Yeah, but if you're going to believe the whole "ultimately we're just dust on the wind" point then everything is meaningless and you may as well kill yourself now.
The better alternative is to find what pleasure and satisfaction you can while you're here.
I don't really understand that line of reasoning at all. And probably never will.
Ultimately we're just dust in the wind. That's a fact. Our life is very short, as proved by all the research in longevity and how much we want it to succeed.
In my mind this 'you only have one shot at it' aspect only makes life way more important than if there were reincarnation, or life after death or any of those things.
It makes life infinitely more valuable. We don't enjoy life 'despite' its one-shot-itis, we enjoy life MORE because of it.
We don't enjoy life 'despite' its one-shot-itis, we enjoy life MORE because of it.
I'm sorry, but nothing I've seen out there bears this out.
For the most part, people get through their days by ignoring their mortality somehow. If this wasn't the case there would be nothing to explain the plethora of people out there working dead end jobs they hate, stuck in relationships they don't enjoy or telling people they have plans to do 'something else' at some unspecified point in the future.
I know that's a remarkably pessimistic take on it, but really, look at your average person out there. If they were actively conscious of their mortality (and trying to make the most of their one shot) why would they be living the way they do, without trying to change something?
They are not conscious of their mortality because they have been denying it all their life.
'Your grand pa did not ceased to be, he just went to a better place' is the lie they tell to their children, and in a minor grade, to themselves.
All those 'life after death', 'angels', 'ghosts', 'zombies' and reincarnation movies and TV programs also help accomplish that.
Now, you are not being pessimistic, just stating a fact. However, whatever the most average person can think should not and does not affect the way I see life.
You're confusing two point: the meaninglessness of being simply atoms in the void, and our finite life spans. It's perfectly consistent to think that a finite life span would make us cherish our time more, if only not for the fact that everything is meaningless.
How that makes everything meaningless is totally beyond my grasp. It however mimics the message of 'doom' that some religious people uses to attack atheism.
Having read only a part of 'Gödel, Escher, Bach', I realize that the fact that we know some of the rules that atoms follow, and can predict how in average a given bunch of atoms will act, helps us nothing to explain how complex things form.
Never mind life, the most complex form of matter we know.
This in my view, makes all life (not just mine) very, very valuable. We are the most precious matter in the universe.
Most small things act 'in a way' when studied alone, but form incredibly complex patterns and 'behaviors' when acting in great groups that are totally unexpected, by anyone who studied the small things in single quantities.
In fact, a single brain will never be able to understand how a brain works. Thousands of brains, or a bigger electronic brain, probably can. But they themselves will never be able to explain how all the group or the electronic network works to produce knowledge.
Why should the emergence of complexity from simple underlying rules give meaning or value? First, there's the whole is-ought problem. Second, even if you tried to say complexity implied values, there are all sorts of things (computers, trees, and weather systems) which are highly complex but don't have the kind of intrinsic value that is assigned to people.
The better alternative is to find what pleasure and satisfaction you can while you're here.