pain goes away. We free ourselves from the burden of meaning and from the weight of its dissolution, which seemed to us to be meaninglessness. When attachment is broken, relief comes. Against the backdrop of eternity, all good things pass. All bad things pass! We are eternal wanderers, eternal spectators, eternal players. And even if you do not believe in this, and life ends after the death of the body, worries about this do not make any sense. Will longing bring happiness closer?

Excerpt from Victor Pelevin’s novel “T”:

“Lin Tzu, in response to a question about the nature of Buddha, said that this is a hole in a latrine. Soloviev believed that this was the most accurate explanation that could be given. Imagine, he said, a dirty and filthy outhouse. Is there anything pure in it? Eat. It's a hole in its center. Nothing can stain it. Everything will just fall down through it. The hole has no edges, no boundaries, no shape - only the toilet seat has all this. And at the same time, the entire temple of uncleanness exists solely thanks to this hole. This hole is the most important thing in the latrine, and at the same time something that has nothing to do with it at all. Moreover, what makes a hole a hole is not its own nature, but what is built around it by people: the outhouse. But the hole simply does not have its own nature - at least until the moment when the lama, sitting on the toilet seat, begins to divide it into three kayas.”

The example is rough. But quite bright and largely accurate. The more we search meaning of life, the further we are from real awareness of the meaning of what is happening here and now. We ourselves give meaning to what happens. And when the feeling meaninglessness will be experienced quite intensely and deeply, we can intuitively choose what and how to make meaningful, “important”, and what to devalue and leave forgotten in the past. This flexibility is a reward for lived experience.

It is meaningless, first of all - and this, from the point of view of personal spiritual needs, is the most important thing - the personal life of each of us. The first, so to speak, minimum condition for the possibility of achieving the meaning of life is freedom; only being free can we act “meaningfully”, strive for a reasonable goal, seek complete satisfaction; everything necessary is subordinated to the blind forces of necessity, acts blindly, like a stone attracted by the earth as it falls. But we are connected on all sides, shackled by the forces of necessity. We are bodily and therefore subject to all the blind, mechanical laws of world matter; stumbling, we fall like a stone, and if If by chance this happens on the rails of a train or in front of a car flying at us, then the elementary laws of physics immediately stop our life, and with it all our hopes, aspirations, plans for the reasonable implementation of life. An insignificant bacillus of tuberculosis or another disease can end the life of a genius, stop the greatest thought and the most sublime aspiration. We are subject to both blind laws and the forces of organic life: due to their irresistible action, the period of our life, even in its normal course, is too short for the full discovery and implementation of the spiritual forces inherent in us; before we have time to learn from the experience of life and the previously accumulated stock of knowledge to live wisely and correctly fulfill our calling, our body has already become decrepit and we are approaching the grave; hence the inevitable, even with a long life, tragic feeling of premature and unexpected death - “is it already over? and I was just about to live for real, correct the mistakes of the past, make up for wasted time and wasted energy! - and the difficulty of believing in your own aging. And in addition, we are burdened from the inside with a heavy burden of blind spontaneous biological forces that interfere with our rational life. We inherit from our parents passions and vices that torment us and on which our strength is fruitlessly wasted; in the face of our own animal nature, we are doomed to torture and hard labor, chained to a wheelbarrow, senselessly suffering punishment for the sins of our fathers or for sins in general,to which nature itself doomed us. Our best and most reasonable aspirations are either dashed by external obstacles or weakened by our own blind passions. And besides, blind nature has arranged us in such a way that we are doomed to illusions, doomed to wander and get into dead ends, and we discover the illusoryness and fallacy of our aspirations only when they have caused us irreparable harm and our best forces have already gone to them. One wastes himself on revelry and pleasures and, when physical and spiritual health is already hopelessly lost, he becomes bitterly convinced of the vulgarity and meaninglessness of all pleasures, of the insatiability of life’s melancholy by them; the other ascetically abstains from all the immediate joys of life, tempering and preserving himself for a great calling or holy cause, so that later, when life is already drawing to an end, he becomes convinced that he does not have this calling at all, and this cause is not at all holy, and in the powerless repentance to regret the fruitlessly missed joys of life. Who remains alone, afraid to burden himself with the burdens of family, suffers from the cold of lonely old age and mourns the already unattainable comfort of family and the caress of love; who, having succumbed to the temptation of the family, found himself burdened with the burdens of family worries, immersed in the petty vanity of family squabbles and unrest, fruitlessly repents that he voluntarily sold his freedom for imaginary benefits, gave himself into the slavery of forced labor and did not realize his true calling. All our passions and strongest inclinations deceptively pretend to be something. absolutely important and precious for us, they promise us joy and peace if we achieve their satisfaction, and then, in retrospect, when it is too late to correct the mistake, they reveal their illusory nature, the falsity of their claim to exhaust the deepest aspiration of our being and give, through our satisfaction, completeness and strength to our being. Hence the inevitable melancholic, secretly deeply and hopelessly tragic consciousness for all people, expressed by the French proverb: “si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait” - the consciousness of deceived hopes, the unattainability of true happiness on earth. Goethe, nicknamed “the darling of fate,” who lived an exceptionally long, happy and fruitful life, the owner of the rarest gift - the ability to combine creative energy, immeasurable hard work and powerful, self-restraining willpower with thirst and the ability to experience all life’s pleasures, to revel in all the joys of life - this chosen one of humanity at the end of his life he admitted that in 80 years of his life he had known only a few days of complete happiness and satisfaction; and he experienced all the inevitable tragedy of human life, he said that the essence of life is recognized only by those who eat their bread in tears and spend sleepless, painful nights in melancholy and grief, and that fate consoles us with only one tireless refrain: “endure hardships.” "(Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren!). If this is the life wisdom of the chosen lucky one of humanity, then what conclusion should we draw to ourlife, all the rest, less fortunate and gifted people, with all their weakness, with all the severity of their lot in life, with all the contradictions tearing them apart from within and the spiritual weaknesses clouding their paths?

