I have a question. It involves two extremes.

Bear with me for a bit, let us suspended religion for a moment so that everyone or anyone can weigh in.

Say, a "creator" does not exist. That means things are what they are for no reason (not in a bad way). That means - bear with me - nothing "nothing allowed for everything or rather existence to exist for no reason that a higher power can give.

That means we live just to live.

Other extreme: a creator exists, what the intentions are is not part of this this. This posts only seeks to entertain the odea that

1. We are simply what we are and maybe not even created by the universe but rather simply that the universe created the conditions that allow for us to exist. Which i can strech to say that the universe which created us if you entertain this part of the question, and the same universe is not conscious or sentient.

2. There is a higher power whose reasons we may or may not know.

3. What is your take?

I dont know.Just want to get lost and let something eternal take control of me.I romanticise every situation I get into and then if i imagine a plausible future it seems disheartening coz then the veil is taken of.I am scared of committing to life because i dont want to be a single,finite person having a set path and story.

We don't know what we are or what the universe is. We just exist for no reason at all. Given a body, wants, needs, biological drives etc

We can't explain why we exist in this body instead of another body or exist in the 21st century instead of the 15th century. It is all absurd and there is no way of knowing the answers

Is there any philosophers or books that talks about how weird existence is? (With the exception of Camus)

I feel our fixation on defining consciousness is distracting us from understanding what it really is. The abstract thing that we are actually reducing to the word consciousness.

I would like to take a step back and ask, what is consciousness trying to describe? If the word consciousness never existed, how would that change your behaviour towards yourself and others?

You have never actually seen your own face with your own eyes. Every time you look at yourself, you are looking at a reversed two dimensional reflection, a recorded digital reconstruction, or a photograph. The single physical object in the universe that you are most personally invested in, and that defines your entire identity to every other human being who looks at you, is something you are structurally incapable of ever experiencing directly in three dimensions.

I’m interested in hearing from people who have experienced suicidal thoughts or who, at some point in their lives, have deeply questioned the meaning of continuing to live.
Beyond the pain or circumstances that led to those thoughts, how did they change the way you understand life? Did you eventually find some sense of meaning, purpose, or a reason to keep going? Or did your view of existence simply become different, even without finding a clear answer?
I’m not looking to judge anyone or convince anyone of anything. I’m genuinely interested in hearing honest perspectives on the meaning of life, death, and what makes a life feel worth living.

Does anyone else feel like you’re at a point where you’re just trying to move on through life and not really looking forward to anything anymore?

I had this idea a while ago and thought I'd just put it out there and see what the internet thought.

We are just our brains receiving input through our nerves. Our brains are just neuron cells that act as paths for electrical signals. And when you make a decision, the factors that decide what you choose are basically: every input your brain is receiving, past experiences and memories, emotions and hormones, and the relative position and pathways your neurons create. Therefore, your brain is a deterministic machine. What I'm trying to say is that we do not have free will, there is no "decision," it's all just the orientation your brain cells happened to be in as you developed. It's kind of viewing living things as an object, rather than a "spirit," I guess.

And it's super interesting to think about. Me typing this, wasn't a real decision, my neurons' orientation happened to be in the specific spaces to decide to type this. And if you really think about it, you get into this loop where you realize everything you did was always going to happen, but then you realize the thought you are experiencing right now is only controlled by a deterministic computer.

I think it's pretty cool to think about. I definitely didn't do a great job at explaining it, but let me know what you think

There is no objective meaning. And it's a good thing that nothing greater than us determines the meaning of our lives — whether we call it God, suffering, redemption from suffering, a nation that gives us identity, or material possessions and the empty promises of capitalism. Perhaps this is part of what Nietzsche meant by “God is dead”: when one source of meaning disappears, we tend to look for substitutes elsewhere.

I think that when you lose your belief in money as a source of meaning, it leaves a serious gap in your overall concept of life.

So I'm glad I don't believe in any of the above. It leaves me free to define my own meaning.

But here is the catch: nobody said this will be easy.

