Is there any honest reason to call any pursuit "meaningful" or "worthwhile" other than the fact that everyone else...

Is there any honest reason to call any pursuit "meaningful" or "worthwhile" other than the fact that everyone else agrees that it is such? Philosophy, mathematics, science, history... all of these pursuits are artifacts of the past. Yet we continue to pursue them, because their perceived importance is reinforced by society.

Intuitively, I can see that playing video games all day is less meaningful than studying philosophy, but I have no reason to believe that intuition wasn't constructed by my social environment.

So play videogames all day, you insecure cunt, nobody cares.

>Be a good person/don't be an asshole
If there is a God but will only judge you well if you worshipped him, then He is unjust and you should not care.

If there is a God and He will judge you purely base on how you lived then you will be judged well and thus have a good afterlife.

If there is no God and no Heaven/Hell, then at least those left behind will remember you fondly.

>Worried about society perceiving you as important or not
There's your problem. Fuck society and do your own thing. Be based. I write genre fiction. Veeky Forums seems to hate it, but I don't care. I've gotten a couple low-scoring reviews, and that's a shame, I truly wish they'd have enjoyed the book as much as I enjoyed writing it, but ultimately I don't care. It's just unfortunate that I had the opportunity to bring joy to someone however because their views/interests did not coincide with what was in the book, it was a missed opportunity.

Still I will continue to write what I enjoy, because I find it fun, and it just so happens to be making me a bit of money. I anticipate that as time goes on and I continue to self-publish that I will continue to make more money until my 'bit of money' becomes 'a lot of money' and simply for doing something that I enjoy just about as much as...

playing videogames. Making money by writing, for me, is like making money by playing videogames. In a sort of roundabout way, I am kinda doing what I dreamed of doing as a child in the 90s; making money by playing videogames and fantasizing about having a room FILLED with N64 cartridges. N64 was the shit.

If there is meaning, then there exist actions that are right regardless of what that meaning actually is, and there are actions that are wrong regardless of what that meaning actually is.

That pic makes me sick, not because it triggers any kind of existential dread, but because of the smugness of it. All of those activities are at least somewhat enjoyable unless you're a neurotic, insecure, cynical mess. Fuck you, working out is fun in itself.

>All of those activities are at least somewhat enjoyable
The picture doesn't imply that they aren't enjoyable - rather the opposite. But they are routine. And any routine activity calls into question whether it is truly meaningful. "I am going through life, doing practically the same things every day... is there a higher purpose to it all?"

>"life has a meaning" meme
Will people fucking stop perpetuating this nonsense? Literally no one ever did or ever will find the universal meaning of life. The best you can do is fool yourself into thinking actualizing your potential is you finding the meaning of life. Fuck off REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe

Back to you go.

N64 was very mediocre

Except you wouldn't have video games without those pursuits. Even if you try to throw the primitivist ideal out there as if no longer pursuing social structure or technology is a benefit, it would only be a benefit if everyone still pursued and adhered to fundamental philosophical and ethical pursuits.

To be honest I'm just really sick of all the weak-willed hedonistic rhetoric of 'everything is relative, we're all gonna die so it doesn't matter' that gets culturally reinforced to bank off of your lazy, weak, hedonism. If you're content pursuing nothing but shutting your brain down with a mild background dose of dopamine for your entire life, go ahead. But at that point, honestly why not just commit suicide? For the pleasure of mundane stimulus? If everything is some nihilistic relativist nightmare where the only goal is the aversion to pain, there is no better escape from it than in death.

Or, maybe, there are actually things worth pursuing in the world, and all of this tired rhetoric is just an excuse to be lazy and unmotivated. You're still here, after all.

>cardio
>what appears to be Wii fit
???

What are the things worth pursuing in life and what's the criteria for someone to be worth pursuing in life? Please no axiomatic statements.

It's because most popular are solipsists. People just can't accept that the universe exists.

something*

>[opinion] is wrong because the people who have [opinion] are lazy

Come back when you have an actual argument.

Routine is what keeps people sane, not sitting in a chair saying 'stay sane, stay sane'

The short answer is it's partly socially constructed, partly because philosophy itself defines its meaning/fulness

Long answer is if you read philosophers they will tell you the answer.

No, of course not.
Life has no meaning because it is impossible to find a truly objective "meaning" in much of anything. We hold these pursuits higher because they improve not only yourself, but the general well-being of society. Video games are inherently hedonistic, and will only lead to wasted time in the long run. Were you to create video games this would be a different story as it may be considered art and possibly a source of wealth. One thing you need to consider is that you are not god, but a fallible creature that is a mile away from death. Whether you choose to waste your time until said death is up to you. From the viewpoint of an entity completely removed from everything, like god what you said would hold true. However, when you consider that you are a monkey again several decades away from death you have to create meaning through these subjective opinions held by society. Your only alternative would be passive nihilism which

Would ultimately lead a person to suicide as life would actually be pointless. You would live only to satisfy your baser urges, and thus find no meaningful interaction with life.

...

An activity or pursuit only has "meaning" in relation to other activities and pursuits, which themselves only have meaning in relation to other activities and pursuits. The degree to which an activity feels "meaningful" is directly proportional to the degree of "meaning" in the activities it affects, whose "meaning" is in turn derived from the meaning found in the activities it affects, and so on.

Ultimately

If we are going to consider (certain) video games art, then it would not be a waste of time for someone to play those video games, if he plays them for the aesthetic experience. Unless you believe that indulging in art is inherently a waste of time.

>We hold these pursuits higher because they improve not only yourself, but the general well-being of society.
Not necessarily. There are the tired counterexamples of the fruits of technological advance being used in warfare. But, also, if an individual studies a subject on his own, but never ends up contributing to it, then he isn't improving society. I generally agree, though, that pursuits that improve well-being - or bring humanity closer to "truth," whatever that may be - are, as they should be, held as more valuable. The individual who studies ought to contribute in whatever way he can (or at least have the intentions to contribute), otherwise he may as well be doing any other time-wasting activity. You must communicate your original thoughts in some way for them to be useful to humanity. Once you are dead, whatever thoughts in your mind can no longer be extracted, but whatever you have communicated will (hopefully) live on.

>All of those activities are at least somewhat enjoyable unless you're a neurotic, insecure, cynical mess. Fuck you, working out is fun in itself.
Well fuck. At least I can agree on working out but that might be due to some kind of masochistic tendencies.

>working out is fun in itself.
I... guess? As with most things of this nature, you need to get good at it before it becomes fun (I assume. I haven't gotten to that stage yet). Until then, it's boring - even dreadful. I think the people who have that opinion [that exercise isn't fun] are too numerous to call them all neurotic.

roling for wizard wizard

fuck. i don't even like watermelon

>Is there any honest reason to call any pursuit "meaningful" or "worthwhile" other than the fact that everyone else agrees that it is such?

Yes, when you honestly consider a pursuit worthwhile. This is what the existentialists call "authenticity." It requires a certain degree of faith in yourself.

>This is what the existentialists call "authenticity."
Would love to learn more.

There are many words for it (Nietzsche e.g. called authentic people "erster mensch"), but if you'd like to go down the existentialist road I'd recommend Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger and Camus (not strictly an existentialist but he's a good balance to Kierkegaard and Heidegger), as a start.

If you want my opinion on it, authenticity comes from self-possession. When you recognize your uniqueness, you discover its corollary in what you like to do; you will then do it regardless of what others think, say, or do. "Authenticity" to me is only an appearance, a physical description of what a self-owned person looks like. This is why it (authenticity) is often described in terms of its lack. It's much easier to point out people living under the guidance of an outside force than people living fully for themselves.