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What is the meaning of life?
(ani.social)
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this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Bust a nut, pass your genetics and perish. Thats it. What you do in between that is up to you.
No, social behavior has always been a party of biology. Even after you reproduce how you care for your young and your extended family has a huge impact on the species. Herd animals or anything that flocks can't function solo. If all the adults just left after they reproduced the species wouldn't survive. Reproduction is key for the individual, but it's never that simple. The version you're told in school is always a highly simplified version of the truth.
Honestly the entire idea that the only purpose of humanity is to make the next generation or support that process in some way just feels gross in a very eugenics adjacent way. If you start with that premise, it's just too easy to conclude that anyone who isn't working towards that end is disposable.
I’m in the “there is no purpose,” camp. It seems like a bit of a mental disorder to me to (without any evidence) assume that oneself or one’s species isn’t just hanging around by random happenstance. Wouldn’t that simply be narcissism? People have long asked the question, “why are we here?” Yet there’s never been and never will be a definitive answer.
From a biological point of view everybody is disposable
Not just humanity. That is the purpose of all living things, insofar as we can be said to have a purpose at all.
No, it's not purpose. It's just a process that perpetuates itself.
It's how you make the next generation, but if that generation doesn't have a purpose, then neither does yours, nor the act of reproduction.
...well in the long view, that's how we got here and eventually that's all that matters: it's a bit nihilistic but that's the essence of nature in the cosmos...
We did evolve grandmother's. That was an evolutionary pressure response. Deep knowledge and long growth have lead us through doors of perception far beyond the reach of all life we have yet precieved.
Tangential nitpick—the phrase “evolutionary pressure response” evokes the idea that there is an intelligent or benevolent purpose behind the process. When a beneficial trait randomly occurs and gets passed on, that is a release from evolutionary pressure, not a response to it.
Grandmother's what? What's implied by the "'s" after "grandmother"?
You probably haven't been off reddit long, but breath easy friend, no one proofread's around here.
Apple pie.
The entire purpose of life and evolution up to this point was to evolve grandmother's apple pie.
How about I do something which will make life better for people who are actually alive already instead of increasing total human suffering by making new people.
That's the philosophy group to the left
Having kids can be extremely fulfilling, doesn't increase human suffering at all. Having kids subjectively improved my life and the lives of many people adjacent to me, e.g. the lives of my family members and friends and my kids' friends.
I don't understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it's pretty baffling.
You say it's improved your life and the lives of those adjacent to you, your family members, friends, and your kids' friends. But you haven't said its improved your kids life. I think that's what the OP was talking about. A being who doesn't exist doesn't desire to exist so making new life isn't doing them a favor and only exposes them to harm.
Don't project your own depression onto others, and non-existent beings.
If you think existence "only exposes [living things] to harm" and nothing else, nothing even potentially good?
If you truly believe that, I've got no nice way to say this: You need therapy.
I mean I'm not depressed and I love living, so I wouldn't be projecting depression on to others.
I agree that people can experience good things as well as harmful things, but it's not a risk worth taking. Giving birth is gambling with human life. You never know if someones life experience is going to be overwhelmingly positive or negative, but if they are never born, that's not even an issue to worry about.
Human suffering is caused in part by overpopulation (as is the suffering of all creatures - we are invasive, destructive and afflicted with a superiority complex) and in part by religious indoctrination, so while you procreate, as long as you don't force offspring into a single and restrictive belief system, I suppose it's okay, and all the best to you.
Come on, it's worth it but it certainly brings a lot of suffering that wouldn't exist otherwise. Telling my teenager that he needs to shower 5x, every day that he does sports, is suffering for both me and him.