Half Life

[Gloominary]

There is no point to life.
Fundamentally your life isn't progressing.
Life is a mix of opposing qualities: birth and death, growth and decay, joy and sorrow, desire and satisfaction.
If there was a point to life, which I don't think there is, it'd be to embrace all these states of being, or to embrace nothing at all.
There's no such thing as a one sided coin, but that hasn't stopped many of us from trying to find one.

Does pleasure not imply pain, does drunkenness not imply sobriety?
Every direction you can travel in: north, west, up, there is an opposing direction: south, east, down.
Likewise, birth, growth, joy and so on, are directions, there a towards something we, think we want, or an away from something we don't want, we hope.
The only way to do away with negativity, at least for yourself and those within capacity to affect, is to wholeheartedly embrace it, embrace annihilation.
Could it have possibly been any other way?
It doesn't matter, this is the way things are.

But is it really a case of 999 steps back, and 1000 steps forward, or vice versa?
How can you tell, who knows?
Are things really traveling more northernly than southernly?

The famine makes the feast all the more necessary, vibrant and stimulating.
We appreciate the good times after the hard times, all the more, but likewise, we lament at the loss of the good times, if they were really very good, all the more, and round and round it goes.

There's nothing original about what I'm saying, it's been said a million times before, in nearly the same way.
There's nothing even especially nuanced about it.
Even pointing out how little nuance it has, isn't that nuanced.

How can one be nuanced in our modern world, where everyone is now a writer?
The more people there are, the more people writing there are, the less you matter, the less you matter as a writer.
The more everyone can say something, the more need there is to bite ones tongue.
But then when did human of all animal beings do anything because we needed to, in even the loosest sense of the word need?

People think you must be whole hearted about life...but you can be half hearted, you can give half your heart to things and to people, and keep the other half for yourself, or for no one and nothing, because it rarely turns out like you planned, for the good, or the better.
I think it's good to have lots of reservations about anything you get into, to hold back, or at least it suits me.
Maybe fewer things in life are actually worth doing, or doing them to the max, than people think.

But there's no one way to do life, aside from the bare essentials, which we must all partake in, there's a million ways to do it, and this makes for a lot of ambiguity, ambivalence and arguing.
It also makes things more interesting.

What do you think, should life be lived head on?
Give it your all, or nothing at all, or can it be half lived, should it be, with one foot in this world, and the other in nothing or the 'next', if there is such a thing?
These days everyone seems to think there's many ways to live life, but no one seems to think suicide, or a sort of suicide of the heart, is one of them, why not?

But if one only gives half their heart, or energy to things, what does on do with the remainder?

[WendyDarling]

There is no point in to life.
Fundamentally your life isn't progressing.

Learning isn't progressing?

[Gloominary]

There is no point in to life.
Fundamentally your life isn't progressing.

Learning isn't progressing?

Learning is often regressing.
Learning takes time and energy.
It's better to conserve resources and energy than to squander them.
A lot of things don't need to be known.
You don't need to know what your friend's friend's friend is eating for breakfast in Alaska.
You don't need to know how many moons orbit Jupiter, or what their names are.
You may enjoy learning about these things, but often the more we learn about the world, the more depressed we are, as individuals and as a species, because the world can be a horrible place.
Newtonian and Darwinian cosmology and genealogy were more depressing than the cosmologies and genealogies that came before them, and what have we really gained from adopting this worldview, even if it's closer to the truth?
Did Odin not have to give up his eye for wisdom?
Did Pandora not unleash many evils upon the world?
Humans may damage or destroy themselvs and nature in a scientific experiment.
Modernity itself is a kind of scientific and sociological experiment gone awry.

[Gloominary]

How much can we really learn?
Does the human brain only have so much ram?
If we're busy learning this, this and this, we may forget that in the process, because we're not thinking about the knowledge of that, or doing anything with the knowledge of that, and data requires constant, or at least occasional reveiw in order to retain.
Are we really more knowledgeable about nature than our ancestors?
Or is our knowledge merely more abstract?
We spend more time learning than our ancestors did, and less time doing, but isn't doing the ultimate sort of learning?
The less first hand knowledge we have, that comes from experience, the less authentic it is.
We're learning about someone else and their experience of their environment, who says we and our experience of our environment will be the same?
People lie, and so the less we can confirm via experience, the more we may be duped.
Can a scientist really know more about a certain locale than the indigenous people living there, unless that scientist were to live there himself, immersed, as opposed to frequent it on mere occasion?
Native Americans had a built a civilization that sustained them for thousands of years.
Our civilization may very well not survive this century.
Maybe we should be learning more from them.

[Gloominary]

Life is all about forgetting too.
After our intelligence peaks around 30, our brains slowly begin deteriorating.
At this point they'll still probably be healthy enough that we can learn more things than forget, but after about say 60, depending on your mental and physical health, you start forgetting more things than you can learn, until you'll be lucky if you remember your own name, or how to tie your shoe laces.
At this point, the stuff that's really important to you will be the stuff you remember, more and more superfluous info must be cast into the recycle bin, as your ram decreases.

[WendyDarling]

A lot of things don't need to be known.

True, random facts are unimportant when not applicable or necessary for one's daily life, but that is not the learning I was speaking of. I was addressing more of one's gained self knowledge and our affects on our environment and others, I was addressing the emotional intelligence that spills forth from common sense and making valuable decisions about our actions and reactions. I believe we are here to feel. We exist to feel emotions. Our advanced emotions are our greatest asset, but dumb us we cannot seem to work through our emotions without damaging our overall well-being somehow as with numbing activities or life threatening activities. We fail to react accordingly 9 times out of 10. We keep failing to learn what's important, what makes life worth living, which is felt as an emotion.

[Urwrongx1000]

I've always been repulsed by nihilistic, self-hating professors and especially their infiltration into the philosophical arena. Just because your life is worthless, has no meaning, and lacks purpose, doesn't mean that your status applies to anybody else. However you may find this or that other nihilist, who shares your hopelessness, and then feed off each other for awhile. Others may sympathize with you, and feed the fire of your discontent. That also doesn't help.

The world already has too many Nihilists as nihilistic views have become commonplace. Nihilism, to me, is a sign of low-birth and the slave caste, born without purpose, without meaning, without value. Rather your purpose in life is to serve your superiors. Many in the western world believe that they are "free" when they are not. Slaves rebel against their masters, and then find themselves without value in life, because the lineage of their slavitude has lasted for generations or millenniums. A freed-slave has never tasted freedom before. So of course you will experience such a nihilistic reaction, that of despair and weakness.

