What is the point of doing anything?

Doing nothing is doing something. We can't avoid some kind of action, even if it's passively sitting in a chair DOING nothing until we die and turn into slime.

Here now, this thread is months old. But what the heck.

I just wanted to point out to Vikorr that whatever a person is able to learn from anything, be it a text of written words or any other experience, depends on that person's ability to extract useful information from it. Your response to this old post is yet an example of how that ability isn't neccesarily equally strong in all of us.

Oh come now Cyr :
- You're blaming me for your failings at the English Language?
- You want the literal meaning of your words to be ignored, and for us to make assumptions about what you actually mean?

Funnily enough, I agree somewhat with the body of your initial post that I replied to (and there are a number of things I don't quite agree with). However, your headline sentence which I quoted is just...not right. And the body doesn't appear to change it the headline sentence in any substantial way.

When it comes to the english language I am pretty confident that I know what I am doing with it.

And it is never my literal meanings of anything you are reading. It is your literal meaning, regardless of who put the words there in the first place. If you have different associations to a word you will understand my posts differently than I do myself. Not that either of us is neccesarily right or wrong, it's just a matter of how we define things for ourselves.

Hah, someone got me at what I've been saying all along about definitions.

Still, I doubt that you define 'feeling good right now' much differently to what I do.

I probably don't vikorr, but as our brains work pretty fast, getting from "you're a pretty girl" to "but your boyfriend is my friend" is pretty instantaneous.

Same with, that white powder looks fun, but it's not worth the headache in the morning.

This is an old post, I'm aware of that, but recently my feelings have drawn me back to it.

Everything in life seems to always find its way back to its own futility. Everything that we pursue, when taken as a whole, very much seems futile. This seems to be the ultimate problem in life; how do we reconcile our desire for purpose with the apparent futility of existence? How do we overcome the futility of life and find a way to make life meaningful?

For example, I was reading Sartre's book "Existentialism & Humanism", and I was thinking about the ideas contained in it, trying to determine how much I agree or disagree with those ideas, and trying to determine the limitations of those ideas. After a while, I found myself feeling that this process seems completely futile. I realized that I didn't know why I was choosing to do this. There was no reason to do anything else either.

But that is the problem, the problem of futility.

yes...now you are speaking of functions...and you are right of course !

It's a great post, EP,worthy of revival. I used to feel that everything IS ultimately futile because it ends in death. Now I see all I do not as futile means to a meaningless end--oblivion--but as ends in themselves. Now everything I do is its own end point, like hearing or playing Bach or painting abstract images. As for oblivion, well "I" will not be in a state of oblivion since, ontologically speaking, there is no "I" now, and there surely won't be even a psychological "me" after dying. Moreover, when "my" life comes to end, that will be "for me" the end of time. "I" will have lived forever, "my" forever. And I will have taken everything--all the so-called objects of "my" experience"--with me.
If you ask "me" that's an optimistic but realistic interpretation of our situation..

,..."your" information actually will be flying around forever JL...

I feel like what you're labeling as doubt if really just curiosity. Doubt is always "what if". And its natural to weigh the what ifs before you make any decision, especially when it seems unnecessary (certainty)

What is the point of doing anything?

One point could be to learn to be unselfish (it’s a whole life’s work): to try to act unselfishly, to try not to act selfishly, and to transform neutral actions into unselfish ones by changing one’s motivation for doing them.

To recognize and to experience the quality derived from a life of just being and acting unselfishly. Many believe the self is a fiction so to weaken the negative aspects of it uncovers a happiness not conditioned by this fiction. I’d say happiness is more illusive for the purely selfish.

i myself have sat and ponder the idea, of what meaning can i possible derive for any actions I take, to the essential start of each today. As the dots connect my life together i see no purpose behind my existance or the lives we recreate. only to realize there is nothing true about this world as you mention. this is were i find myself wondering my position in a bedlam. or ending this pointless task.

Amen.

the point of existence is not about doing nor about any thing, when the point of existence is to b real, which makes sense literally

truth makes everything and everyone and every task and every move just real

take it for real and get down forever

Maybe to realize how much left is to do? how can you know if you are doing something if you don't know what is that thing? when we say anything, what this includes? every single thing that i know, you know, or we know?

I love this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wf8yEb1cwY

ur point of doing is to keep ur free will alive which is about to take advantage from objective existence as a positive fact always
that is why u keep meaning doing things as rights u gain to freely profit from existence as first class citizens life