If our existence is forgotten in 200 years, what is the point?

Question

Basically...why are we here? What we do will be forgotten in 200 (if not less years). What we do now, whether it be trying to help others or just ourself seems to have no profound effect in the long run. This in some ways ties into religion...well obviously. Thank you for your time and I look forward to a good response which might constitute a rant for some people...but not to me, as I will be very interested. Thanks again

Answer 1

Do the people that lived 200 years before us have an impact on our society? I think so.

People thousands of years before us have an impact on us. Everyone shapes the society and what it will become. Without the people 200 years before us existing, we wouldn't have anything we had today. We would still be rubbing sticks together and banging rocks against eachother.

This doesn't mean you have to invent something or anything like that to make an impact on the next generation. You make an impact on say, one person that will live after you, and they impact someone else.

But the point of all of this? I think God's just seeing what we become. :) Just my opinion.

Answer 2

Well, let's take us back 5,000 years ago.. did we have tv... internet... phone...cars...radio...electricity???? No.

lets take us back just 200 years ago. did we have those things no.. but what we had was a foundation of thoughts, ideas, and knowledge that had been formed and explained by those before us. 200 years ago, technolgoy had progressed HUGELY in those 5000 years. When a new idea or technology is discovered, it is formed from the ideas and discoveries of those before us. Ideas and knowledge is built upon past discoveries.

Today, modern 15-year-olds may have massive amounts of more technical knowledge than 40-year-olds 200 years ago, but without our ancestors knowledge and ideas, we wouldn't have technology at all. We would be cavemen doing commercials for geico..... Well, we wouldn't have geico.. well.. OR commercials.... but you know what i mean.

I see the big picture as us forming society, coming from small solitary groups and fomring small societies.. to forming cities.. stats.. and nations... coming together as a people, and using our collective knowledge and skills as our rhyme and reason.

We see how doing so has made things so much easier for mankind. We see how it has increased our intellectual ability and skills. We are coming closer to finding our purpose, if there is one.

Answer 3

Well, if the end of your existence is to be remembered, and that's it, then there is no point.

You'd have to believe that the ONLY thing you can accomplish by living is being remembered to accept that though. Whether it be religion, or having children, or just fulfilling your own desires, most people believe in another end.

So, do some soul-searching, and ask yourself what you hope to accomplish in life. If all you want is to be remembered, do everything in your power to become president. If you believe in a religion, follow that religion. If you just want to extend the survival of th human race, go have kids. If you just want to live and die, then just live until you die.

Answer 4

I want you to find twenty people who have not been forgotten in two hundred years. I will give you a few to prime the pump:
1. Shakespeare
2. Socrates
3. Plato
4. Confucius
5. Yeshua of Nazareth (Commonly known as Jesus Christ)

If these people were not forgotten in two hundred years, your next question should be:

What am I going to do in this lifetime that will cause me to be remembered more than two hundred years?

That is the very simple solution to your very complex problem!

Answer 5

It seems to me as if living is inherently selfish. Compassion, contemplation, and societal efforts are luxuries that we should certainly be pleased to indulge in but can't be the meaning of living simply by virtue of many things being alive without them. It's very possible that living is a compulsion, and as such has no meaning. Just as we can only percieve ourselves as alive by virtue of the power of our minds, so too is it the mind's responsibility to construct whatever meaning satisfies it. A similar question that may have a very different answer is : what is the meaning of being a human?

Answer 6

You're just basically asking for the meaning of life. We're here now, because we are. It doesn't matter what we are for in the future. Of course life has no "profound effect in the long run" but both life and death are inevitable. Spend your time learning about something USEFULL like quantum physics and theory.

Answer 7

I made up a quote to live by several years ago, but have since found deeper meaning in life. I guess the quote could still apply in an "at the very least" type situation. So here goes;
At the very least, "What is life but to tell a tale of having lived?"

Answer 8

Jamie gave you the excellent answer (no longer delving into cosmology). Stars style interior the direction of the crumple of interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas. all of us be attentive to this as a results of fact we be conscious it happening now, and characteristic modelled the technique employing state-of-the-artwork astrophical algorithms. as a results of fact the gas falls in (contracts), it heats up. finally you get a warm, dense ball of gas so warm it starts off to polish. this may be a protosun. For a famous individual the size of our sunlight, this keeps for approximately a million years. finally the middle turns into sufficiently warm and dense for honestly fusion to start--and a real sunlight is born. The image voltaic wind then pushed the lighter aspects out in direction of the orbit of Jupiter and previous. this is why the interior worlds are dense and rocky, and the outer ones are all gas giants. in spite of angular momentum develop into possessed via the unique cloud is preserved interior the disk of understand that collapses, and is the reason why all the planets revolve the comparable direction and in extra or less the comparable plane around the sunlight. The planets coalesced from the comparable unique cloud of gas and debris, which needless to say were enriched via the remants of a prior famous man or woman that had blown aside. all of us be attentive to this as a results of fact the ratios of aspects in our image voltaic equipment heavily parallel the estimated ratios produced with the aid of customary stellar nucelosynthesis and next supernova heavy factor synthesis. whether or no longer God orchestrated all of this keeps to be previous scientific exploration on the instant.

Answer 9

In life, you will influence at least one person. This effected person will, in turn, influence another. This pattern will continue until 200 years later where you will find a man who has grown and become what he is just because of your affect on another.

Answer 10

you know what, you are totally right. you should get a bunch of people and yourself to sit in a giant room doing nothing and just wait to die, because, after all, why are we even living if in 200 years or less people will not commemorate everything we did. jeezzeee! that is so selfish! its like you only do things for attention! do things for yourself, have a fun time living while you have the chance!