exchristian
Welcome to the exchristian community! We strive to provide a safe space for anyone looking to leave the religion or seek comfort while dealing with the fallout from leaving. This site was originally hosted on reddit before the ~~Great~~ Minor Exodus of 2023.
You can find a related exchristian community on Discord.
“All our efforts amount to nothing”
I wouldn’t say that. To me the obvious primary goal in life is to leave this place in a better shape then how you encountered it for the people that come after us.
If we truly take away the divisions in humanity (colour, religion, country,…) then there’s only one thing that remains: making sure we make it.
Love those around you and it’ll resound for generations. Clean up the planet and you just bought humanity a few more days if not years or ages.
It is NOT about what happens to us afterwards.
It is about what happens to them. The living.
But why do you care about what happens to them given how you won't even be there to experience the fruit of your hard work and labor?
Go even further and think really long-term: they will die, too. Whether you leave it in "a better shape" or not, everything will eventually die, even with perfect recycling programs, fusion reactors, etc.; I'm talking trillions of years into the future. The sun will become a black hole, everything will go extinct, and we'll continue to trudge along the path to total entropy until we're there and that's it for everything and nothing. So why does it matter if even billions of lives were improved for their brief 80-2,000 years (just to account for potentially how far life extension tech can go) versus the vast eternity of nothingness? Their better quality of life doesn't matter because they'll die regardless. A 100-year life of relatively less versus more pain: really? So what? That's nothing compared to the history of the Earth alone, and much more the entire universe. Why fight so hard if there is no life to come after this one?
Now, in saying this, I'm not promoting total hedonism and pleasure-pursuing, but my point is that in light of the looming, endless void, you can't claim moral superiority in saying you lived your life better or more altruistically than a more selfish person. The flat plane of the extinction of all consciousness levels any claims of living a "better" life; if you want to help people, then by all means, go for it, but know that you're just doing it because you want to do it; there is no moral basis in any particular action being "better" or "worse" given how we're all destined for death and annihilation anyway, no matter what we do or don't, ultimately. And that sucks that reducing people's pain doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but we don't seem to get a choice in deciding that (aside from deluding ourselves over what "better," more moral living means; just because one feels it's right doesn't make it so, even as I continue to try to help my local community regularly).
I don't really see the big deal, other people are going to keep doing stuff. If you want to make a change in the world you need to be a part of a major group activity, not just maximize the luxury of the cruise ship you end up on.
I'm saying: why does that change matter if you won't even be there to experience it in full? (I'm assuming you're talking about legacy improvements to humanity after your death; if you would experience it in full during life, then by all means, go for it: I'd agree with that, at least.) Otherwise, I think I'd need an example of what you mean.
I'm saying: why does that change matter if you won't even be there to experience it in full?
Out of empathy and compassion for everyone still here after you're not.