• C1pher@lemmy.world
    772·
    9 days ago

    Bust a nut, pass your genetics and perish. Thats it. What you do in between that is up to you.

    • MDCCCLV@lemmy.caEnglish
      531·
      9 days ago

      No, social behavior has always been a party of biology. Even after you reproduce how you care for your young and your extended family has a huge impact on the species. Herd animals or anything that flocks can’t function solo. If all the adults just left after they reproduced the species wouldn’t survive. Reproduction is key for the individual, but it’s never that simple. The version you’re told in school is always a highly simplified version of the truth.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        227·
        9 days ago

        Honestly the entire idea that the only purpose of humanity is to make the next generation or support that process in some way just feels gross in a very eugenics adjacent way. If you start with that premise, it’s just too easy to conclude that anyone who isn’t working towards that end is disposable.

        • frog_brawler@lemmy.world
          12·
          9 days ago

          I’m in the “there is no purpose,” camp. It seems like a bit of a mental disorder to me to (without any evidence) assume that oneself or one’s species isn’t just hanging around by random happenstance. Wouldn’t that simply be narcissism? People have long asked the question, “why are we here?” Yet there’s never been and never will be a definitive answer.

          • superkret@feddit.org
            3·
            8 days ago

            No, it’s not purpose. It’s just a process that perpetuates itself.

            It’s how you make the next generation, but if that generation doesn’t have a purpose, then neither does yours, nor the act of reproduction.

          • ObliviousEnlightenment@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 days ago

            Yes, but also it’s more complicated than that. Most species die off before being grandparents, and certianly they don’t participate in the rearing of grandchildren. We specifically live long enough and have emotional connection to keep being part of a family structure past that point. It helps retain and pass on knowledge that proved valuable for us. Likewise, younger siblings are more likely to be homosexual, and it’s hypothesized this was to build redundancy into family structures. If both parents die off in a hunting accident, you have a gay aunt/uncle who can step in; much better than being an orphan.

            Yes reproduction is the GOAL as far as evolution is concerened, but contributing does not require direct participation.

          • LePoisson@lemmy.world
            21·
            8 days ago

            Is it though? Because evolution is only really concerned with a thing living long enough to reproduce. It’s not planned like eugenics would be.

            That’s why there’s tons of examples of dumb as hell stuff in biology because as long as an organism is “good enough” to keep reproducing and spreading their genes that is fine and that species will continue to evolve.

            Eugenics would be more like if evolution somehow could select only for specific traits and then made sure to only let things with those traits reproduce. Evolution is much messier than that.

        • ...m...@ttrpg.network
          63·
          9 days ago

          …well in the long view, that’s how we got here and eventually that’s all that matters: it’s a bit nihilistic but that’s the essence of nature in the cosmos…

    • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
      203·
      9 days ago

      How about I do something which will make life better for people who are actually alive already instead of increasing total human suffering by making new people.

      • EvilCartyen@feddit.dk
        1210·
        9 days ago

        Having kids can be extremely fulfilling, doesn’t increase human suffering at all. Having kids subjectively improved my life and the lives of many people adjacent to me, e.g. the lives of my family members and friends and my kids’ friends.

        I don’t understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it’s pretty baffling.

        • Emerald@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          185·
          9 days ago

          You say it’s improved your life and the lives of those adjacent to you, your family members, friends, and your kids’ friends. But you haven’t said its improved your kids life. I think that’s what the OP was talking about. A being who doesn’t exist doesn’t desire to exist so making new life isn’t doing them a favor and only exposes them to harm.

          • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1014·
            9 days ago

            Don’t project your own depression onto others, and non-existent beings.

            If you think existence “only exposes [living things] to harm” and nothing else, nothing even potentially good?

            If you truly believe that, I’ve got no nice way to say this: You need therapy.

            • Emerald@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              124·
              9 days ago

              I mean I’m not depressed and I love living, so I wouldn’t be projecting depression on to others.

              I agree that people can experience good things as well as harmful things, but it’s not a risk worth taking. Giving birth is gambling with human life. You never know if someones life experience is going to be overwhelmingly positive or negative, but if they are never born, that’s not even an issue to worry about.

        • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          112·
          9 days ago

          I don’t understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it’s pretty baffling.

