Thread: Please stop taking life so seriously.

It's amazing isn't it? We are so small and yet for a long time we believed ourselves to be the center of the universe. I can't blame people for taking life too seriously. Human beings naturally strive to develop and become greater. We crave self-actualization.

But hey... There's nothing wrong with parties and road trips

Not at all, we should look at ourselves because we are important, we just have to look at the big picture too.

And welcome to dreamviews.

Originally Posted by mooseantlers

Not at all, we should look at ourselves because we are important, we just have to look at the big picture too.

And welcome to dreamviews.

Thank you

Originally Posted by tommo

We are not part of the universe as a whole? You mean the non-human (or similarly capable, importance-applying animal) part of the universe.

It's really not a difficult concept. If you don't have the basic reading comprehension to distinguish the meaningful difference between "a part of the universe" and "the entire universe" then I really don't know how else I could say it to you.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

It wouldn't be too unreasonable to suggest that the reason we consider things which are "smaller" than other things to be in any way different in terms of meaning or utility or even relevance is something to do with the comparative force it can generally output within our individual lives (for that is after all, everything we are and know). The bigger the knife, the more scared you are, the smaller the animal the easier for you to kill. This doesn't hold strictly, but this is a definite general tendency within the lives of human beings towards things being smaller having something of a lesser importance or need to be taken into account in terms of survival and evolutionary importance.

Resultantly if we find us thinking ourselves rendered meaningless or we consider everything far less serious or consequential as a result of considering our scale (as this thread indeed does) we must consider that the only reason we have for the nihilistic shift in perspective is actually one based on a deep rooted and absolutely context and environmentally based instinct (that is, of something smaller outputting less influence into our immediate lives). What in your mind seems to be profound, celestial, and high above simple primal urges, can in fact be seen as little more than a simple formalisation and reflection of one of those very primal instinctual biases.

The universe can only deem us unimportant if we do, since we are the only known part of it that creates the concept of importance.

Originally Posted by saltyseedog

everything is of equal importance

Except Kriss Angel. That guy's far more important than anything else.

Hmmm I don't know I think David Copperfield owns Kriss.

This rock is alive

Until we find a planet with evidence of sentient life, or encounter another probe in space, then we must assume we are if not important then significant, as we could be the first beings in the universe to explore it.

ITT: the importance of stuff is proportional to its physical size.

Oh dear.

Originally Posted by CRAZY BONE

The quote and image is rather relaxing.

Your body consists of 100,000,000,000,000 cells, each of which is an extremely complex system of biochemical processes involving the motions of 100,000,000,000,000 atoms, each atom being about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller than you are.

This means you are extremely fucking important, and the act of twitching your finger is vastly more important than the collision of a thousand galaxies would be for its constituent stars.

Chilled out now?

Originally Posted by Xei

Your body consists of 100,000,000,000,000 cells, each of which is an extremely complex system of biochemical processes involving the motions of 100,000,000,000,000 atoms, each atom being about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller than you are.

This means you are extremely fucking important, and the act of twitching your finger is vastly more important than the collision of a thousand galaxies would be for its constituent stars.

Chilled out now?

No, now I'm all tense. I feel like I should be using my cosmic importance for something now.

Something... important, I mean.

But what!

Originally Posted by Xei

Your body consists of 100,000,000,000,000 cells, each of which is an extremely complex system of biochemical processes involving the motions of 100,000,000,000,000 atoms, each atom being about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller than you are.

This means you are extremely fucking important, and the act of twitching your finger is vastly more important than the collision of a thousand galaxies would be for its constituent stars.

Chilled out now?

Why should I be stressed out, on edge and miserable all the time? Would it help anything or anybody? And no, it doesn't change how I feel. It just makes everything feel more cold and academic instead of hot and emotional. Like everything's just complex machinery, no matter what happens. There's not a fucking thing I can do on a large scale anyway.

Originally Posted by Xei

This means you are extremely fucking important, and the act of twitching your finger is vastly more important than the collision of a thousand galaxies would be for its constituent stars.

We're as important as the worms which feed on our corpses.

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

Why should I be stressed out, on edge and miserable all the time? Would it help anything or anybody? And no, it doesn't change how I feel. It just makes everything feel more cold and academic instead of hot and emotional. Like everything's just complex machinery, no matter what happens. There's not a fucking thing I can do on a large scale anyway.

But you are on a large scale! You're gigantic!

A hundred trillion tiny organisms owe their entire existence to you; that's ten thousand times greater than the population of Earth!

Seriously though, you missed the entire point of my post. lrn2subtext.

Originally Posted by Xei

But you are on a large scale! You're gigantic!

Well there's no need for that.

Originally Posted by Xei

But you are on a large scale! You're gigantic!

A hundred trillion tiny organisms owe their entire existence to you; that's ten thousand times greater than the population of Earth!

Seriously though, you missed the entire point of my post. lrn2subtext.

Well, I'm lost, so please enlighten me on the subtext.

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

Well, I'm lost, so please enlighten me on the subtext.

It was a reductio ad absurdum of the oft propagated idea that the relative size of a human to the horsehead nebula has any bearing upon the value of human experience.

Originally Posted by Xei

It was a reductio ad absurdum of the oft propagated idea that the relative size of a human to the horsehead nebula has any bearing upon the value of human experience.

Well, the extra perspective that we're not "alone" in the universe and that there's vastly more out there that will still exist long after we're all gone helps to ease the mind. Like any illness or depression: once you see that there are lots of people out there who suffer or have suffered similarly to you, it doesn't make it less important, but it does make you less alone.

Well, there's billions of creatures on Earth that'll continue to exist long after we're gone. Beyond Earth... that's still an open question.

Originally Posted by Xei

Well, there's billions of creatures on Earth that'll continue to exist long after we're gone. Beyond Earth... that's still an open question.

lul nothing can outlive kriss angel

The fact that we are so small, and survive (as a species) in such a chaotic universe, is all the more reason to take life so seriously. Of course, relative to the universe, we are tiny. But consider the complexity of human life, or of all life, and how there are literally millions or trillions of things that can (and do) go wrong within a human to cause death. Yet, we live for tens and tens of years. Enough time to create relationships, to attain rediculous amounts of knowledge. Enough time to explore a considerable amount of this planet. Life is remarrkable, and worth taking seriously.

It's funny (not haha funny) that I found this thread today. I got a call from my mom today, my stepfather died yesterday.