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Dec. 29, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:31
1243 The Meaning of Life Part 1 - Meaninglessness

Making friends with meaninglessness.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
Sorry I haven't posted a video in a while.
Last Friday, the 19th of December, 2008 at 9.30 or so a.m.
Christina and I welcomed our beautiful daughter Isabella into the world, so I've been a tad consumed with stewing in fatherly adoration and worship, and so I hope that you don't mind.
We've been a little lax in videos lately, but I have been cooking on an idea which I think will be of interest to you, which is a three-part It's a mini-series on the meaning of life, which I think is really, really important, and something which all philosophers seem to want to take a swing at, and I suppose I would not count myself as an exception.
So, the first part of the argument that I would like to make is against Meaning against the idea that there is such a thing as the meaning of life, or an external purpose that exists objectively or independently of our consciousness, which, if we follow, gives our lives purpose and content.
That's not something that I believe in, and I think I can make a case that there is no such thing, and then I can talk about why we would want to be good and pursue the truth, regardless of the fact that there is no such thing as the meaning of life.
When we say the meaning of life, of course, we use the word life to include all living organisms, from the gray area of viruses on upwards.
Now, you and I both have florid bacteria that lives in our intestines that helps Bacteria is alive, of course, but we would not say that the life of that bacteria has any kind of meaning.
The life of a worm does not have any kind of meaning.
The life of a gecko lizard does not have any kind of meaning.
So there's no such thing as meaning inherent to life.
So we actually mean, of course, meaning inherent to human life.
And even that is not particularly precise.
A man in a coma is a human being who is alive, but we would not say that a man in a coma, that his life has any meaning.
Human cells aren't enough.
We would look at our little toe, and we would not say that the life of our little toe has meaning, whether our little toe is alive or Dies from frostbite.
Life does not have meaning.
Our little finger, our earlobe, one eyeball, these aspects of our bodies, the organs of our bodies, do not have any meaning.
Of course, biologically speaking, our little toe is only using us as a gigantic lever to make other little toes, new little toes.
But we would not say that any one of our organs in particular has meaning.
Its existence, its life, so to speak, has meaning.
So, really, when we talk about the meaning of life, we're talking about, you know, the couple of square centimeters of consciousness that is, in effect, of The chemicals and energy that go on in the wetware, in our physical brain.
That that is where meaning magically occurs.
So there's no meaning in the existence or non-existence of a rock, of a rain cloud, of a little toe, of intestinal parasites, of tapeworms, of worms, of geckos.
Of our liver, of our spleen, if our appendix is taken out and dies in a jar, we don't say that it has lost its meaning for existence.
There is none. So all of our organs, every single piece of matter in the universe, has no meaning whatsoever.
But then we reserve, in some magical way, meaning for this particular organ up here, the brain.
And just before six million determinists come swarming down the pipeline and say, aha, but that is exactly our argument with regards to free will, I don't require the existence of meaning to debate these issues with you, but of course, and I will get to a video on determinism soon, but determinists require free will in order to debate with you, so that's the self-contradictory position in a way that arguing against the existence of meaning is not.
Now meaning, much like a truth, much like the scientific method, much like numbers, much like concepts, does not exist in the real world.
There's no meaning that's out there that we can see with a telescope or record with a spectrograph.
There's no such thing as meaning out there in the same way that there's no such thing as truth There are ways of executing the scientific method that are recordable, but there is no such thing as the scientific method in the real world in the way that there is a rock or gamma rays or dark matter, if they ever find it, and that kind of stuff.
Meaning clearly does not exist in the universe.
Meaning clearly does not have any validity or applicability, even for those who suggest that it is valid, to any other form of life Other than human beings, or for any other organ for human beings except the brain.
So the question is, is there meaning inherent within the brain?
And I would argue that there is not.
There is matter and energy in the brain.
My argument is, and I'll make the case, I've made it before in videos, In podcasts, there is free will within the brain.
There are certain effects that we can record of the brain's activities, but there is no meaning embedded within the mind.
In the same way, there's no truth embedded within the mind.
Truth is a relationship between thoughts, concepts, and empirical reality, or the logic we derive from empirical reality, but there's no such thing as meaning in the world, and there's no such thing as meaning embedded within our brain like a crayon up Homer Simpson's nose.
There is no such thing as meaning in the world.
So, why do we have such a concept?
Well, I would argue, and I will, in fact, argue, that here's a little mental experiment when it comes to meaning, because my argument is that meaning, the desire for the pursuit of meaning in your life, is actually a manifestation of depression, of unhappiness, of subpar functioning.
So, think back...
I apologize for the crude example, but I am a materialist.
Think back to the most mind-blowing orgasm that you ever had, you know, when you had your full-on O face, you know...
Yeah, I know, that makes it a little confusing as to why I ever had a child.
When you had your most mind-blowing orgasm, you didn't really, during that moment of ecstasy, you didn't really worry about the meaning of life, did you?
You didn't really... Worry or feel that your life lacked meaning or was empty or purposeless or anything, because you were experiencing extreme joy.
If you have really striven hard for a particular goal, winning Wimbledon or whatever it is, getting a girl to go out with you who you really like or something like that, if you've really striven hard for a particular goal and you've achieved it, Then in that moment, which may not last forever, it doesn't, right?
But in that moment where you have achieved something great and a very full of pride and happiness and joy and satisfaction and accomplishment and all those kinds of good things, in those moments you don't worry about or think about the meaning of life.
Why? Because there's nothing missing.
From your life in those moments.
There's nothing missing from your life in those moments.
When I first saw my daughter emerging like a golem between two pieces of liver, I did not and saw how beautiful she was and how healthy she was and held her in my arms for the first time.