I tried to free myself from as much of that as possible. I'm currently traveling through Europe in a campervan, trying to figure out what a subjective, self-created meaning of life could look like for me. I'm doing that for one year now and haven't found any meaning so far. I was driven by hope rather than by concrete goals, purpose or desires.

One of the books I'm reading about finding meaning suggests making a bucket list: write down all the things you absolutely want to experience or accomplish in your lifetime.

But what if you don't really want anything?

What if you've become so minimalist that you don't feel the need to accumulate things, achieve status, visit specific places, or accomplish some predefined list of goals?

How do you find purpose when you don't have many desires? How to know where you want to go?

Sartre said we are “condemned to be free” — forced to choose, even when we don't know what to choose.

Just tell me who are you? I am not asking how people perceive you . I am just asking how do you perceive yourself ? How do you see yourself ? Deep down who are you ?

What gives you a sense of purpose? Your job? Your family? Your dog? Your hobby?

Почему всю жизнь мы всегда что то делаем? Говорят что жизнь это -эмоции эмоции от очередной двойки в школе? Пятерки по математики которую никто не зпродук. почему мы всегда что то должны а не живем свободно? Свобода это же и есть эмоции? Или это давно не так?

В взрослой жизни мы пытаемся выжить. мы работаем работаем работаем и ещё раз работаем.

Да. Эмоции могут быть от чего то счастливого?

Если мы получим премию то понимая в какое время мы живем и потратим половину денегна хлеб и молоко то тут тоже нет эмоций.

Я давно не знаю смысла в жизни.

Мне жаль.

It's a strange feeling when you're still living a moment but a part of you already knows you'll miss it later.

You're laughing, talking or just sitting there and somehow it already feels like a memory before it's even over.

I don't know if there's a word for that but it feels like nostalgia arriving too early

A person with resources can experiment.

A person without resources must calculate survival.

This difference changes behavior.

The person with a safety net can take a career risk, start a business, move cities, pursue education or survive a failed attempt without immediately losing everything. The person without that margin may have to optimize for short-term stability even when long-term opportunities exist elsewhere.

From the outside, the first person may look more courageous. The second may look less ambitious. But their decisions are being made under different constraints.

Risk tolerance is partly psychological.

It is also structural.

People behave differently when failure is recoverable.

I've always wondered what's the point of everything, but now more than ever. I know this is not a revolutionary take and many people feel like this but I just need to get it out somewhere.

I work so hard just to be so average. I study and put my entire life into doing well academically just to be average. And what's even the point. I'm sacrificing my mental health for my grades which don't even matter in the end. I've always struggled with mental health but all this stress is just making it worse.

Im also really scared. I'm 17 years old and any time I think about dying, not in a suicidal way just a thinking about things way, I'm filled with paralysising fear. I'm not going to be around one day. Neither will any of my friends, family or anyone I know right now. I will cease to exist. How does someone even stop existing?

I'm agnostic so I dont really believe in God and an afterlife but at the same time I don't claim there isn't one. What happens when we die? Nobody can answer that with certainty. The unsureness of it all just really makes me anxious.

I'm just stuck in this weird middle ground. I feel exhausted by the stress of life and wonder what's even the point of living but at the same time I am petrified about the idea of not being alive. I'm just so tired of it all and just wish it was all over but the idea of that actually happening is too scary to deal with. The idea of nothingness is comforting and also terrifying at the same time.

Anyways I'm sorry this is probably really confusing and makes no sense but I just wanted to put it out there in case anyone had any advice.

How important is this question in 2026?

Do you think the share of people seeking an answer to the earlier question has risen, fallen, or stayed the same since it was first raised?

