Why is life so miserable and sad?

[Darkover]

Because we are aware of it. Evolution is pragmatic but not personal and when it accidentally (but for a purpose) created consciousness it allowed for humans to be the only species around to realize how fucked it is for each individual life form. As a whole, life is winning, life has surrounded the planet and continues to thrive. But at the micro level things must die and waste away and experience incredible loss because new life will always replace the old. Most biological organisms on this planet don't think life is miserable and sad because they don't possess the same degree of awareness we do. Life is miserable and sad because you are a Human Being. You won the lottery by being born into the ultimate species but the consequence of such a great prize is knowledge. The knowledge that in life you won't get most of what you want and everything you care about and everyone you love will eventually all go away, not to mention the inevitable mental and physical suffering throughout the process.

It is interesting that despite all of this Homo Sapiens have still continued on for hundreds of thousands of years fighting through life, populating the entire earth, forming incredible civilizations, discovering life altering advances in technology and science, creating an endless amount of world views and religions, fighting to the death for what they love and striving to their dying breath to keep on living. This demonstrates that there is ways to live and think in this world, beyond our primal impulse to stay alive, while being fully aware of its misery.

Life, for most animals, has the simplistic purpose of surviving and perpetuating itself. We're humans. We have rational thinking: we know stuff, and we know that we know stuff, so we know we're going to die. Merely surviving and perpetuating are too below our greatness, right?

Even though all life is suffering and the universe is indifferent to our existence, we manufacture meaning: To be happy; To love, or to do what you love; To improve yourself as a human being; To leave a legacy, to be remembered; To avenge; To prove a theory or belief, to follow your religious belief. Those are valid points to a human life. And they are all pointless as well, because of the dying stuff, right?

 

[Shrike]

Because life doesn't belong to us. It belongs to evolution. It's not about knowledge. It's about all your senses and tools evolving and ultimately being used for the simple goal of furthering yourself at the expense of others, and everyone around you doing that same thing, because altering that narrative feels terrifying. Survival of the fittest, applied to sentient beings, is a deeply evil system, but we do not allow ourselves to judge something that doesn't itself experience, and it's so old and ingrained challenging that feels like committing a grave religious sin.

So instead we lie in misery, perpetuate our suffering, and pretend it's all fine.

Animals are not all so blissful, either, they're stuck in the same cycle. Their lives at times are just shorter.

 

[TiredOfAllThis]

It's rather pointless.

 

[Mirrory Me]

Thinking and experiencing those things is what makes life feel sad.

 

[sserafim]

Because we're all in hell. I truly believe that this planet is hell itself. There's so much cruelty, competition and violence, even nature itself is cruel. Everyone competes with each other just to survive (and sometimes even for fun), like they do in the animal world. It's all about survival of the fittest, only that will bring you success. The most successful step on other people to rise to the top, leaving others in the dust.

Honestly, life is just a game (of survival). Also, the fact that animals kill and eat each other to survive and that we have to eat animals (other living beings) just to survive makes the world seem even more like hell, and makes me wonder if there are higher beings feasting on our energy as well.

Adulthood is just modern-day slavery, it's about working for a living to pay the bills and costs required for survival. Why should existence even have to cost money? No one chose to be on this planet, yet we have to pay to exist on it, and work for around 50 years until we die. The fact that we have to "earn" a living is absurd. At the end of the day, everyone is just a slave to the system.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

Because we're all in hell. I truly believe that this planet is hell itself. This planet has so much cruelty, competition and violence, even nature itself is cruel. Everyone competes with each other just to survive (and sometimes even for fun), like they do in the animal world. It's all about survival of the fittest, only that will bring you success. The most successful step on other people to rise to the top, leaving others in the dust.

Honestly, life is just a game (of survival). Also, the fact that animals eat each other to survive and that we have to eat animals just to survive makes the world seem even more like hell, and makes me wonder if there are higher beings feasting on our energy as well.

Adulthood is just modern-day slavery, it's about working for a living to pay the bills and costs required for survival. Why should existence even have to cost money? No one chose to be on this planet, yet we have to pay to exist on it, and work for around 50 years until we die. The fact that we have to "earn" a living is absurd. At the end of the day, everyone is just a slave to the system.

Exactly this. This is the main reason for life being miserable. If humanity just cooperated with each other instead of competing with each other, we could potentially develop complicated robots that can do the work necessary for us. Hell, when I was younger, I didn't want to work then but I did have this idea to work towards developing technology enough to make sure that future generations didn't have to work.

However, as I learnt about the true nature of humanity and how we compete with each other, even if technology were to exist that would make most fields of work obsolete, humans would still find ways to make each other miserable because of the idea of competition. Hence I quickly made up my mind that I don't want to willingly participate in this as humans love making each other miserable and I don't want to be miserable along with them too.

Many people, despite being enslaved by the competition, justify the competition and even act cruel towards those who are homeless instead of the 1% who have the majority of the wealth in the first place.

It's sickening. Why do most people continue to justify this hell? Is it because they're content enough with the small amounts of time of happiness they get whenever they aren't in work? I will never understand it

 

[divinemistress36]

Because we're all in hell. I truly believe that this planet is hell itself. This planet has so much cruelty, competition and violence, even nature itself is cruel. Everyone competes with each other just to survive (and sometimes even for fun), like they do in the animal world. It's all about survival of the fittest, only that will bring you success. The most successful step on other people to rise to the top, leaving others in the dust.

Honestly, life is just a game (of survival). Also, the fact that animals kill and eat each other to survive and that we have to eat other living beings just to survive makes the world seem even more like hell, and makes me wonder if there are higher beings feasting on our energy as well.

Adulthood is just modern-day slavery, it's about working for a living to pay the bills and costs required for survival. Why should existence even have to cost money? No one chose to be on this planet, yet we have to pay to exist on it, and work for around 50 years until we die. The fact that we have to "earn" a living is absurd. At the end of the day, everyone is just a slave to the system.

I believe this planet is hell too

 

[TiredOfAllThis]

And I never understood those who mistreat animals, for example. My cat is the sweetest one I ever met - yet the previous owners were neglecting her. To the point she had liver issues. When I see anything like that, my heart bleeds. I'm so tired of such things...

 

[UKscotty]

It's all about perspective I think. Depression makes us see life as pointless and hellish.

Without depression, life is generally full of happiness and joy. Depression messes with our ability to produce dopamine so we feel sad and helpless.

 

[piryohae3]

All this manufactured misery was made possible by this fucked up system created by humans. Worrying about jobs, money, paying bills...it's all so fucking stupid.

 

[TiredOfAllThis]

The more I know about the life - the less I want to live

 

[sserafim]

The more I know about the life - the less I want to live

All this manufactured misery was made possible by this fucked up system created by humans. Worrying about jobs, money, paying bills...it's all so fucking stupid.

Literally

 

[TiredOfAllThis]

Life can be more or less straightforward, just got to avoid abusers.