          Because people who are chronically online are chronically online because they had shitty childhoods which gave them chronic depression. Thus they associate the creation of children with the creation of suffering.

          Source: me

        • trolololol@lemmy.world
          42·
          9 days ago

          Come on, it’s worth it but it certainly brings a lot of suffering that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Telling my teenager that he needs to shower 5x, every day that he does sports, is suffering for both me and him.

        • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          54·
          9 days ago

          Human suffering is caused in part by overpopulation (as is the suffering of all creatures - we are invasive, destructive and afflicted with a superiority complex) and in part by religious indoctrination, so while you procreate, as long as you don’t force offspring into a single and restrictive belief system, I suppose it’s okay, and all the best to you.

  • Zacryon@feddit.org
    341·
    9 days ago

    Getting your finger bitten off by a person who is wearing a lot of make-up? Pls explain, I’m not a biologist. /j

  • VubDapple@real.lemmy.fanEnglish
    17·
    9 days ago

    Pynchon from Gravity’s Rainbow:

    “Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as a diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled “black” by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks, continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hersey bars.”

    • orange_squeezer@lemm.ee
      3·
      9 days ago

      It wasn’t until I got to the cigarettes and cunts as currency that I realized this was not a particularly hardcore monologue from Gravity Falls, a popular show I had not watched, but Gravity’s Rainbow. Great excerpt though.

    • ...m...@ttrpg.network
      2·
      9 days ago

      …god wants dollars, god wants cents, god want pounds, shillings, and pence; god wants guilders, god wants kroner, god wants swiss francs and god wants french francs; god wants escudos, god wants pesetas, don’t send lira, god don’t want small potatoes…

  • Zenith@lemm.ee
    151·
    9 days ago

    Y’all need to look into some of the less boring fields of philosophy, plenty of philosophy says physical pleasure is good and we should be having and enjoying it!

    • the_q@lemm.eeEnglish
      311·
      9 days ago

      Yeah the great philosopher Capit’l Ism promoted that belief.

      • Donkter@lemmy.world
        7·
        9 days ago

        That philosopher is widely debunked and is criticized for having good ideals but being a complete idiot for their prescriptions for how to implement them.

        • Zenith@lemm.ee
          1·
          4 days ago

          That Philosopher? There’s whole gilded of philosophy that incorporate carnal pleasure, epicureanism being one I like, but also things like aesthetic philosophy dip into that.

  • Nay@feddit.nlEnglish
    131·
    9 days ago

    Imo, the meaning of life is to experience as much as possible. Simple as that.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
      51·
      9 days ago

      Seems like that’s how you’d get murder, cannibalism, sadism, and things like that if you don’t put limits on it somewhere.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        9 days ago

        On the other hand, if you go with reproduction as the main goal, then that gets you to eugenics from an uncomfortable number of very different paths.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          9 days ago

          Absolutely, that’d lead you to as many partners as possible while discouraging birth control. Plus tangentially it’d incentive trying to reduce the number of children other people have to increase your share of the gene pool. (Which I think is one of the paths you were getting at with eugenics)

      • Nay@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        9 days ago

        No one can experience all things, and there are plenty more things to choose from than what you listed.

        Totally unrelated, but what does this ink blot look like to you…? Just curious! 😜

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          9 days ago

          How would you prioritize what to experience? By novelty? Or would you be happy to watch every movie ever made?

          I mention those because it’s a common trope in fiction for curiosity of experiences to lead down disturbing paths. Slanesh in 40k comes to mind.

          • Nay@feddit.nlEnglish
            2·
            9 days ago

            It’s all up to the individual. Whatever makes your motor run. But I’d universally suggest traveling to other countries to experience different cultures first hand. Other than that… Just interact with and experience as many new things as you’ve got the bandwidth for.

    • Vespair@lemm.ee
      4·
      9 days ago

      That’s the meaning you imbue life with; it’s not inherent to its state.

  • TedDallas@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    8 days ago

    Personally I feel like it is a dumb question. Life gives you meaning. By that I mean life enables the creation of symbolic truths. And what enables life is a different question.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
    4·
    9 days ago

    Oh lol that one on the left is the meme where xianxia fighters explain their move in the middle of battle.