Most Westerners have already, long ago, turned to (Abrahamic) god, christianity, judaism, or other forms of institutionalization. Many give themselves with blind loyalty to the "secular state", civilization. These "progressives" believe their life has meaning politically, which is another form of slavery and delusion. Another dead-end. Yes it can be the case in life that many organisms, even outside humans, live dull, boring, valueless lives of repetition. After all, to adapt to an environment, is to form a (repeating) habit within it. All organisms do this. But despite that, it doesn't necessarily reflect the particular value of this or that specie.

Humans are no different. Within humanity, there is a portion of humans that are valueless, have no meaning in life. 80% perhaps? We could go through the numbers but it won't necessarily help. All it will show you is that there are many other nihilists, like yourself, who have no meaning and purpose in life.


I've also learned, for me, that it's pointless to "help" nihilists. So don't think that's what I'm doing here. I'm merely prescribing to you your symptoms, as a doctor would diagnose a physical illness. Nihilism is not only a physical illness, but a mental and spiritual one as well. It's a genetic illness. A slave is waking up from his/her mental slavery, and yearning for a salve, a sedative, to return to sleep. Thus you may find false meaning, false purpose, and false worth in life. I'm not here to point you to a meaningful life and existence. Because I don't have faith in nihilists. Why give hope to the hopeless? You toss a life preserve to 1000 drowning in water, they will crowd and overturn your boat. I've seen it happen.

So yes, your life is shit, and there is no hope for you. This is what you wanted to hear, correct? For somebody to confirm your fears?

I'm just here to tell you, you're wrong. Your meaningless does not reflect upon other, rarer humans, who are full of meaning, full of worth, full of purpose in life. Some humans have value. Perhaps this will shock you, and you will wish you were one of them.

[Pandora]

There is no point to life.

And with those words, Gloominary walks into some woods... never to be seen again...



Maybe he's sitting in the forest somewhere, rubbing two sticks together. Or maybe he's been eaten by hungry predators.

Does it even matter?

[Prismatic567]

There is no point to life.
Fundamentally your life isn't progressing.
Life is a mix of opposing qualities: birth and death, growth and decay, joy and sorrow, desire and satisfaction.
If there was a point to life, which I don't think there is, it'd be to embrace all these states of being, or to embrace nothing at all.
There's no such thing as a one sided coin, but that hasn't stopped many of us from trying to find one.
..........

It is obvious from empirical evidence human beings are different from all other living things.
The significant differences are human beings are evolved with higher intelligence, the capacity for wisdom, morality, abstraction, progress, planning, deliberate conscious decision making and others.

From observations and inferences of the evolution of mankind to the present, it is noted the human being is a type of biological servomechanism like the following;

In control engineering a servomechanism, sometimes shortened to servo, is an automatic device that uses error-sensing negative feedback to correct the action of a mechanism.[1] It usually includes a built-in encoder or other position feedback mechanism to ensure the output is achieving the desired effect.

For a servomechanism to work effective, there must be an objective [desired effect] as a target for the machinery to work on.

In the case of the servomechanism of humans, the objective is a meaningful purpose of life.
Since there cannot be a teleological [God directed] purpose of life, to fulfill the imperative of the servomechanism, humanity must develop a meaningful purpose of life.

To establish a workable meaningful purpose of life, with intelligence on hand, humanity can abstract from the experiences, observation and knowledge of human evolution and general evolution of all living things.

An observation of the above general evolution is there are no species that has emerged with a drive to be extinct immediate or as soon as possible.

Therefore one can infer all living things including human beings strive to survive at all costs until the inevitable, reproduce the next generation to preserve the continuation of the species.
The above is thus one meaningful purpose of life.
There are many other subsets of purpose of life to support the above main purpose of life.

Thus, there is no teleological purpose and meaning of life, but there has to be an imperative and humanity defined meaningful purpose of life [as above] to ensure our inherited servomechanism works effectively or else various forms of pains are generated.

[Gloominary]

There is no point to life.

And with those words, Gloominary walks into some woods... never to be seen again...



Maybe he's sitting in the forest somewhere, rubbing two sticks together. Or maybe he's been eaten by hungry predators.

Does it even matter?

Or he chooses to remain in the city where he lives, but lives a life of intentional, deliberate mediocrity, where he works a little, eats a little, drinks a little, plays a little, and doesn't have much of an impact on anyone, or anything, except perhaps to get some people to realize that often it's better not to have too much of an impact, let nature take its course, not intervene, so much, to be more content with simplicity.

[Gloominary]

I've always been repulsed by nihilistic, self-hating professors and especially their infiltration into the philosophical arena. Just because your life is worthless, has no meaning, and lacks purpose, doesn't mean that your status applies to anybody else. However you may find this or that other nihilist, who shares your hopelessness, and then feed off each other for awhile. Others may sympathize with you, and feed the fire of your discontent. That also doesn't help.

The world already has too many Nihilists as nihilistic views have become commonplace. Nihilism, to me, is a sign of low-birth and the slave caste, born without purpose, without meaning, without value. Rather your purpose in life is to serve your superiors. Many in the western world believe that they are "free" when they are not. Slaves rebel against their masters, and then find themselves without value in life, because the lineage of their slavitude has lasted for generations or millenniums. A freed-slave has never tasted freedom before. So of course you will experience such a nihilistic reaction, that of despair and weakness.

Most Westerners have already, long ago, turned to (Abrahamic) god, christianity, judaism, or other forms of institutionalization. Many give themselves with blind loyalty to the "secular state", civilization. These "progressives" believe their life has meaning politically, which is another form of slavery and delusion. Another dead-end. Yes it can be the case in life that many organisms, even outside humans, live dull, boring, valueless lives of repetition. After all, to adapt to an environment, is to form a (repeating) habit within it. All organisms do this. But despite that, it doesn't necessarily reflect the particular value of this or that specie.

Humans are no different. Within humanity, there is a portion of humans that are valueless, have no meaning in life. 80% perhaps? We could go through the numbers but it won't necessarily help. All it will show you is that there are many other nihilists, like yourself, who have no meaning and purpose in life.


I've also learned, for me, that it's pointless to "help" nihilists. So don't think that's what I'm doing here. I'm merely prescribing to you your symptoms, as a doctor would diagnose a physical illness. Nihilism is not only a physical illness, but a mental and spiritual one as well. It's a genetic illness. A slave is waking up from his/her mental slavery, and yearning for a salve, a sedative, to return to sleep. Thus you may find false meaning, false purpose, and false worth in life. I'm not here to point you to a meaningful life and existence. Because I don't have faith in nihilists. Why give hope to the hopeless? You toss a life preserve to 1000 drowning in water, they will crowd and overturn your boat. I've seen it happen.

