Life is illogical., Foolish thoughts on the world and myself. Options

[P.P.A.]

This might be very unordered but so are my thoughts, so please bear with me.

My personal philosophy is, out of past experiences and realisations, that greed or uncontrolled desires are the reasons for almost all human-induced suffering in the world. Craving leads to destruction and eventually self-destruction, and therefore I think the way for me to live that would be the most bearable for both the people and the world I interact with and myself would be one of complete absence of desires. A state in which I do not long for anything I do not possess and at the same time don't cling to the things I do have, but at the same time being grateful for all positive things happening to me while silently accepting the bad ones and not wishing for a better situation of any sort.
I am working towards this goal but it is of course not easy; there are still things I desire and cling to, and I need to free myself of this negative state of mind I am bound to.

Now, aside from this I possess a second goal (and a third one but this is to be left out here). You see, all beings on Earth are born with a debt and as they live on, they go even deeper into the red numbers. Every living thing needs to kill and consume others in order to sustain its own life, that is the cruel law of nature. The difference between an animal and a human is however, that the animal only takes as much as it needs to survive. Furthermore, it is a part of the system it lives off and a link in the food chain and the cycle of life. Even if it is not consumed while alive, after its death upon decaying it will return its debts to the lowest step on the ladder on consumption, for new beings to ascend it again.
We humans, at least in the richer parts of the Earth, however are not like that. We consume much more than we need to sustain our lives, we live in a constant excess and in our decadency we waste so many lives and resources that by simply returning our bodies to the soil our debts will have been purged. Especially in this highly industrialised time we stopped being a part of the ecosystem, we damage it. And, I think, we are the only species aware of the fact that we live off others.
Therefore, I consider it my personal duty to return a bit to the world and its inhabitants. I want take care of my parents once they grow old, become rich enough buy and preserve large areas of forest or plant new ones, not blow any more CO² into the air than what leaves my nose by eventually driving a car based on electricity and having a house with sufficient photovoltaic panels or a windmill next by to generate power independent of oil or coal. I want to consume the least possible while paying off at least some of the things I owe to others. (Committing suicide is not an option, as it would leave you with your debts.)

"Why?", you may ask. I would reply I do not have an answer. This is the dilemma, nothing in this world makes sense. No matter what you try to achieve in your life, it will become meaningless to you once you cease to be. The people who judge your actions too will fade away one day, and the generations thereafter. Eventually the expanding sun will swallow the Earth, and even if humanity has left it by then, at one point in the very distant future, the universe will implode and dark matter will consume everything. Everything a beating has tried to achieve will have its nucleus split apart, no memories will survive, no deeds live on. And whatever we do will have become even more irrelevant than it is now already, we will have been less important in the long run than a single grain of sand in a wide desert, less than a single drop of water in all the oceans of this planet.

So, why try to achieve something if ultimately it will be completely irrelevant? I don't know. We only live for so long down here, and even if there is such a thing as reincarnation, this very life we are living right now will never return, it is a one-time chance. But how do you use your time wisely? Or rather, how can you in a world where nothing lasts? I am leaving the possibility of an afterlife out of this for now, this is already complicated enough.
There is no logical reason for me to try and repay my debts - the things I owe my life in its present and future form to will cease to be sooner or later, and also those they pass their knowledge on to. Is it perhaps my greed? Do I think that living in such a way will make me happier as I would feel as though I did something "good", as I would have a justification for my meaningless existence? Is it in the end yet another disguised personal desire with the benefit for my surroundings being just a farce to hide that I am still a fool trying to lead a purely self-satisfied life?

Does it even matter? Is there a point in having ideals and dreams in such an absurd and meaningless world? Or would perhaps the best way to live be that of giving in to the bizarreness of existence, to stop trying to use logic and reason to try and uncover the point of a life that is illogical, unreasonable, and pointless? Should you rather indulge yourself in insanity, shed off these meaningless features of the human mind that are of no worth in this universe and simply live as life comes and goes, only listening to your instincts, intuition, and emotions - those irrational things that overcome you without your mind being able to decipher them, those embodiments of insanity already available for use within you, harmonising with the nonsensical existence?

At the same time, I stopped excluding the option that happiness if the point of life. While I for myself always thought happiness was pointless, in a world where we are unable to do anything truly meaningful in our limited time, perhaps enjoying this time that will be wasted anyway no matter what we do is the best way to use it? Is it perhaps foolish to not enjoy it with no better alternative around?
I might even have admitted this to myself, despite constantly denying it. Me wanting to eliminate greed for being the cause of suffering, the cause of unhappiness, might be and perhaps even is just my mind unconsciously wanting to shield itself and others from unpleasant things, wishing to live harmonically without any desires in order to be at peace with everything else just so it itself and aforementioned everything else can be happy, or at least not be unhappy. Well, I never dismissed the happiness of others as irrelevant, just my own. So while there is a chance that my mentality also sprung forth simply from the desire to not repeat past mistakes and to ensure that the people and world around me can be happy, is there not still a positive reverse effect, that that way I would myself gain happiness from making others happy (assuming I could)?


I don't know. My mind seems as absurd to me as the world it exists in. Perhaps I am a hypocrite, perhaps I am in denial of things. Nonetheless, I will continue to work towards not having any desires - while that in itself is a desire, this goal is therefore paradoxical. But I at least want to cease my cravings to a level where I can harmonically be a part of this world, where I live in the now without longingly looking back, appreciating the beauty of the moment and being happy with what I have and not desiring that which I do not have.
As a metaphor for this I like to picture a river and a man playing dead man and letting the stream carry him. He just flows along with the water, peacefully and without trying to hold on to anything or taking something along with him. If he clung to a plant or an animal at the shore of the river, he would end up tearing out the plant or pulling the animal into the water, drowning or at least severely endangering it. If he tried to swim against the flow of the river, he would be pulled down by the currents or be hit by a floating log, ending up being sucked underwater and having to face the danger of drowning. Instead, the man just flows with the river, admiring the landscapes he passes by that way without desiring to stay there, making friends with the fish and birds accompanying him on paths of his route and then when the time has come to leave, letting them go their ways without trying to hold them back forcefully. Until eventually after a harmonic ride on the water the river mounds into the endless sea with its boundless freedom...

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Jun 1 2009, 02:02 PM

[Raijinili]

I will do whatever I feel like doing. This will never change.

The only thing that will change is what I feel like doing.

[P.P.A.]

That is probably the best and most flexible way to live. :(