On our mortality and ultimate insignificance

Quoting Benj96

In a universe where everything is ineffectual does this make moments precious and worthy of reverence or do we require a more apathetic approach?

The purpose of each human's life, to the extent there is one, is the experience of that life. The inability to face that is what religion and philosophy are all about.

Quoting T Clark

The purpose of each human's life, to the extent there is one, is the experience of that life. The inability to face that is what religion and philosophy are all about.

:fire:

Quoting Benj96

How does this influence your perspective on life and humanity? Human life is like an etch-n’-sketch. You can draw for a brief moment what you will, but eventually time shakes the board and whatever information you set in concrete will gently erode away to nothing.

The smaller the greatness, perhaps the greater the smallness.
Quoting 180 Proof

[A]bout human extinction; that's ineluctable nothingness – the radical contingency of the species, its fossils & histories, and our bloodied parade of civilizations – an echo of sighs & moans, laughter & screams fading even now and forever into oblivion. Music is made of silence, which merely interrupts with sudden soundscapes, each piece (i.e. an ephemeral world) ending like raindrops in the ocean. It's terrible knowing, feeling bone deep, that everything and everyone we ever knew and loved – and that we never knew or will never know who also knew and loved or will know and will love – will one day very soon in the cosmic scheme of things be utterly forgotten as if all of it, all of us, had never existed.

[i]I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:[/i]
[b]My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair![/b]
[i]Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."[/i]
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

And knowing this, how can this recurring nothingness have not already happened in the sense of being a priori – the very structure of our minds, that is, what enables us to think at all? Think what? Think the 'before there were any thinkers and after all thinkers are gone' ...
Think what? Absence (e.g. Democritean void). It's the blindspot that enables vision. Silence that inspires – calls for – music. Space that allows touch and motion. Oblivion – extinction (i.e. contingency) – that drives thinking to 'think no-more-thinking'. I forget who quipped Man built civilization in order to distract himself from the abyss; thus: 'we are for now, ergo we think' here & now – this is all there ever is.

We are – this entire world (or galaxy) is – just one candle out of countless trillions of other candles a-flicker in this boundless void, barely illuminating oblivion, which, perhaps, before winking-out at last, we may light another wick with all that we ever were.

:death: :flower:

Quoting Benj96

In a universe where everything is ineffectual does this make moments precious and worthy of reverence

No.

or do we require a more apathetic approach?

No, but at least a more precise one.

Quoting Benj96

In a universe where everything is ineffectual does this make moments precious and worthy of reverence

It didn't until I happened upon two omniscient fortune tellers in this thread who know all that was, is, and ever will be, as well as being intimately acquainted with the entirety of the universe. Can't say I've ever ventured that far. That's pretty encouraging really. It's like God is with us.

Reply to T Clark haha putting it frankly

Quoting 180 Proof

. Music is made of silence, which merely interrupts with sudden soundscapes, each piece (i.e. an ephemer

Interesting that you responded with this because the original title of the thread was the importance of “absence/ nothingness” before I shifted focus to insignificance. I had a line that said “music and frequency is not just noise but rather an interplay of absence and noise. Silence plays a role.

In the grand scheme of things, our actions are insignificant. But our actions are still significant on a smaller scale. A father reassuring his child is trruly important at the scale of the child, but will be insignificant to, let's say, a tribe in South America, or to the Sun, or to Andromeda. Events are significant on our scale because we are beings localized in a specific ( and small) time and space, which means that our subjective world is small enough to make events that are insignificant in the objective world significant.

Quoting Hello Human

A father reassuring his child is trruly important at the scale of the child, but will be insignificant to, let's say, a tribe in South America, or to the Sun, or to Andromeda

What significance is there to an entire Universe with nothing sentient or capable of appreciating it. A tiny smiley face drawn on a cup of coffee in a barren wasteland between the last two survivors of an interplanetary war is worth infinitely more than an entire galaxy devoid of emotional intelligence or that one thing we humans often seldom dish out yet begrudgingly love to receive- compassion.

Of course, the words of another are open to scrutiny, and provided the speaker provides or at least doesn't restrict the listener from looking into not just the validity of the claim but the character of the claimee him or herself, at least as a reasonable reference (ie. if you don't practice what you preach why should another), only then can we reach higher understanding Or at least not be entrapped by the oh-so-familiar cycle of ignorance, as is often the case of those who hold dogmas, be they scientific or religious, above the greater sense of wholeness, harmony, and what simply feels right when one is not beleaguered by the ills of the world we have unleashed on ourselves out of failing to consider all things, including that which we do not know.