He said to Neo that humans are like a virus, breeding and infecting the world with our “stick” and general disgustingness.

I look around the world, at the state of society, the environment, international conflict and the enshitification of humanity - I’ve gone through my life blindly accepting that life for life’s sake is beautiful, and worth it.

But as I see the state of it all, our perpetual need to destroy each other over ideas and resources, I struggle to come to grips with it. Societies around the world are facing population shrinkage… Do they all know something I don’t?

Is human life beautiful, and objectively worth perpetuating? Or are we a blight? Why should we be?

  • cmeu@lemmy.worldOP
    6·
    9 months ago

    I agree that existence is truly a wonder.

    Yet I don’t see how everything else being great around us means we’re so great for just seeing it all… I’d ask, a net positive to what group? Our own, of course, because we procreate. But… at what cost? Does the cow share your zeal for humanity, you know

    Is the point of existence merely for wonders to be observed?

    • DreamerofDays@kbin.social
      2·
      9 months ago

      All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

      We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.

      That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…

      … nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.

      We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      9 months ago

      I think that’s precisely it. The universe is beautiful and we’re the portion of the universe that exists to appreciate that beauty.

      It’s a very humanocentric view (or sentient-centric more accurate) but I think it’s fair and accurate. We definitely need to get our shit together though.

      • livus@kbin.social
        2·
        9 months ago

        @xmunk I really don’t understand this argument.

        I’s like a cockroach in my house claiming that it exists to appreciate my beauty.

        Dude I don’t need you to appreciate my beauty and meanwhile you’re contaminating everything in my kitchen.