So yes, your life is shit, and there is no hope for you. This is what you wanted to hear, correct? For somebody to confirm your fears?

I'm just here to tell you, you're wrong. Your meaningless does not reflect upon other, rarer humans, who are full of meaning, full of worth, full of purpose in life. Some humans have value. Perhaps this will shock you, and you will wish you were one of them.

Your thinking is all too common, it's my thinking that's rarer.
The world is full of self help gurus, promising people the moon, but never delivering.
Nietzsche, your master, was a pioneer in this field.
It is I, who am in the minority, it is I, who am the rebel.
I use and abuse the system when it suits me, where as you're a slave, who wouldn't dare break a law.
I am a thief, and a fraud, when it comes to my dealings with the rich.
I give little to the system, and take what I need.
But I don't need a lot, your materialism, narcissism and vanity doesn't interest me.

[Gloominary]

@wrong

self-hating

I don't hate myself.

Just because your life is worthless,

My life has some worth to me, just not a lot.

doesn't mean that your status applies to anybody else.

I think it does apply, for the reasons I gave, and more, reasons which you haven't countered.

The world already has too many Nihilists as nihilistic views have become commonplace.

I disagree, the world is full of messages, telling us to dare to dream big, that nothing is impossible, to grab the bull by the horns and so on.

Nihilism,

If nihilism means seeing things for how they really are, full of joy and sorrow, sickness and health, that you can have too much of a good thing, that there are limits to progress, as individuals and as a species, than yea, I guess that makes me a nihilist, but I'd sooner call it realism, perhaps verging on pessimism.

to me, is a sign of low-birth and the slave caste,

Mhm...unless your rich, than I guess that makes you self hating.
Or are you middle class?
Everyone knows, or ought to know there's hardly such a thing as middle class anymore.

Rather your purpose in life is to serve your superiors.

Just because you have money, and the power it can buy, doesn't make you my superior, in my book, and it doesn't mean you have any authority over me.
I've always done what I want, in spite of what society, or the state thinks.
The rich aren't that much better off than the poor, especially if the poor know how to live decently, their power is somewhat illusory.

Many in the western world believe that they are "free" when they are not.

On this point we're agreed.
Freedom is always limited, you can always have more or less of it.
Freedom is also a state of mind, it's realizing there's no good reason to submit to this capitalist, consumerist prison planet, which has no respect for nature or working people, and its anti-values.
In some ways we're freer now than in times passed, but in others more enslaved.

Most Westerners have already, long ago, turned to (Abrahamic) god, christianity, judaism,

You've been reading too much Nietzsche, and not paying attention to what's around you, here, now, but even in his time.
Most people worship money and what it can buy, as well as the capitalist, statist conception of property, people hardly pay attention to (the) God(s) or spiritual things, if they do at all.
Our culture is totally secular, Christian culture has been relegated to the margins, the fringes, and very few people understood Christ's message to begin with, or cared to.
Christianity too has long since been completely secularized and materialized with the advent of certain sects of Protestantism like Calvinism, but very few people practiced it in its authenticity to begin with.

Many give themselves with blind loyalty to the "secular state", civilization.

I'm an anarchist, but I'd sooner accept a more socialist and especially an environmentalist government than a capitalist one.
Blind loyalty to the state?
That's exactly what capitalism is, a plutocratic state, where corporations rule, with a conception of property that benefits the haves, an economy and laws that're rigged in their favor.

I should say I'm not an anarchist in any sort of utopian, or absolutist sense.
Of course we'll never have perfect anarchy, there will always be some form of oppression, and oppression isn't all bad even, especially if it's measured, and you're the one doing the oppressing *laughs.
Perhaps we can have more anarchy, if more people signed up, in certain times and places.
But there's an excess of oppression, especially what's being done to nature in the name of material progress, it's gotten way out of hand, ultimately it's going to destroy oppressor and oppressed alike.

Yes it can be the case in life that many organisms, even outside humans, live dull, boring, valueless lives of repetition.

Here you argue against the notion of repetition, and so you're actually arguing against reality.
Existence is repetition, rich and poor alike have to get up in the morning, shower, shit and shave, go to work, come home, eat and go to bed.
Rich people get hemorrhoids, diarrhea, they might get a kidney stone from all the rich foods they've been eating.
If Science is telling us anything, it's that even stars explode, perish, and arise again like the phoenix from their stellar ash.
The seasons turn, war, peace, famine, feast and so forth.
You think life has to be exciting, because you're a total hedonist and materialist, or at least of the positive, assertive kind, not the negative, passive away from pain and suffering kind, which is more the kind I am.
It doesn't have to be, nor should it be necessarily, to each their own.
You're pipe dreaming about transhumanism and linear time, but actually what science is telling us now, if anything, is the human species is on the verge of its annihilation, not salvation, not just for the many, but for all.

Humans are no different. Within humanity, there is a portion of humans that are valueless, have no meaning in life. 80% perhaps? We could go through the numbers but it won't necessarily help. All it will show you is that there are many other nihilists, like yourself, who have no meaning and purpose in life.

Life is alright, for me, some people like it, some people loathe it.
But even those who like it endure trials and times where they've contemplated a partial or total relinquishment or surrendering.
That's the reality of it, for anyone who's lived long enough to suffer.
To be somewhat numb, jaded, and detached, to give up on dreaming big, and 'happiness', is what sane people do, to adapt to the ebb and flow of things, the cycle of birth, growth, decay, death and renewal.
To resist them makes one a kind of a nut.

I've also learned, for me, that it's pointless to "help" nihilists.

'Nihilism', as your labeling it, is one of, if not the sanest responses to an insane world, but keep fantasizing, likewise I'm not speaking to you so much as of you or through you to mindful onlookers.

[Gloominary]

@Wendy

True, random facts are unimportant when not applicable or necessary for one's daily life, but that is not the learning I was speaking of. I was addressing more of one's gained self knowledge and our affects on our environment and others, I was addressing the emotional intelligence that spills forth from common sense and making valuable decisions about our actions and reactions.

Okay, well in that case we're in agreement.
I had a feeling we'd be in agreement on this but I got oppositional with your statement anyway just to make some points I've been wanting to make on this forum.
I also think emotional intelligence is just as important as other more studied and esteemed intelligences, and your connecting emotions with valuing.
Feelings have a lot to do with valuing, which's not to say reason plays no part in it.
For me, reason can gradually turn how we feel and emote about things into more consistent, well thought out evaluations of things and their worth to us.

