Yeah, the fundamental equations governing the evolution of the universe make no reference to humans, but that was a silly place to search for meaning to begin with. I would also ask for a more precise definition of what you mean by “matters”. If you quit your job, you will certainly cause various other things to happen in the world, if you have children their standard of life will drop, if you die people will miss you and grieve you. Your life is causally connected to the rest of the universe.
If what you want is some form of “existential satisfaction”, like wanting the answer to a question that you don’t know how to phrase, or you feel like there has to be more to life than the mundane day-to-day stuff, then the answer is meditation, lots and lots of meditation (most effectively of the buddhist variety). In my opinion meditative awakening is pretty much the only thing that actually answers the fundamental question of meaning. If you’re somewhat unpatient and non-risk-averse then 5-meo-dmt does a good job of temporarily catapulting you to the end of the path, but be careful and do lots of research before trying.
If what you want is some form of “existential satisfaction”, like wanting the answer to a question that you don’t know how to phrase, or you feel like there has to be more to life than the mundane day-to-day stuff, then the answer is meditation, lots and lots of meditation (most effectively of the buddhist variety). In my opinion meditative awakening is pretty much the only thing that actually answers the fundamental question of meaning. If you’re somewhat unpatient and non-risk-averse then 5-meo-dmt does a good job of temporarily catapulting you to the end of the path, but be careful and do lots of research before trying.
I want to strongly push back against this. Do not do this (either the meditation or the hallucinogens) unless you want to, with a terrifyingly high probability, break your brain (i.e. do serious, quite likely irreversible, damage to your cognitive capabilities).
(The worst thing is that you won’t even get ‘meaning’ out of such things, only an illusion of meaning… but even if that weren’t true, I would still strongly urge you to never do such things.)
I understand your worry about drugs, but not at all the worry that meditation has a “terrifyingly high probability” (which means… 0.1%? 1%? 5%? 20%? 50%?) to “break your brain”. Why do you believe that?
Are you referring to Dark Night stuff in the Daniel Ingram sense or something else? I’d agree temporary emotional turmoil is likely past a cerain point, and might be extreme in certain cases, but I haven’t heard of decreases in cognitive capabilities (it certainly didn’t do that for me). We’ll just have to disagree about whether the meaning brought by high-level meditation is real or not, since I’m not sure how to respond to that except to quote personnal experience and the reports of other people who have done lots of meditation.
Yeah, the fundamental equations governing the evolution of the universe make no reference to humans, but that was a silly place to search for meaning to begin with. I would also ask for a more precise definition of what you mean by “matters”. If you quit your job, you will certainly cause various other things to happen in the world, if you have children their standard of life will drop, if you die people will miss you and grieve you. Your life is causally connected to the rest of the universe.
If what you want is some form of “existential satisfaction”, like wanting the answer to a question that you don’t know how to phrase, or you feel like there has to be more to life than the mundane day-to-day stuff, then the answer is meditation, lots and lots of meditation (most effectively of the buddhist variety). In my opinion meditative awakening is pretty much the only thing that actually answers the fundamental question of meaning. If you’re somewhat unpatient and non-risk-averse then 5-meo-dmt does a good job of temporarily catapulting you to the end of the path, but be careful and do lots of research before trying.
I want to strongly push back against this. Do not do this (either the meditation or the hallucinogens) unless you want to, with a terrifyingly high probability, break your brain (i.e. do serious, quite likely irreversible, damage to your cognitive capabilities).
(The worst thing is that you won’t even get ‘meaning’ out of such things, only an illusion of meaning… but even if that weren’t true, I would still strongly urge you to never do such things.)
I understand your worry about drugs, but not at all the worry that meditation has a “terrifyingly high probability” (which means… 0.1%? 1%? 5%? 20%? 50%?) to “break your brain”. Why do you believe that?
Are you referring to Dark Night stuff in the Daniel Ingram sense or something else? I’d agree temporary emotional turmoil is likely past a cerain point, and might be extreme in certain cases, but I haven’t heard of decreases in cognitive capabilities (it certainly didn’t do that for me). We’ll just have to disagree about whether the meaning brought by high-level meditation is real or not, since I’m not sure how to respond to that except to quote personnal experience and the reports of other people who have done lots of meditation.