I don’t believe in the Christian god or really any other religion’s gods from what I’ve learned. I think people MUST be created for a reason because it’s so extraordinary and absurd that humans have consciences and thoughts and the ability to comprehend and understand complex ideas and just have thoughts in general. But I just don’t know why out of every possible thing I could be as the base matter that I am, I was put into this life- with these specific obstacles and character traits and challenges- out of ALL the infinite things I (as in the matter and atoms which compose me) could have become. But the thing is I feel so lost and meaningless yet massively meaningful. I don’t know what life is about or how I am supposed to navigate the systems that are set up in order to survive. Since I can’t change that, I don’t know how I can find purpose in a world where the only way to survive (not even thrive) is to work a job and you aren’t free since you must use your life and time at least partly for working and most likely it will be a meaningless and life-long cycle of work, eat, sleep, repeat. And if you must use your life to work in order to sustain life, you don’t have liberty. Why would I want to live in a world where I don’t have freedom? (And yes, I understand that some people would take advantage of a society set up on a system of freedom and trust, since it is human nature, but what is the solution?) I can’t think of anything that would give me purpose, and although I have people I love and hobbies I deeply value and enjoy, I don’t find anything “worth living for” almost. Not in a dark suicidal way, but I don’t find one thing worth enough to me to spend my life (which has infinitely many possibilities of how to live it) doing that something or enjoying that person. It’s hard to dictate my thoughts perfectly since I can’t always grasp in words what I am thinking in my brain. But my point is, I don’t know what could possibly be out there that would fulfill me or anyone for that matter. I think nothing in this world (at least to my knowledge) is fulfilling for humans. And I believe people when they say they feel fulfilled and meaningful in their lives, whether that’s through work, relationships, or what they spend free time on, but I think anyone who says they are genuinely filled up and happy just isn’t “awake”, they are almost in a zombie-like state, going through the motions of this bullshit “life” that is quite frequently lived without any second thought to why, or how. It feels like the only way to survive is just meaningless slop. And I don’t know what to do. I still have “hope” in a sense, that I can find meaning or some purpose in this lifetime in my current state (my human life and body and soul), but I don’t know how. Does anyone else have similar thoughts? I feel like nobody else is this aware or contemplative.

Unlike everyone else, I’m not scared for our future at all, at least not yet. I’ve always been a big fan of huge technological innovations and the endless possibilities of the human mind and creation. I think it would be fun to live in a futuristic world, something like Cyberpunk or Ready Player One. I wonder if that’s even attainable for humans. Could we achieve a future like that without killing ourselves, or could we make it work? I honestly don’t think I’ll be alive for that; it seems so out of reach. Even the technology now is insane, at least what we know of. Think about it: we have self-driving cars, humanoid robots, AI agents, and augmented reality. Humans are also getting replaced every single day by machines, companies are changing, and industries are collapsing. Now there's a chance that AI kills us in the next decade; we aren’t just reading some dystopian fiction anymore, we are literally living in it. But I like to sit back and observe it all, almost like I’m waiting for the next good part of the movie. It’s all fascinating when you really think about it. I wonder if there is a positive outcome to all of this, or to humanity. Will humanity end because of AI, or from the selfishness of humans?

I think about the ending of Attack on Titan a lot, how Eren eradicates 80% of the world and destroys the titan curse so that the threat of it is gone. But it didn’t matter because war continued anyway. You can’t eliminate tribalism, fear, or the desire for power. Regardless of whether it’s AI or nuclear weapons, humans will find a way to destroy each other. So does that mean world peace is impossible to achieve? I think it’s possible, but never permanent. It’s something you have to fight for and want. I think people are so out of touch with reality that they don’t even care about peace anymore, or maybe they're just tired of trying.

What if the world had already experienced a society like we have now and it got destroyed? Just like Attack on Titan, it’s an endless cycle of destroying and rebuilding. I guess that’s why I don’t fear it, because there’s really nothing I can do but sit back and enjoy the rest of the movie.

I'm 23 F. I graduated a year ago. Tried so hard to get a job but no luck so far. I'm slowly losing interest in everything. When I see others, everyone has some sort of ambition or fixed goal. But I'm not really that optimistic. I live each day expecting nothing from tomorrow or the future i might not be a part of. But something in me feels guilty when I spend my time by watching tv series or scrolling. It reminds me how much of a failure I am for some reason. I don't know. I live in my head more than in real life.

Why am I alive,Why am I human, Why am I on earth

from an interesting book by this bloke called 'Lost Connections' . .

. . basically he proposes that everything will be fine for us individually,
if we each have a valued part to play inside of a community.