In the grand scheme there is no point. A few 1000 years and nobody even knows we existed. A few million years and maybe the earth has died. You just enjoy it while you are here , and do no harm to others.

The point of life is to be kind, have fun, and be silly :3

well, in 5B years, the sun will expand and eat the earth. None of this is going to exist after that. in trillions of years, perhaps, the universe may just collapse in on itself. So we got that going for us.

Hmm. I get that.

From a somewhat external perspective (I’m an ADHD enjoyer), it seems to me like the lack of “final answer” found through pure reasoning, because at the end of the day this can only be answered through belief (not just religious belief but belief in general, it’s kind of a matter of intuition to conviction) might veer them into nihilism, at least in the ideological sense (which can then affect one’s mood negatively). Likewise for the free-will v determinism “debate”.

that’s just it, i don’t believe there to be a “final answer”. I think shit just happens for no reason at all. Sometimes I go through periods where that’s freeing, and other times, like now, I go through feeling like it’s all fucking pointless anyway, so why even bother.

DANGER - OPEN PROSELYTISING AHEAD!

I unironically recommend monotheism. Like with many things of this category, logic can only get you too far. Once you’ve understood that this complex entity we’re part of called the universe, light and matter in spacetime, either was just always there (or at least the foundations, idk) or wasn’t, and that there really cannot be any material evidence for or against it because we’re constrained in what we’re examining, you’re forced to take a leap of faith one way or another.

If you believed in God as preached by Moses, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad, for instance, you’d know the reason for your existence (to be a good slave of God so we please Him and can fearlessly return to God, the Creator, the Gracious and Merciful; and don’t worry, you’ll have fun regardless in this world so we don’t need to write it down), and the fact that it’s God’s will would make it as objective as possible (if you believed in all of this, ofc).

Now, you could believe in (agree with on a fundamental level) some philosophical schools of thought like, idk, a mixture of absurdism with Kantian ethics (“life’s a meaningless chaos but I still wanna be a good boy”), or something a bit more positive like a Platonic (the meaning of life is acquiring knowledge) or a Cynic (be virtuous and live honest to yourself within your natural bounds/in harmony with nature), and it could work well but these can still be rejected by the mind as they’re just “things other people said” and feel a bit “not-final”. And, again, even if you keep “digging” logically you’ll never get to something final (to this and many other things, check “Agrippa’s trilemma”!) and this can lead to very depressing thoughts easily. In conclusion: for pragmatic reasons, because you’re still alive and whilst that’s going on you might never shake away your desire to have answers to these questions that feel satisfactory and final, I think you should at least dip your toes into Abrahamic monotheism.

So yeah, TL;DR: don’t get bellcurved (and needlessly sad) and believe in God today!

I’m only a single extra data point, but I certainly feel that way a large amount of the time.

existential awareness & concern in general is common in Neurodivergent people in general.

not exclusive to nihilism nor autistic people.

For a long time I was very nihilistic. I didn’t understand what anything actually was, when you get right down to fundamental truths. I started meditating and slowly have come to appreciate the universal self (non-dual true self). Basically the internal and external aren’t separate, that is to say the universe and myself are actually the same thing, even though there are disassociated relative experiences. The churn of causality is our universal cosmic will and you experiencing the relative pointlessness of it all is something that you should fully cherish while keeping in mind that nothing is permanent. Then again, who’s to say, there are no blueprints.

I can only speak for myself but I do see life as inherently meaningless and that’s perfectly okay. In some ways it’s actually quite liberating. Life is a multiplayer sandbox video game and you’re free to play it how you wish but ideally in a way that doesn’t ruin the experience for other players.

Not sure if common but yeah I’ve been that way too since I was young. The only purpose is if you have an intrinsic goal that makes you happy to pursue and that’s about it. I think this could be where the special interest thing comes from.

Honestly, I don’t really even have any special interests anymore because I just don’t see the point of it anymore. I mostly just sit around doing nothing all day except watching the same movies all day, coming on lemmy. I think I’m depressed as well as nihilistic. No idea

I mean for me nihilism is a perspective that I have in general, i.e. there is no purpose to anything really in the grand scheme of things. But when that also means that you can’t find personal joy in anything, I think that becomes a depression thing. I have also been in that position and after a lot of therapy I realised it was because I was so burnt out on doing what people wanted me to because I was ‘supposed’ to rather than actually asking myself what gave me enjoyment if you took everything else out of the equation. It took me a while to realise what I actually personally cared about because I’ve spent so much of my life masking basically.

Knowledge and impact are very different things. For example, areas where the Roman Empire used to extend to still fare differently than those outside of it. Our cultures get imprinted onto infrastructure and vice versa and so what we do travels through the ages.

I highly recommend kurtgesagts video on “optimistic nihilism”

The point of life is that there is no point, so you are free to choose what matters for you.

what if nothing matters to someone? what does that person then do?

If nothing matters to you and you experience little to no joy from anything, that’s called depression and is super common to NDies. Needs professional treatment if it stays for more than a couple of weeks or it might become chronic, contact a doctor

Play. Doodle, run, sing, dance, marvel at trees. Climb rooftops and sit in the sun.

Now if you’re numb then that’s something that has lots of possible causes. Depression, emotional processing, exhaustion, overstimulation, trauma-derived survival schemas, ennui, neurological stuff, etc.