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Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Philosophy · #1635913
Two teenage boys discuss the search for meaning and truth in a world devoid of either..
Maybe... Maybe we're not supposed to have a purpose. Maybe we are, after all of our searching, doomed to meander about life with no reason to do anything, no true objective.
         I look at my life, and I think,
         “Why? Why do I want to go to school? To make it to university? Why is university important? What does that accomplish that must occur?”
         There is no source of objective reason! How ridiculous it that? All of these people in the world, who tell you,
         “You must finish your A levels! You must make it to university!”
         They're all chatting absolute bollocks. The only reason we decide something is important, that something has value, is because we decide for ourselves. And unfortunately, since we are all different, with different values, and judgments, and morals, nothing can have any inherent value at all! Imagine that... We simply choose for ourselves what is important, and then impose this belief, or these belief systems, upon others.
         “You need to get a job” Callum said to me last night, whilst we were out on his porch, admiring our prized shrubs as usual, “Seriously. Stop being lazy, get your act together, it'll be good. You'll have money for once.” Feeling the sting that accompanies criticism from a good friend, and wishing to respond in kind, I replied,
         “Why? So I can be like you? Get to work and spend the next six hours wishing I wasn't there? Money matters not to me dude, subscribing to the consumerist mentality doesn't help me to forget the fact that as a whole, as a species, we are completely aimless, with nothing to do.”
         Callum was representative of teenage society, and in fact, most of society in the modern first world. 'There is nothing else to do, and since we are incapable of comprehending that there are others who need help more than ourselves, we shall blow all of our money on clothing and shitty, overpriced coffee beverages from some obnoxious conglomerate.
         Yet for me to criticise would be just as bad as him doing what he wants in the first place, which is why everything is so maddening. Nothing can be right or wrong, good or bad, sensible or silly. We simply... do.
         “No... So you can finally buy shit, like this! This is some sick chronic by the way” He exhaled voluminously, and both of us were transfixed by the large cloud of smoke that seemed to linger as it floated down the street through the fog, seeming to mix with it yet keep its own seperate identity at the same time.
         “Cal, you know I don't give a fuck about buying things, and the only reason we get stoned is because our thoughts are just too damn depressing to have to confront all the time when we're sober. Nothing serves any purpose, other than to help us forget that nothing serves any purpose” I hung my head, pervaded by the feeling that life was a complete waste of time and energy, “Tell me, wouldn't the world be better if there were a God? Some source of objective reason to actually focus our energies, rather than this ass backwards squandering of talent we see all around us? At least then we would know what we are meant to do with our lives. At this point, I could be told I was to die tomorrow, and not bat an eyelash. Life does not matter.”
         “So then why dude, and I know you, mind,” Cal could read my like an open book, and I him. We had ridden this train of thought innumerable times, with no change in outcome, no resolution, “Why haven't you killed yourself yet? I don't mean that in some rude, bullying way, but seriously... What makes life of so little value that you see no reason to live, yet so important that you cannot help but live it?”
         He was right. Therein lay the dichotomy, and it was painfully difficult to reason. In my opinion, and as far as I know (I've done a fair bit of research), life is a fruitless, random extrapolation, one which helps to gain nothing, which could simply not happen, and have no drawbacks. I do not wish to live anymore. There is too much pain, too much suffering, too much inequality and downright viciousness in the world to claim that living is good and justified. It's a statistical happening, and we are simply autonomous bags of flesh, and on the cellular level, we are unfeeling machines ourselves.
         Yet I live despite my qualms, and it troubles me no end. Something starkly irrational, something human, spurs me to continue breathing, to continue experiencing, though it is all pointless. Maybe it's the fact that everything experienced is so totally unique to each individual, that I almost feel obligated to add my own unique experiences to the pool. While we will be dead for the rest of eternity, we only live once, and no matter how absolutely ridiculous existing may be, we still do exist, and luck is it's own driving force. 
         “I dunno Cal, I have no fucking idea,” I snapped back to reality, realizing that we had a spliff to finish, “It's like something inside whispers 'please don't go just yet, you could miss something spectacular!' Then my head, the rational part of me goes, 'shut up you twat, you know nothing is genuinely spectacular, you just see it as such. And because of tha-”
         Callum cut me off, “I know, I know. And because of that, nothing is worth experiencing, as nothing will ever be objectively incredible, nothing will ever astound us as a species. We need God for that. And as we know...”
         He raised an eyebrow and chuckled darkly to himself, as if reaffirming his own belief that religious people are simply dumb fucks and nutters. We have encountered the absurd, the point at which we realize that no matter how much searching we do, there is absolutely no source of objectivity that we know of. It would be like saying that for me, two plus two equals for, and for someone else, two plus two equals seven. If this were the case, no one would do math anymore, as they simply wouldn't have a definite, 'correct' answer. It's silly to expect anything meaningful to be accomplished when we have no universal definition of what meaningful is.
         It would be silly to live, when we have no universal definition of what 'living' entails...
         
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