“Love your fate and foster chance” – This model for life asks you to hold bravery, risk taking and hard work as top values, without hope for “something else”.
When Nietzsche famously said “God is dead”, he was proposing that religion satisfied many innate human needs, that we had replaced religion with an evidence-based faith in science. It was a somber declaration, for he understood that to live without God requires an enormous burden. Through the lens of religion, purpose is automatic; you exist as a tool in the hands of a deity, and your purpose is to serve the will and spread the message of this higher power.
But without a higher power to serve, you must ask the question: what IS my purpose?
Well friend, the answer is that you decide your own purpose, and what gives your life meaning. I know, that’s an annoying answer. But the assumption that a person’s life SHOULD have meaning and purpose is not natural. We exist because we can exist. You can be born and die having done nothing in between, and that’s fine. You won’t get in trouble. I mean, between you and me it seems like a hell of a waste… getting the chance to be alive (especially in this incredible time) is an incomprehensibly rare opportunity. You’re alive! Be thankful, and do all the things! Go ride a roller coaster! Eat a giant thing of cotton candy! Learn about gears! Try psychedelics!
As amazing as life is, life is equal-parts horrific. Life is hard and we want to improve it. But wanting things we don’t have makes us miserable right now. That misery is useful to your goal. It pushes you, encourages you, makes the status quo unbearable to the point that you must change it. This, is the engine of human progress;
Hope.
So how dare I suggest you live without hope! Well there is a dark side to hope; by hoping for “something else”, you reject what is right now. You hope to get that new lawn mower you just saw – and without even realizing how, suddenly the one you have right now upsets you.
“What a piece of crap! Why do I still have this thing? It barely works!” You rage into the digital ether.
wip to be continued
Spencer Nunamaker 