I truly believe I don’t matter

[prototypian]

I realize this is a nihilistic view and certainly that has been beat to death my amateur philosophers and people with angst but I truly believe it and it thwarts my help in therapy especially cognitive behavior stuff.

I view the world as being a huge enormous incomprehensible number of people and scarce resources. As we have grown and resources have diminished competition means that if you do not wish to compete you are of no value. This is dismissed by the population who say "there is a choice for everyone to make"; the truth is that there is no choice. You must compete and become alpha and work to "win" or you have no value.

When I look at my 30 plus years of workingnprofessionallly I can point to nothing that is of long term value. Will anyone care in a history book that a spreadsheet specifically balanced and a report was filed for an auditor. Setting aside the lame system of value argument for whatever justification one has, if my worth is compare to that of Mozart or some great writer or mathematician would there have been a point where I was the only person who could save the world by getting a quarterly report completed. And as I have unfailingly completed these quarterly reports what exactly has this helped for humanity. Don't answer that it has justified something. What people have these spreadsheets saved or inspired? Besides havigg by them done because they were done what have they helped. In a similar vein, what good has a minimum wage sandwich maker done? If they weren't there would someone truly go hungry? And is it really a problem in the face of all of the strife on our planet that somehow profit doesn't show up at the local sandwich shop on a given day? Would the eclipse have stopped or a war started? We are taught these values because they benefit people who are already benefitting. We aren't being taught these values to inspire us and the reason to be inspired isn't to actually help an individual be meaningful, it is to avoid that person raealizing that it doesn't matter at all.

 

[Alexei_Kirillov]

Take too many cogs out of the machine and it stops functioning.

 

[Traveller12724]

I realize this is a nihilistic view and certainly that has been beat to death my amateur philosophers and people with angst but I truly believe it and it thwarts my help in therapy especially cognitive behavior stuff.

I view the world as being a huge enormous incomprehensible number of people and scarce resources. As we have grown and resources have diminished competition means that if you do not wish to compete you are of no value. This is dismissed by the population who say "there is a choice for everyone to make"; the truth is that there is no choice. You must compete and become alpha and work to "win" or you have no value.

When I look at my 30 plus years of workingnprofessionallly I can point to nothing that is of long term value. Will anyone care in a history book that a spreadsheet specifically balanced and a report was filed for an auditor. Setting aside the lame system of value argument for whatever justification one has, if my worth is compare to that of Mozart or some great writer or mathematician would there have been a point where I was the only person who could save the world by getting a quarterly report completed. And as I have unfailingly completed these quarterly reports what exactly has this helped for humanity. Don't answer that it has justified something. What people have these spreadsheets saved or inspired? Besides havigg by them done because they were done what have they helped. In a similar vein, what good has a minimum wage sandwich maker done? If they weren't there would someone truly go hungry? And is it really a problem in the face of all of the strife on our planet that somehow profit doesn't show up at the local sandwich shop on a given day? Would the eclipse have stopped or a war started? We are taught these values because they benefit people who are already benefitting. We aren't being taught these values to inspire us and the reason to be inspired isn't to actually help an individual be meaningful, it is to avoid that person raealizing that it doesn't matter at all.

You are right in your nihilistic view but I think you are forgetting something, when we are born in this world, we don't realize that we are born in some kind of prison that we are forced to stay in for 80 or so years assuming you die naturally of old age, so society has created all these things including your job + watching games + going to concerts + .... for people to do while they wait for the 80 years or so to elapse and for them to die. So you may not matter but since you are stuck on this planet, you kinda have to do something while you wait, otherwise you will get bored out of your mind, I think society tried to solve that problem

 

[Socrates Respecter]

I realize this is a nihilistic view and certainly that has been beat to death my amateur philosophers and people with angst but I truly believe it and it thwarts my help in therapy especially cognitive behavior stuff.

I view the world as being a huge enormous incomprehensible number of people and scarce resources. As we have grown and resources have diminished competition means that if you do not wish to compete you are of no value. This is dismissed by the population who say "there is a choice for everyone to make"; the truth is that there is no choice. You must compete and become alpha and work to "win" or you have no value.

When I look at my 30 plus years of workingnprofessionallly I can point to nothing that is of long term value. Will anyone care in a history book that a spreadsheet specifically balanced and a report was filed for an auditor. Setting aside the lame system of value argument for whatever justification one has, if my worth is compare to that of Mozart or some great writer or mathematician would there have been a point where I was the only person who could save the world by getting a quarterly report completed. And as I have unfailingly completed these quarterly reports what exactly has this helped for humanity. Don't answer that it has justified something. What people have these spreadsheets saved or inspired? Besides havigg by them done because they were done what have they helped. In a similar vein, what good has a minimum wage sandwich maker done? If they weren't there would someone truly go hungry? And is it really a problem in the face of all of the strife on our planet that somehow profit doesn't show up at the local sandwich shop on a given day? Would the eclipse have stopped or a war started? We are taught these values because they benefit people who are already benefitting. We aren't being taught these values to inspire us and the reason to be inspired isn't to actually help an individual be meaningful, it is to avoid that person raealizing that it doesn't matter at all.

the whole goal of CBT is to get rid of the "wrong" beliefs that one has. But who decides which opinions are right and which are wrong? What if it is indeed true that most of us have no value? Then a CB therapist just ends up gaslighting us. That's why I'm skeptical of therapy. I'm not sure if it can help someone who is a critical thinker and who is capable of deep self reflection.

That aside, I think what you should try is radical acceptance instead. Just admit the truth and learn how to cope with it if necessary. I will offer some thoughts that may prove helpful.

First, I agree with you that the "everyone has a value" line is a total lie. It takes money and power (social status) to have value in a society. Otherwise nobody really cares, at least when it comes to action. But this is social value we're talking about, not the moral value. You can still believe that you as a human being have a moral value (in some Kantian sense maybe) even if you lack social value. This idea is what some thinks prevents us from stepping on the dangerous path of social darwinism or something like that. Is the fact that you have moral value comforting? I don't know. It may be.

In terms of social value, it's true that the vast majority of us do not really matter. We're totally dispensable as individuals. A plummer gets ill or or dies - they will get replaced in no time. They do not have much social value, unlike some brilliant scientist or politician. If all plummers suddenly disappeared then our civilization would probably collapse but this fact says nothing about our value as individual plummers. So you're right. Compared to some brilliant individuals who have much more societal impact, we mean almost nothing.

But that is not to say that we lack ANY social value. We have value, even if that value is small. It's still something, even if it's pathetic. So we need not fall into complete nihilism. Furthermore, when you take Mozart or some great mathematician, ask yourself, how much value do they actually have? They may have more value than you, but it doesn't mean their lives are FULL of value. You're making a comparison. How much value do they have in the grand scheme of things? It's pathetic. Mozart died and the world moved on. Even if he never composed his stuff the world would still move on. Truth is, even such great people do not have much value and the discoveries that they have made or the stuff that they have created either does not matter that much in the greater scheme of things or are dispensable (do you really think that if Bell never invented the phone, someone else wouldn't invent it later?)

tl;dr you're mostly right, we're insignificant and dispensable, but I think there are considerations that can help you to cope (in the sense of accepting the situation and living without discomfort, not in the sense of self-delusion) better with our insignificance