I believe we are here to feel. We exist to feel emotions.

I'd say if we're here for anything, it's to experience everything, both feeling and unfeeling, reason and irrationality, all of it, it's all a part of life, to care, to not care, to pursue, to give up the chase, to be content and complaisant, to strive and struggle, and some people/groups go more to one extreme or another, because of various genes, memes and the places, times they're living in.
I'd say if there's a problem it's that we tend to overemphasize one side of the coin, usually the positive, assertive one, and so I'm overemphasizing the other side, to compensate.

Our advanced emotions are our greatest asset

I agree that they are a critical asset, and I think western civilization, insofar as intellectuals, mostly male, have been concerned, tended to overemphasize reason and downplay emotion and intuition, and the critical role the play in our understanding of ourselves, the world, and our valuing.
I've read human beings aren't just more cognitively advanced than many animals, but we're also more emotionally advanced as well, our emotions are more complex, dynamic and nuanced, and so are our desires.
It's important to be able to express, articulate, direct, and not merely repress our emotions, and it's important to link emotion with value, and not be too abstract about value.
It's important to think about value, not just all day long about how to get more of whatever we think we want.

but dumb us we cannot seem to work through our emotions without damaging our overall well-being somehow as with numbing activities or life threatening activities. We fail to react accordingly 9 times out of 10. We keep failing to learn what's important, what makes life worth living, which is felt as an emotion.

Maybe if education paid more attention to emotions earlier on we'd be more able to manage them.

[WendyDarling]

Maybe if education paid more attention to emotions earlier on we'd be more able to manage them.

Agreed. What would be the educational methodology to accomplish that feat? Where would it begin if the parent/s did not participate in cooperation? I like the idea of "confrontation classes" or "designing destressing classes" or "honesty initiatives classes" or "tactful talking classes."

[Karpel Tunnel]

There is no point in to life.
Fundamentally your life isn't progressing.

Learning isn't progressing?

Learning is often regressing.
Learning takes time and energy.
It's better to conserve resources and energy than to squander them.
A lot of things don't need to be known.
You don't need to know what your friend's friend's friend is eating for breakfast in Alaska.
You don't need to know how many moons orbit Jupiter, or what their names are.
You may enjoy learning about these things, but often the more we learn about the world, the more depressed we are, as individuals and as a species, because the world can be a horrible place.
Newtonian and Darwinian cosmology and genealogy were more depressing than the cosmologies and genealogies that came before them, and what have we really gained from adopting this worldview, even if it's closer to the truth?
Did Odin not have to give up his eye for wisdom?
Did Pandora not unleash many evils upon the world?
Humans may damage or destroy themselvs and nature in a scientific experiment.
Modernity itself is a kind of scientific and sociological experiment gone awry.

This seems like an argument supporting that learning CAN BE a form of regression, but not that it must be.

[Urwrongx1000]

I don't hate myself.

From the OP, it certainly sounds like you do.

My life has some worth to me, just not a lot.

Obviously

Here you argue against the notion of repetition, and so you're actually arguing against reality.
Existence is repetition, rich and poor alike have to get up in the morning, shower, shit and shave, go to work, come home, eat and go to bed.
Rich people get hemorrhoids, diarrhea, they might get a kidney stone from all the rich foods they've been eating.
If Science is telling us anything, it's that even stars explode, perish, and arise again like the phoenix from their stellar ash.
The seasons turn, war, peace, famine, feast and so forth.
You think life has to be exciting, because you're a total hedonist and materialist, or at least of the positive, assertive kind, not the negative, passive away from pain and suffering kind, which is more the kind I am.
It doesn't have to be, nor should it be necessarily, to each their own.
You're pipe dreaming about transhumanism and linear time, but actually what science is telling us now, if anything, is the human species is on the verge of its annihilation, not salvation, not just for the many, but for all.

Nihilism is a form of delusion by which any individual or person attempts to 'negate' (destroy) the world "as it is". Thus Nihilism is inherently anti-reality. Usually it is a manifestation of self-hatred, spawning from, as you mentioned, a loss or complete lack of meaning, value, or worth in life. Many people feel this way, because you can argue, they really do have no worth in life. No meaning. No value. Their lives are empty, spawned from empty parents, spawned from empty parents. A long tradition of nihilism passed down from one generation to the next, breeding on instinct and reflex more than anything else. And certainly more than inspiration.

There are distinct differences between nihilists and others who, by contrast, "love life", find meaning and value within it, or best of all, create meaning, which seems to be the most existential challenge and accomplishment of all.

I'm not anti-reality by reiterating the point of repetitions. My point is that much nihilism spawns from the repetition of the slave-caste, living out meaningless lives, through the repetitive motions, by which people wish, dream, and desire that their insignificant lives "could change", although they/you completely lack the power and will to do so. In this way, "breaking the chain" of such slavery could mean simply, breaking the chains of repetitions. But I've studied human nature, and nature in general, a long time now. People grow accustomed to these repetitions, habits, and habitats. Just as a corpse grows accustomed to its burial grave.

The nature of desire is to want what one cannot have, ever.

[Gloominary]

I don't hate myself.

From the OP, it certainly sounds like you do.

My life has some worth to me, just not a lot.

Obviously

Here you argue against the notion of repetition, and so you're actually arguing against reality.
Existence is repetition, rich and poor alike have to get up in the morning, shower, shit and shave, go to work, come home, eat and go to bed.
Rich people get hemorrhoids, diarrhea, they might get a kidney stone from all the rich foods they've been eating.
If Science is telling us anything, it's that even stars explode, perish, and arise again like the phoenix from their stellar ash.
The seasons turn, war, peace, famine, feast and so forth.
You think life has to be exciting, because you're a total hedonist and materialist, or at least of the positive, assertive kind, not the negative, passive away from pain and suffering kind, which is more the kind I am.
It doesn't have to be, nor should it be necessarily, to each their own.
You're pipe dreaming about transhumanism and linear time, but actually what science is telling us now, if anything, is the human species is on the verge of its annihilation, not salvation, not just for the many, but for all.

Nihilism is a form of delusion by which any individual or person attempts to 'negate' (destroy) the world "as it is". Thus Nihilism is inherently anti-reality. Usually it is a manifestation of self-hatred, spawning from, as you mentioned, a loss or complete lack of meaning, value, or worth in life. Many people feel this way, because you can argue, they really do have no worth in life. No meaning. No value. Their lives are empty, spawned from empty parents, spawned from empty parents. A long tradition of nihilism passed down from one generation to the next, breeding on instinct and reflex more than anything else. And certainly more than inspiration.

