why do you keep going? what drives you? what do you aim for? what is the meaning of life?
simple questions really.
Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world──the fight for the Liberation of Mankind
How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky
Revenge.
EDIT: damn it someone took it so I have to be earnest
I love the world, I love every single human, even the shits fighting us. I want every part of it to blossom into its full beauty. I want to turn the stars green. I want us all to dance among the universe forever. I want us all to join into cosmic union without losing our own selves.
None of this will happen in our lifetime. But if I can hasten it's coming by even an hour, what glory can surpass that?
literally just hanging out with people. for 99% of people, emotional bonds and connections with people are the most fulfilling thing you could have
Building a life and a future history with other people. I'm old enough that I have a fair share of friends and family have passed away, and they live on in the web of my memories, and still shape the course of my life yet to be. I live my life with that in mind, knowing that someday my consciousness will cease, but some positive aspects of my essence will live on and become part of the fabric of a better future. I think just being present and a good person on other people's lives is enough.
I also find a lot of purpose in the creation of physical objects and in sharing all the technical details and instructions for how others can create them. I don't just want to make things, I want those things to become part of our common culture.
Humanity has had thousands of years of written history, and tens of thousands of years of oral history prior to that. Countless charismatic spiritual leaders of all beliefs have created religions and cults of all sizes and traditions. A common factor in most of them has been their belief in an "end time" within the lifetime of a believer, at which time a Divine Power descends onto our Flawed Earth and brings the true believers into The Promised Land (whether literal or figurative). It would be a moment in history where truth becomes clear to all, believer and non-believer alike, and the spiritual leader is vindicated.
Of course that has never actually happened yet, or we wouldn't be chatting about it on an internet forum.
But unlike every single one of those spiritual leaders, we really are seeing a sort of end-times. The great climate change catastrophe unfolding before our eyes, the ur-catastrophe that all other future catastrophes are either a component of, or have contributed to. We are the first to actually witness something akin to what all those false prophets of centuries and millennia past had claimed would happen in their lifetimes. Why would I not want to witness something completely unprecedented in the history of our species?
And besides, when the shit really hits the fan, my parents will be into "living independently but will need help with physically-demanding tasks" age. I want to make sure I'm around to help them out.
Love is the only real reason to live. From what I've learned, apparently everything is made of Love. And every person who has ever had a spiritual experience reports that there is an entity made of pure Love that is behind it all. So at the moment I'm trying to balance this truth with the whole materialist communist thing. I do believe communism would make it much easier for us all to love each other more, without terrible material conditions forcing us to exploit and be exploited. Idk, I'm still thinking about it all.
To funnel whatever resources I have available to where they will be most useful to the people who come next.
To sit by the river long enough.
