Why would a creature that depends on passing on it's genes

Legacy.

>>25757333
what the fuck does that mean?

wouldn't I be more reproductively successful if I spent less time crippled by existential depression and more time impregnating females?

>>25757299
You learn that fact because of how smart we became. But we became smart for better survival, not to learn that fact.

>>25757500
So it IS an evolutionary fluke. And unintended consequence of our intelligence.

How the fuck do I live with this?

>inb4 "just do it"

I would have to somehow lower my IQ. Is that the best option for happiness? Is ignorance truly bliss?

>>25757550
Create your own purpose. Mine is simply to live comfily, and I only had to deal with feelings about not having a higher goal.

>>25757697
Could it really be that simple?

Why does every purpose I create seem hollow?

>>25757299
That's because God created us, we didn't evolve.

>>25757299
Because the advantage we gained by being able to build tools and raise crops far out-weighted the minor penalty of a risk of suicide. If one son kills himself, you still have 5 more willing to breed. Suicide has only really gone up in recent times too when people became educated enough to realize their own purposelessness. People in the slums of Nairobi aren't killing themselves the way we are.

>>25757761
So is this the future of man-kind? Do you see a way out for us? I feel like our metacognitive abilities are rapidly increasing with each generation, some kind of micro-evolution taking place here..

>>25757742
th-thanks God

>>25757734
I mean I went through a large episode of existential depression to deal with it. So it wasn't simple. Maybe realize the goal isn't so important as how you'll feel working towards it.

>>25757734
>Why does every purpose I create seem hollow?

Because you touch yourself at night.

>>25757966
how did you work through it?

File: 1414940441786.jpg (90KB, 640x839px) Image search: [Google]

90KB, 640x839px

>>25757299
Man has a natural inclination towards the divine. This is no coincidence. Our Father in Heaven created Man with this trait. It is only by seeking Him through the Lord Jesus Christ that humankind finds true purpose and meaning.

>"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."
>Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
>Jesus answered, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him."

>John 14:1-7

>>25757299
>Why would a creature that depends on passing on it's genes for the continued survival of it's own species become aware of the ineffable purposelessness of it's own existence?
No reason at all, it simply happened. Your question implies that a reason must always precede a phenomenon, but we don't know if that's the case.

>What is the evolutionary utility of self awareness/meta-cognition?
We only have one example (ours) so far, but the "birth" of self awareness in humans caused the emergence of culture and knowledge, which consequently created a set of subjective needs for the species, making them go through artificial evolution in order to fulfill their newborn needs, which in turn made them excel as a species. We can't know if the emergence of self awareness in humans was an accident or not, although it most likely was, logically speaking, so you could say that its evolutionary utility was a coincidence, not its purpose.

>Is this some sort of fluke of the universe? I mean, what the fuck?
Quite the question, what the fuck indeed. The probability that the universe is indifferent to our existential conundrum is high, but there's no way to know for sure, as our knowledge is limited by the constraints imposed by our perception.

>>25758011
Not that anon but I sold everything I own and left my apartment with the intention of killing myself. I spent the next 3 weeks homeless, and in a fit of sleep depravity, depression and desperation while literally sitting next to a railway waiting for the next train to lay my neck in front of I had some kind of life changing epiphany about my existence.
You'll figure it out.

>>25758106
I wish I could believe in the bible, I genuinely do, but again I would have to lower my IQ.

Not even trying to be edgy, I'm just literally incapable of ignoring all of the historical, logical, ethical and scientific inconsistencies of the christian faith. If I could, I would. Seems like an easy way out of all this.

>>25758011
I went to therapy and got a psychiatrist to give me drugs. It still took like 6 months. Not saying it'll be this easy for others.

>>25757299

Literally one of my favorite images on 4chan, ever

>>25757550
I personally find freedom in the fact that it's all pointless. Kind of a meme answer but after the initial existential crisis I kinda just decided to do whatever I wanted; if I'm stuck in this pointless cycle it might as well not suck.

>>25757734
Because if you want some deep objective purpose than they will all seem hollow.

>>25757299
I'd say that it's actually an evolutionary advantage and that it makes our species even more inclined to breed because we don't really want to be miserable existentialists, we want to be happy. Given the choice between a happy marriage and a life on /r9k/ we'd all choose to be the cuck of a happy couple

>>25757390

Become bogged down by existential thoughts is a side effect of the awareness of your own existence, not the root cause of it.

Being aware of your life's fragility is an amazing piece of knowledge to have when making rational decisions about the struggles of daily life, especially if you happen to share watering holes and hunting grounds with lions.

Can we just take a second to think about what it must've been like to be the first rational being that was aware of its own existence?

Imagine what a lonely and confusing world that creature must have lived in.