There are distinct differences between nihilists and others who, by contrast, "love life", find meaning and value within it, or best of all, create meaning, which seems to be the most existential challenge and accomplishment of all.

I'm not anti-reality by reiterating the point of repetitions. My point is that much nihilism spawns from the repetition of the slave-caste, living out meaningless lives, through the repetitive motions, by which people wish, dream, and desire that their insignificant lives "could change", although they/you completely lack the power and will to do so. In this way, "breaking the chain" of such slavery could mean simply, breaking the chains of repetitions. But I've studied human nature, and nature in general, a long time now. People grow accustomed to these repetitions, habits, and habitats. Just as a corpse grows accustomed to its burial grave.

The nature of desire is to want what one cannot have, ever.

While some people are more successful at getting whatever it is they want than others, whether it be because of luck, talent or sheer tenacity, I see things far less black/white than you do.
George Carlin, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schopenhauer, Siddhartha Gautama, King Solomon and many more were arguably successful, yet had cynical outlooks, because pain, suffering, death and disease (physical and mental) touch us all, not just the poor, or the unsuccessful.
Whatever we achieve in life, we have to give it all back sooner or later, usually piecemeal, the rich, and the successful, all the more, and there's no guarantee future generations will take good care of their estate.

The modern world was by and large built by successful men, yet never in recorded history has the human specie been more in peril than it is now.
It's been said the road to hell is paved on good intentions, there's a flipside to practically everything.
If humanity had of been more conservative, cautious and careful, we wouldn't have found ourselves in the ecological and social mess we're in now, but instead we had to be overly optimistic, foolhardy.

If you look at statistics, the now diminishing middle class is somewhat happier and healthier than the poor, they also live somewhat longer, averagely, but by these metrics, there's virtually no difference between the middle class and the rich, and this, among other things, is what I meant about their power being somewhat illusory.
Furthermore, if you look at the difference between the middle class in 1st and 3rd world countries, there is no significant difference when it comes to happiness, even tho the middle class in 1st world countries are much wealthier.
What does that tell you?
It tells me a lot of our happiness is defined by envy, keeping up with the Joneses, by what other people think of us and not by something more genuine, by what, what we have can actually do for us.

It's been said handouts, like welfare and food stamps make the poor weak, permit the weaker ones with weaker attitudes to breed, but don't the rich get a handout from their parents?
If they're billion or multimillionaires, they get a much larger handout than the poor get.
See there's a flipside to just about everything.
In my opinion, if there is such a thing as successful, it means being sober, temperate, not too haughty, steering a middle course between excess and deficiency, finding the right balance of all things at the right time, place for the right person, people.
I think you can have too much of just about any good thing, even learning, as I was discussing earlier, and technology.
Presently we may not be responsible enough to handle the technology we've been given, we may never be.

Wealth and power aren't everything, there's no reason why a wise person can't find as much health and happiness as anyone, so long as he has enough to live somewhat comfortably, conversely there's no reason why a rich fool will be able to.
That being said, everybody plays the fool sometimes.
I think it's more about how you spend it, than how much you have.
The rich never seem to have enough, for them, upper middle class is dirt poor.

I read an article once about how a self made multimillionaire who had 500 million dollars committed suicide because they lost half of their fortune gambling on the stock market.
I mean they still had 250 million dollars, but that wasn't good enough for them.
What good is your high income if it's a burden to you, if you spend so much time trying to earn more, and so little taking care of your needs and the needs of others around you, or enjoying it?
The very reason why the rich often get rich is in the first place, is often the same reason why they're rarely able to enjoy it, or take better care of their needs.
That constant fear of never having enough, or being good enough, it can an addiction and obsession like any other.

[Gloominary]

You have this idea that rich and 'successful' people are really powerful like, but woe to them should they happen to stroll down the wrong neighborhood at night, which occasionally happens, or if they were to lose all or a significant portion of their wealth, which also occasionally happens, particularly if they aren't self made, and grew up sheltered.
The more you have, the more responsible you are, the more you have, the more people try to cut you down, the less sure you can be of who your friends are.
How powerful can you be, if you've never had to deal with tragedy your whole life?

Look at what happened during the napoleonic revolution, and other revolutions all over the world and throughout history, whether they're genuine working class revolutions, or new elites supplanting old ones, or how families sometimes feud over fortune, sometimes violently.
Every once in a while you hear about this or that rich banker or businessman found mysteriously dead in a river somewhere, just like Mafioso, or about wealthy people who's children have been kidnapped and held for ransom.

They may live in a palace, but that's not what they are, that's what they kind of have, for now, what they are is bags of mostly water that can easily rupture just like any of us.
As generations go by, it gets harder and harder to keep wealth all in the family, unless you inbreed, which's another problem, and it's spread increasingly thin, because the family gets bigger and bigger, it's why if you go back far enough, we all have some blue blood in our lineage.

[Gloominary]

Maybe if education paid more attention to emotions earlier on we'd be more able to manage them.

Agreed. What would be the educational methodology to accomplish that feat? Where would it begin if the parent/s did not participate in cooperation? I like the idea of "confrontation classes" or "designing destressing classes" or "honesty initiatives classes" or "tactful talking classes."

Parents can't always be expected to take care of their kids emotional and social needs, some of them are better than others, many are poor.
I like your ideas too.
Myself I think education should either be completely privatized (altho I'm not for privatizing things in general), or if kept public, government should give parents and children more options in how they're being educated.
Should be schools more devoted to psychology, emotions, relationships and health available, or alternatively: art, music, theatre, or more hands on stuff: physical education, trades, and then parents and kids can decide together what their needs and interests are, rather than the top-down education system being imposed upon everyone uniformly we have at present.
I mean don't get me wrong, we definitely need arithmetic and language, but after that, much of the curriculum seems arbitrary, and archaic, we don't need, that, much science for example.
I'd also like to see a lot more open discussion, questioning and creativity happening in school earlier...but of course we can't have that......

[Dan~]

Sometimes life is a bridge to greater things.
The world itself is next-to-nothing.
But that doesn't render it meaningless.
It just means it has a long distance left to travel.

[Gloominary]

@Karp

This seems like an argument supporting that learning CAN BE a form of regression, but not that it must be.

Right, you need context, but people rarely think about learning contextually, they think the more info the merrier, but you can burn your brain out with too much needless info, individually for sure, and perhaps even collectively, a lot of what you learn in school is needless too, or lacks the right narratives to meaningfully string events together, or doesn't teach people how to or encourage them to build their own narratives.