There is a feeling of completion, of perfection, of nothing needs to be added to my life.
And I feel that way for the most part.
Nothing needs to be added to my life to make it better, to make it happier, to make it More joyful to give it meaning.
Because there's nothing missing, I'm not in pursuit of something, right?
I mean, if my hat flies off my head, I will go and pursue my hat.
Why? Because I'm missing a hat.
But if my hat's on my head and I'm comfortable, I don't feel that I'm missing a hat.
So, when we are happy and complete and have achieved, and I would argue, as I will in the third part of the series, when we have achieved virtue, consistency, self-respect, integrity, and so on...
Then we don't go off in hot pursuit of meaning because there's nothing that is deficient within our life, right?
If happiness is up here and if we lack meaning, we're down here, we've got to fill that gap with meaning.
Well, if our happiness is up here, there is no gap to be filled with meaning.
So meaning is a state of deficiency, a state of desire, a state of you've got to pee, or a state of hunger, or a state of you're too cold or you're too hot, something that needs to be changed in order for happiness to be achieved.
In other words, a desire A desire for the meaning of life is a confession of fundamental systemic dysthymia or depression or unhappiness or yearning or something missing.
Something is incomplete. Something is missing.
And if we look at it that way, then we can more clearly understand that when we say, when you hear someone say, well, there's no meaning to life, or what is the meaning of life?
Sorry, I'm saying there's no meaning to life.
What is the meaning of life?
I want to have meaning in my life.
I miss meaning in my life.
Then what they're doing is they're really saying, I'm not happy.
I'm depressed.
I am not living life in a state of happiness and joy and connection and love and intimacy and self-respect and virtue and all those kinds of good things.
So, once we understand that a confession of a desire for meaning is a confession of unhappiness, we can begin to understand why It doesn't work to pursue meaning in life, right?
So if I say, let's say, I can't be happy unless I can capture me an invisible pink unicorn, right?
As soon as I can capture that invisible pink uniform, by God, I'm going to be overjoyed, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to be complete, everything's going to be wonderful, I will be able to levitate with ecstasy.
Well, of course, the challenge is that there is no such thing as an invisible pink unicorn, and therefore, if I say I am unhappy but I will be made happy through my acquisition of an invisible pink unicorn, then clearly my original unhappiness, right, I'm unhappy and so I feel I need to stuff the gap with the invisible pink unicorn, my original unhappiness, right, happiness here, perfect happiness is here, my current state is down here, I need to fill this gap with an invisible unicorn, well, I'm going to then go off in hot pursuit of an invisible unicorn, but...
Of course, an invisible unicorn does not exist.
So what's happened is that my gap is going to increase, right?
Because now I have the frustration of trying to find this invisible pink unicorn, of thinking I have one, and it turns out that I don't.
And this is what happens when we go off in hot pursuit for meaning in our lives.
The meaning does not exist in our lives.
There is no meaning in the universe.
There is no meaning in our consciousness.
There is no meaning in our bodies. There is no meaning in our boxer shorts.
And so, when we go off, because we feel unhappy, we go off in hot pursuit of meaning.
We are trying to chase an invisible pink unicorn to make us happy, which only increases our unhappiness and dissatisfaction, because now we have this illusion that if we do X, we will become happy.
But when we do X, i.e., we try to pursue and achieve meaning, what happens is we become more unhappy and more unhappy.
And then as we become more unhappy, we become more desperately in quest for meaning.
And this is the vicious cycle that occurs, right?
People feel unhappy, so they go search for meaning, which makes them more unhappy, which means they feel they need meaning more, which makes them more unhappy.
And because you're going in the wrong direction, there's a kind of desperation and resentment and nihilism and panic and determinism and agnosticism and all of these kind of things come out.
In your personality and a feeling that this existentialist feeling that life is somehow impossible and despair and unhappiness is our sole goal.
Or the other thing that occurs for people who set your meaning is they feel like, well, You know, the average doofus down the road who watches TV a la Al Bundy with his hand under his belt, he's not searching for meaning, so it is a curse of the intelligent and self-aware and sensitive to search for meaning and not find it.
So then when people say life is meaningless, they say that in a bitter kind of way.
They say that in a resentful kind of way, like they've been cheated, that life should be meaningful, but it's meaningless, and that's bad.
As opposed to the way that I will suggest we approach the question, which is to say, life is meaningless.
Life is meaningless. And that's actually a kind of liberation.
And in the next video I'll talk about why, because if we're unhappy relative to real happiness, So what happens is people will then offer us invisible pink unicorns to make us happy, right? And so it's in people's interests, it's in institutions' interests, to create in us a desire for meaning, an external desire for meaning.
It is inflicted upon us as children, through religion, of course, is a big one, patriotism, the automatic, quote, virtue of the family, and so on.
So people will say, you need meaning in your life, and the meaning is going to come from following God's will, or serving your country, or joining the army, or becoming wealthy, or buying this, or buying that, becoming pretty, whatever.
So people will give you an invisible pink unicorn which doesn't exist, right?
Because there's no such thing as God.
God's will is just an invisible pink unicorn that will lead you to be more and more hungry and more and more exploitable and controllable by other people.
So when we say life is meaningless, we free ourselves from this addiction to quest out and to try and chase down meaning like a questing beast.
And it actually allows us to stop pursuing this crazy march off a cliff called Hunting the Invisible Pink Unicorn of Meaning, and actually begin to do something which really genuinely builds happiness within our own lives, which I will get to in the next video.
Thank you so much for watching, as always, and thank you so much everybody who helped promote the True News series.
I will get back to those soon.
I just need to find my balance in this new family situation, which is a Truly joyful and wonderful experience.
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