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comment by Corvus

I love Camus.

What you're saying resonates a lot with me. I myself can't remember a time when I actually believed in religion, in general. It helped that my parents, while religious, never forced their views on me. Anyway, due to that I've always had to face that, without this afterlife that religion provides, it's stupid to do anything. Why does anything matter if it's impossible to alter the outcome. Everybody you know will die, regardless of what you do. And so will you. And eventually, the whole universe is either going to collapse or stop expanding or expand so that life isn't possible, and enthropy will make sure that life will eventually end. So what's the point?

Well, the point is to have fun. As Camus and you said, there is no grand scheme of the universe. The universe is a chaotic combination of particles that have no idea what's happening and/or what's going to happen. The only grand scheme is in our head. And that's where we should derive meaning from as well. Whether the universe collapses in how many billion years from now and even spacetime becomes a point of infinite density where time has no meaning or not, what you do today does matter -- it matters to you, and it matters to the people you do it to.

As for what keeps me going, thinking does. I find that it's amazing that for a strange and seemingly chaotic arrangement of particles I can be here, be aware of myself, be able to think on what happened before and predict what is going to happen next. Just the fact that I can be here and ponder what the meaning of life is is, to me, amazing. In general, thinking about the human experience, and how amazing it is.