The popular consciousness believed that the gods were jealous of human happiness and always took measures to punish and humiliate the lucky one in order to compensate for random human luck with bitter blows of fate; and, on the other hand, it believed that even the blessed gods are subject, as to a higher principle, to an inexorable blind fate. Their sages taught a more purified religious consciousness; that, according to the laws of world harmony, no one should seize too much for himself, or excessively outgrow the general level, that a person should know his humble place and that even the individuality of a person is a sinful illusion, punishable by death; Only in voluntary recognition of himself as a service, dependent link of the world whole, only in the humble acceptance of his slavish dependence on the cosmos and his cosmic insignificance does man submit to the divine will, fulfill his official purpose and can hope not to ruin himself.

Our empirical life is a fragment: for itself, without connection with a certain whole, it can have just as little meaning as a fragment of a page torn out of a book. If it can have meaning, then only in connection with the common life of humanity and the whole world. And we have already seen that a meaningful life must inevitably be a service to something other than itself like a self-contained personal life that Only in the fulfillment of a calling, in the implementation of some super-personal and self-sufficient value, can a personcan find himself as a rational being, demanding a reasonable, meaningful life. The closest whole with which we are connected and of which we form a part is the life of the race or humanity; Without the homeland and connection with its destiny, without cultural creativity, creative unity with the past of humanity and its future, without love for people and solidarity in their common destiny, we cannot realize ourselves, find a truly meaningful life. Like a leaf or a branch of a tree, we feed on the juices of the whole, blossom with its life, and dry up and fall into dust if there is no life in the whole itself. In order for individual life to have meaning, it is therefore necessary for universal life to have meaning, that the history of mankind be a coherent and meaningful process in which some great common and undeniably valuable goal is achieved. But even here, with an impartial and honest consideration of the empirical course of things, we are faced with a new disappointment, a new obstacle to the possibility of finding the meaning of life.

Where is Hellenic wisdom and beauty now, the mere memory of which fills our soul with sad tenderness? Which of today's sages, if he does not delude himself with conceit, can reach with his thought those spiritual heights at which the thought of Plato or Plotinus freely soared? Are we now close to the pacification and legal ordering of the entire cultural world under a single authority, which the world already achieved during the golden age of the Roman Empire with its pax Romana? Can we hope for a revival in the world of those unattainable examples of deep and clear religious faith that were demonstrated by the Christian martyrs and confessors of the first centuries of our era? Where is now the wealth of individuality, the flourishing fullness and diversity of life of the Middle Ages, which the arrogant vulgarity of the wretched enlightenment called the era of barbarism and which, like a pipe dream, now attracts all sensitive souls, hungry in the desert of modern civilization?

We have learned to understand - and in this respect, direct life impressions coincide with the main achievements of objective historical science over the past hundred years - that there is no continuous progress, What humanity lives in a cycle of ups and downs So what all his great achievements in all areas of life - state and social, scientific and artistic, religious and moral - have their end and are replaced by periods of stagnation and decline, when humanity has to learn anew and rise again from the depths.

The world is a great living being and at the same time a unity of many living forces.

The ancient Greeks, admiring the beauty and living harmony of the cosmic whole, recognized with bitterness and hopeless despair the hopelessness, futility and meaninglessness of human life in it.

We saw the conditions for the attainability of the meaning of life: the existence of God as absolute Good, eternal Life and the eternal light of Truth and the divinity of man, the opportunity for him to join this true, divine life, to establish it on it, to completely fill his life with it. own life.

But as we have seen, even the existence of God is not enough to find meaning in our lives: this requires the possibility of our human participation in the light and life of the Divine, we need eternity, perfect enlightenment and peace of satisfaction in our own, human life.

██ ██ The work, significant for Frank’s religious and philosophical concept, is a kind of continuation of his work “The Crash of Idols,” which was sharply critical of socialism as the extreme degree of social rationalism. It is here that the great thinker develops the most interesting concept of the fusion of theology and “pure philosophy” - and puts forward a most interesting theory of the results of such a combination.