Some aspects of nature shouldn't be meddled with at all, like GMO for example, but tell that to big science.
They're just rushing into it like oh yea, no unforeseeable consequences will occur from all this, or we'll be able to deal with them as they come up, but they don't know that, it's a faith they have, in scientific and technological progress, that the more knowledge we have and use, the better, but just look what we've done with the science and tech we have so far.
We're in an ecological nightmare right now, a crisis that could overtake our civilization, our species.
We are on the precipice of another mass extinction event, and we're merrily opening yet another can of worms, and another......

[Gloominary]

@Prismatic

human beings are different from all other living things.

From my research, I tend to agree with Darwin when he said: the difference between humans and other animal minds is one of degree, not kind.

The significant differences are human beings are evolved with higher intelligence, the capacity for wisdom, morality, abstraction, progress, planning, deliberate conscious decision making and others.

Other animals do all these things, but perhaps all, most or many of them do them less in general.

From observations and inferences of the evolution of mankind to the present, it is noted the human being is a type of biological servomechanism like the following;

In control engineering a servomechanism, sometimes shortened to servo, is an automatic device that uses error-sensing negative feedback to correct the action of a mechanism.[1] It usually includes a built-in encoder or other position feedback mechanism to ensure the output is achieving the desired effect.

That sounds a bit too mechanical for my taste, but it'll probably be sufficient for this discussion.

For a servomechanism to work effective, there must be an objective [desired effect] as a target for the machinery to work on.

Right, for purely reflexive animals, there's no objective, for sentient animals, there almost always is an objective, it may be conscious or subconscious, it may be immediate or long term, but it's there.

What I meant by there being no point to life, is there being no overall point, that sometimes we need to feel pain, suffering, occasionally we may even enjoy it, that sometimes we need to regress in some way, in many ways, for our own good, we need to do away with some, or all of our wealth and power, fame and fortune, even our knowledge and understanding, food and drink, and just about all the things people normally consider good.
Our birthrate may be too high, our death rate too low.

Life zigs and zags, and it has to, again it's born and grows, it decays and dies, making way for the yet unborn, giving them a chance, to be born, for the young to grow up.
Like that existence as we know it happens when we balance opposites, rather than veer too far off in one direction towards 1 of the ever elusive sides of the double sided spectrum (but can a spectrum be triple sided or more?), that's actually when oblivion happens.
So then the point, if there is one, is to take the bad with the good, that some bad is necessary for there to be good at all.
That's your shadow on the wall...you can't get rid of your shadow now, can you?
Batman made the Joker...or did the Joker make Batman?

In the case of the servomechanism of humans, the objective is a meaningful purpose of life.
Since there cannot be a teleological [God directed] purpose of life, to fulfill the imperative of the servomechanism, humanity must develop a meaningful purpose of life.

I think we make it up by our thoughts and feelings about things, and our thoughts about our feelings, and our feelings about our thoughts.

To establish a workable meaningful purpose of life, with intelligence on hand, humanity can abstract from the experiences, observation and knowledge of human evolution and general evolution of all living things.

But you don't need a single purpose, you can't have a single purpose, we have purposes and sometimes they conflict, which is where dilemmas come in.
Our purpose is plural, and they're complex, dynamic, ephemeral things, always changing, multiplying, dividing, coalescing.

Our higher reasoning brain comes a long and tries to make sense of this jumble, so it can better manage and direct things, but it can only do this so well.
If you try to overthink it, you'll go mad.

You might say, well our purpose is to survive...but some people kill themselves, you might say, well, my, purpose is to survive...really?
You always consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously choose to maximize your survival over all your other desires, all the time?
Like even when you put ketchup on your fries?
Well that's unhealthy you know.

Nature, especially human nature, is a fuzzy thing, and we love what we hate we love, careful what you wish for.
We're always changing, growing, decaying, who you were is not who you are, who you are is not who you will be......

An observation of the above general evolution is there are no species that has emerged with a drive to be extinct immediate or as soon as possible.

Therefore one can infer all living things including human beings strive to survive at all costs until the inevitable, reproduce the next generation to preserve the continuation of the species.
The above is thus one meaningful purpose of life.
There are many other subsets of purpose of life to support the above main purpose of life.

Thus, there is no teleological purpose and meaning of life, but there has to be an imperative and humanity defined meaningful purpose of life [as above] to ensure our inherited servomechanism works effectively or else various forms of pains are generated.

Sometimes we do stuff for their own sake, the doing is part of, or, the, objective, like when we dance, sing and play, or gorge ourselves, or drink ourselves into a stupor/coma, or starve ourselves to attain that 'perfect', scrawny, hideous figure, or extreme sports and on and on.
Sometimes we do these things for their own sake primarily, not for the sake of something else.

Now evolutionists can come along and claim we always have some ulterior, subconscious or unconscious motive, that the real objective is to help us survive, or attain something that helps us survive (but sometimes these behaviors are more likely to take us to an early grave than anything else), or that the behavior is at least a by-product of something that helps us survive, or an archaic behavior that once would've helped us survive, but even if so, well it's still not helping us to survive now, so some of our behavior then isn't about surviving, some of it is all about dying.
Survival isn't an absolute, no matter how much they try to stretch it.
Just as there are many things in the body that don't help us survive at all, like cancers, or male nipples, or wisdom teeth.

Mutations in genes and the rest of the body don't have to help us survive 100% of the time, some genes are neutral or bad, parasitical, they can survive and replicate themselves because they're attached to other genes that do help us survive, just like human beings aren't all good or bad, if you want to have relationships you have to take some of the bad with the good, but good/bad themselves aren't black/white either, people can have behaviors that're purposeless, from an evolutionary perspective, but benign, they can be quirky, eccentric, and consequently refreshing, interesting, or alternatively off-putting.
Genes and corresponding behaviors can also have like advantages and disadvantages, a behavior might be beneficial in most circumstances it's triggered in, but not in all.

Not all our genes and behaviors have to be good, from a survival standpoint, they just have to be more good than not, for us to be here, they don't have to be and can't be all good, and they don't have to all have a consequentialist, sort of speak, aim, people find intrinsic value in dancing itself, or singing itself, or laughter itself, and not just for the sake of the pleasure they induce, or sometimes even in pain and suffering itself, in sadomasochism.

[Gloominary]

Sometimes life is a bridge to greater things.
The world itself is next-to-nothing.
But that doesn't render it meaningless.
It just means it has a long distance left to travel.

