by pegleghippie

Today I realized, while looking at my uncontrolled, messy hair, that I really am an uncontrolled, messy person, in a good way. I’ve been viewing myself the same way since high school, that is, as simple, serious, reserved, and seeking respect. But that’s not me. I love my life now, and I love enjoying things for their own sake.

No longer do i desire to be respected, for people to meet me and say, “he seemed so serious about such-and-such.” I want people to meet me and go, “he exudes happiness and warmth.” I’m leaving that serious stuff behind, the reason being that I’ve found the serious to be incompatible with any positive emotions.

My serious nature from high school led me to study critical thinking. I still think critical thinking is incredibly important, but it’s a tool-all the logic in the world serves to make us happier. That’s the axiom:happiness. Or pleasure, or love, or whatever you want to call it; a word does not exist to encompass the scale of positive emotions as opposed to negative ones.



Why the focus on happiness? At a basic level, I’ve completely accepted that existence is absurd, and dammit, I find absurdity very funny. Even the statement, “life is absurd” is absurd as well. Why the focus on happiness? At a basic level, I’ve completely accepted that existence is absurd, and dammit, I find absurdity very funny. Even the statement, “life is absurd” is absurd as well. That leaves us free to do whatever we want with that absurdity; as for me, I have chosen to enjoy it. All morality, all social norms and laws, every taboo, even my beloved logic, these all only exist to help us deal with how meaningless existence is. I think we’ve over-regulated existence: our current norms often keep us from getting a good laugh at life. Instead, these norms should function as tools that empower us to do more with existence than we could on our own, and to explore new and different types of pleasure.



Morality, for instance, is great as a guideline for how to get along with people without making them into enemies. That “getting along atmosphere” that morality provides has allowed for macro improvements like civilizations, as well as micro improvements like friendship. But when Morality is more than pleasure’s tool, you get things like christians hating gay people, or Orthodox Jews refusing to flip a light switch on the sabbath, or basically any negative aspect of organized religion.

So In conclusion, life is meaningless, your existence is absurd, and as far as I can tell, that’s the best news any of us could hope for.