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Are there people here who have always known this?
Yeah, but I enjoy our pointlessness and still want to try and make other people's pointlessness better rather than worse, despite it being pointless in a biggest picture way, it's the tiny little connections that make the pointlessness better and more enjoyable.
I don't think self awareness drives over consumption or displays of power though.
snottyotter
May I try a philosophical take? Our species has a powerful sense of self-awareness. This makes many of us search for a meaning to our lives.
But there is none. So we try to find meaning by making our mark with excess consumption and displays of power. It's a sad paradox that self-awareness, which we think of as our unique advantage, is driving us to consume excess resources and extinguish ourselves. We need to accept that our lives are trivial, inconsequential, just a molecule in a planet-sized brownian motion.
I have done this. It's quite calming but it has an unfortunate label, absurdism, which doesn't sell it that well. And to be honest I wouldn't have accepted this willingly. It's been forced on me by having ME for 30 years. I'm 62, with almost no friends and family and no money or self-determination, and I realise my life is never going to add up to anything. Anything at all. This is my enlightenment.
I wish I had come to it willingly when I was 16 and agonising about what to do with my life. Are there people here who have always known this? Maybe the zen and yoga types? Perhaps more likely to be women than the often egoist, selfish, aggressive men?
This is another way of saying that the patriarchy has doomed us. A matriarchy could save us from ourselves, but the patriarchy is in the driving seat and will not share it.