Yea, maybe there is a spirit realm our souls go to after death, but how dare we entertain such things on a philosophy forum.

[Prismatic567]

Now evolutionists can come along and claim we always have some ulterior, subconscious or unconscious motive, that the real objective is to help us survive, or attain something that helps us survive (but sometimes these behaviors are more likely to take us to an early grave than anything else), or that the behavior is at least a by-product of something that helps us survive, or an archaic behavior that once would've helped us survive, but even if so, well it's still not helping us to survive now, so some of our behavior then isn't about surviving, some of it is all about dying.

Survival isn't an absolute, no matter how much they try to stretch it.
Just as there are many things in the body that don't help us survive at all, like cancers, or male nipples, or wisdom teeth.

Take the whole human population, 100% which is at present 7+ billion then ask what is the % or number that is living with a drive to die prematuredly, i.e. those who are suicidal.

Note the suicide rates around the World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... icide_rate

The highest is from Sri Lanka at 34.6 per 100,000.
That is 0.0346%.

From the above insignificant % of suicides, one can infer the majority 99.97% strive to survive in some forms or another.
We can also infer the purpose of human life is to survive at all costs as based on evidence of how humans strive to survive.

It is also evident humans are endowed with males and females parts to reproduce.
Here again note the numbers of homosexuals and asexuals which at most is about 10%.
Thus 90% of human will have the drive to reproduce the next generation.

There are parts in the body that do not seem to contribute to survival, reproducing and sustaining oneself and the next generation, e.g. appendix but these are merely side issues and not elements of the main issues.

In addition, I have asked, which species of living thing emerged to seek extinction immediately? Answer is none.

Another point is nature is anchored on large numbers to ensure the success of its 'objectives' [as abstracted, not teleological]. Obviously with nature there will be variations but the majority are always driven along its main purpose, i.e. survival and reproduction of the next generation.

Thus those who are able to abstract the purpose of life and flow with it as much as possible, one will leave a very meaningful life.

For example;
'anger' is a necessary emotion for survival but we ought to note Aristotle's

Anybody can become angry - that is easy,
but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. -Aristotle

So we ought to understand what is a given within evolution to enable humans to facilitate survival and reproducing the next generation, and apply the above principle as advocated by Aristotle.

If and when we want to go against the grains of survival and reproductions, we need to understand its limits and work at it optimally. Example, a homosexual may not have any urge to have sex with the other sex and reproduce, so one has to navigate within those constraints to achieve the optimal results to have a meaningful life.

As I had stated humans are a servomechanism [biological] and must be fed with a meaningful objective in life otherwise one will be like a boat without a rudder going in circles with full of pains rather than gains.

[Gloominary]

@Prismatic

Take the whole human population, 100% which is at present 7+ billion then ask what is the % or number that is living with a drive to die prematuredly, i.e. those who are suicidal.

It's not just people who're driven to commit suicide, but people who drink, people who smoke, and so on.
If humans consciously thought about survival all the time, or a lot more than we do and only when it was beneficial to do so, maybe we'd live for thousands of years averagely, so even the average life expectancy might be premature, in that sense.

Note the suicide rates around the World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... icide_rate

The highest is from Sri Lanka at 34.6 per 100,000.
That is 0.0346%.

Yea but that's annually, the number of people who successfully commit suicide sometime during the course of their lives, is going to be much higher, maybe 1%, 0.5% or 0.2%.

From the above insignificant % of suicides, one can infer the majority 99.97% strive to survive in some forms or another.
We can also infer the purpose of human life is to survive at all costs as based on evidence of how humans strive to survive.

Almost everyone on earth listens to music, or watches sports, or intoxicates themselves recreationally, yet these things either don't help us to survive, or they at least don't obviously help us to survive, so then is listening to music the purpose of life?
No, it is one purpose among many, perhaps one of the major ones, but not the only one.
Is enjoying ourselves the purpose of life?
Perhaps, at least it's probably just as important as survival.

I will agree with you that up until now, our behavior has helped us survive more often than not, or we wouldn't be here...but maybe even that is stretching it, maybe we haven't survived so much because of our behavior, but in spite of it, maybe luck was the primary factor, *laughs*, survival of the luckiest, or maybe our bodily adaptations were the primary factor and not our behavioral ones, and most of our behavior is either neutral, in regards to survival, or even harmful, just not harmful enough to counteract our luck and bodily adaptations.

I mean you have to have some luck, too, right?
A species may be very strong, and smart, but if a giant meteor or volcano erupts in its habitat, if a series of unfortunate calamities befalls it, than it's game over.
We're here because of environment too, how do we measure whether our survival had much more to do with our environment or our bodies than our behavior?

And just because up until now most of our behavior has been good enough to get us here, doesn't mean it will be in the future, because environments change, culture changes, and the species itself changes, not always for the better, kind of like how we might be consuming ourselves into oblivion thanx to capitalism, consumerism, scientism, statism, and their underlying pathologies, some of them instinctive, many of them socially contrived, that make these systems possible.
Maybe that's what humanity is really attempting to do after all: find an interesting way to commit collective suicide.

It is also evident humans are endowed with males and females parts to reproduce.
Here again note the numbers of homosexuals and asexuals which at most is about 10%.
Thus 90% of human will have the drive to reproduce the next generation.

Don't forget contraception, celibacy, sterility and so on...but yea, we reproduce enough, that we're here, for now, granted.

There are parts in the body that do not seem to contribute to survival, reproducing and sustaining oneself and the next generation, e.g. appendix but these are merely side issues and not elements of the main issues.

But it sheds light on the main issue, because it's unlikely we'd have all these physical maladaptations and not any neuropsychological ones.

In addition, I have asked, which species of living thing emerged to seek extinction immediately? Answer is none.

Species don't emerge immediately either.

Another point is nature is anchored on large numbers to ensure the success of its 'objectives' [as abstracted, not teleological]. Obviously with nature there will be variations but the majority are always driven along its main purpose, i.e. survival and reproduction of the next generation.

But we're not abstract beings, fundamentally we're concrete, and our concrete, real selves can't, won't and probably even shouldn't attempt to live out an abstraction we've derived, or conjured, at least not 100 percent of the time or remotely close.
I mean we do abstract some things, like generally I feel like I like X, so I will pursue X, even when I occasionally don't feel like I like it, so long as no other likes or dislikes get in the way, or simply because I like being abstract, and perfect.
I concretely, and imperfectly tend to like the aesthetics of abstractions, and perfection, or they make my behavior simpler and easier to understand for me and others or whatever, we can do that to some extent, and do, but not nearly to the extent I think you're suggesting.

