The sheer meaninglessness of all things

According to modern western wisdom we are mere meat robots, with no free will, living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe, marching to our inevitable annihilation. An annihilation that can occur at any time. All our actions, all our thoughts, all our emotions, all our hopes, all our fears, everything we ever say, everything we ever do, is ultimately to no avail. In a million years time, each and every one of us will have long been forgotten, as if we had never existed. And, perhaps, the human race itself will have long since disappeared and will have been forgotten, as if it too had never existed.

Moreover, the Universe itself is dying. Eventually, all conscious creatures will die everywhere in the entire Universe. And eventually, nothing will ever happen ever again . . not anywhere and not ever.

Let the sheer meaninglessness of our existence and the Universe suffuse through you!

But wait! Richard Dawkins has some words of consolation:

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.

We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here...

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?" (Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder p6)

Now doesn't that make people burst with happiness? Let us spring forth from bed with alacrity and enthusiasm for the forthcoming day! To savour the sweetness of existence. To know that you're one of the infinitesimally small proportion of potential people who have been granted the miracle of being alive! To be bestowed this gift of a momentary window of existence before entering into eternal nothingness. Oh, how fortunate we all are!

That's one way of looking at it I suppose! Ha Ha!