I will never matter

[prototypian]

I read a book recently called "the subtle art of not giving a fuck" and the premise was that you should select only those things that matter to you to care about. The other premise is that you should accept that you don't and won't ever matter, be important, be a success, or be of value to the world. I agree with this. I know his premise was to accept this fact and have a sort of buddah like awakening. My own interpretation was that I should just give up and since I don't matter I further wont ever need to even bother. I don't want to be anything.

 

[Apathy79]

Hard to argue with the 2nd point in the broader sense. 100 years from now, none of us here now will have any impact on the world whatsoever. So you see the beetle on its back, turn it over, watch it crawl away again, and realise you helped about as much as you ever will in that moment. We can make small differences locally for brief periods. Feels nice. Guess thats the goal.

 

[waterworks]

Being significant is overrated.

 

[mythofsisyphus]

Hard to argue with the 2nd point in the broader sense. 100 years from now, none of us here now will have any impact on the world whatsoever. So you see the beetle on its back, turn it over, watch it crawl away again, and realise you helped about as much as you ever will in that moment. We can make small differences locally for brief periods. Feels nice. Guess thats the goal.

I agree with this. I think it depends completely on the lens that we take to view things. Sure, on a macro level, our lives don't matter. In the grand picture, we are meaningless, mere atoms in the tapestry of the universe - whatever happens in our lives makes no difference in the very end. But I don't think this holds up on the micro level. To the system around us... friends/family if we have these, but if not even just neighbours, animals, the general public etc., our actions do have influences on a real level. I think if we blindly followed the logic conveyed in the book we could justify horrendous and immoral acts - just because in a million years we and nobody currently alive will exist, does that make it okay to commit a heinous crime? I certainly don't think it does. And I think the flip side of this, if you agree anyway, is that if we're capable of causing harm and that seems to matter to us, then we're also capable of doing good, and this should also matter, regardless of whether it's a mere drop in the ocean in the bigger picture of things.