Thus those who are able to abstract the purpose of life and flow with it as much as possible, one will leave a very meaningful life.

You could say only that which survives has objective meaning, or be an objective, objective, because that which ultimately dies, ceases to exist, and while I see some merit in that, we're not entirely logical creatures, number one, and number two, probably nothing lasts forever, we will all certainly die as individuals, our species will almost certainly die too, or evolve into another species, one we won't recognize, or care for.
Altho we can't be certain, life and the cosmos themselves may very well end, or mutate into something totally unrecognizable.
We can try to slow down change, except when it offers a significant advantage for survival, as much as possible, we can and do sometimes make that one of our objectives, hoping for the best against all odds, but it can't be the only objective, there are many, often conflicting objectives, and they can all be abstracted, we are not and cannot ever be very much like an abstraction or a series of abstractions, but you can try.

I mean if the only way humans can survive is to gradually evolve back into a worm, would it still all be worth it, the struggle, or would that be surviving at all, since a worm is so different from what we are now?
Conversely, if our amphibian ancestors time warped from the past to the present, what would they think of us?
Would they like us?
They would probably be afraid, or they might try to bite you.

Well, the vast majority of species that've ever lived according to big science, died, and then of those that didn't die, a tiny fraction haven't, significantly (whatever that word means you or us, significantly) changed, in the hundreds of millions of years sentient life like sharks and turtles have been around.
So what're the odds of us or something very much like us still being around a billion years from now, hell, a trillions of years from now, a septillion years?
By then life itself will almost certainly have ceased to exist, or mutated into something totally unimaginable.

Also, say the only way for the human race to survive was to place us on life support machines ran by robots, while we're in a vegetative, comatose state, or the only way to survive was to condemn yourself and descendants to complete slavery and humiliation, torture and torment, a kind of hell on earth, forever and ever, would you?
Wouldn't such a state not only be painful for them, but a kind of death to everything you value about being alive?
Or a vegetative state?
Wouldn't that be a kind of death anyway?
So you see, yet another reason why it can't only be about survival.
I agree survival is one of, if not the prerogative, but it exists alongside many other prerogatives, it isn't, can't and shouldn't be an absolute, a very important consideration, yes, but not absolute.

I mean we're always doing something to survive, but we're also always expelling fluids, so should we turn that into an absolute objective or imperative?
Should human beings try to expel as many fluids as we can?
Should we build giant contraptions, fill them with fluids, only to drain them over and over again?
You see how this level of abstracting things hinges on absurdity?

In the main, I say if it feels good do it, I think we should just do what we feel like doing, and then whenever we also feel like considering the consequences and implications of what we do, weigh them out to the best of our willingness and ability to determine the best or at least a suitable course of action, and get back to just doing and being again.
I think that's really what we do, all we can and should do.

If science is entirely right about evolution, the vast majority of animals throughout earths history managed to survive reflexively, instinctively and intuitively.
There's such a thing as an organic, bottom up organization to things, spontaneous order.
Our reflexes, instincts and intuitions, many or most of them probably did evolve for a survival purpose, and now evolutionary psychology is going back and finding survival purposes for many, not all, but many, which is what you've been pointing out, and I've been finding exceptions for, to prove that it is far, far from absolute.

So then, why be so opposed to your intuitions, or our habits, that've formed over the course of decades, instincts over the course of millions of years and so on?
Constantly undermining and interfering with your instincts trying to be hyperconscious about surviving is not only painful (and pain can damage the body/brain), but also it's unnecessarily intervening in processes that're by/large probably there to help you.
We don't need to micromanage, so give into what you love, be guided by your feelings, work together with your emotions instead of against them, without knowing exactly why or how they arise, or what their aim is, and you'll probably end up improving your odds of survival anyway, 9 times out of 10.
Reason needs to do its job and let the emotions and instincts and so on do theirs, instead of trying to do everyone's work for them.

Your conscious, linear, linguistic, rational self is only a small part of your total organism and its consciousness, don't identify with it too much.
There is also consciousness itself, behind it, pure awareness, without analysis, like when you're just watching your thoughts, feelings or the objects of sensation, and also, many processes for analysis going on that can't be easily translated into words or numbers, or perhaps at all.

You could write an essay on how to shoot basket balls into hoops, and then present it to an amateur to read, but that wouldn't be a fraction as good as him throwing the ball at the hoop just once, at teaching him how to shoot hoops.
At best the language and linear, sequential thinking can give us a rough outline of things, and their value to us, a skeleton if you will, and then our various subconscious psychophysical processes fill in the fat, muscles and sinews.
So much of our thinking is beyond the faculty responsible for this discussion you and I are having right now.

Also, why try to fix what arguably isn't broken, the environment and the body have got us this far, why does the mind think it has to suddenly do all the work now, that it can easily and totally transform its nature into something totally superior, for our pleasure or survival, something that took billions of years to evolve, this delicate, fine, symbiotic harmony that exists between things?
That seems pretty presumptuous on the minds behalf.

If and when we want to go against the grains of survival and reproductions, we need to understand its limits and work at it optimally. Example, a homosexual may not have any urge to have sex with the other sex and reproduce, so one has to navigate within those constraints to achieve the optimal results to have a meaningful life.

The constraints aren't absolute, the homosexual is often able to have sex with the opposite sex, where as sometimes the heroin addict is not able to give up the heroin, and so they die.
It really depends on the individual and how hung up on survival and reproduction they are, and how much discipline and foresight they have, the social and psychological and environmental tools they at their disposal to force themselves to do this, or pull away from that.

Ultimately I think I'm arguing for a balance of all things, as being the point, even pointlessness can be and is sometimes part of the point, if there is one, and even imbalance.
It all is and isn't.
The way that can be named is not the way.
You can perhaps name part of the way, or parts of it, but you can't name it in its totality, or it wouldn't be the way.

Maybe reality will one day cease to exist as we know it or altogether, and so what is all this but a kind of playful dream/nightmare reality is having?
What good is a cat without a mouse, or vice versa?
And so the two go together, they are part of a larger cat-mouse paradigm.
If there were no more mice to catch what would the cat do...he'd be beside himself with anguish.
And so maybe the point then isn't to catch every last mouse, but to have a good game, put on a good show.
The whole, it's not the journey, it's the destination thing, and all that.

So progress, and regress, victory, and defeat...they all go together, it's all one thing, pretending it's not, trying to convince everyone and thing watching, or itself, that it's really this role it's playing, when really it's so much more.
And maybe that's why humanity is making such a mess of things, getting in a huff, trying to catch the last mouse.