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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8312280" data-attributes="member: 6796468">I like your thoughts, here... but 3 is actually 3 -and- 4 together.So you've got the big External Meaning as option 1. There's a God, or Gods, or Writer, or Programmer, or SOMETHING out there that gives life meaning because our life holds meaning in some measure to them, even if we're just labrats on Earth 22-31Q.You've got the small Internal Meaning as option 2. Family/Friends/Work/Dog/Vacation/Whatever becomes your meaning for existence. It's a meaning that is entirely subjective and if that keeps you going, cool.And then Option 3 is Acceptance. I know my live will never matter in a cosmic sense. I know my life will never matter on a global sense. I know that most people in the same town I live in probably won't know or care the day I die, and there will be nothing beyond that moment for me or anyone around me. And that's okay. That's how it's always been and how it will always be. I'm not special. I don't need to be. I'll just live my life while I'm here and that'll be it.THEN comes Option 4. Acceptance of the CONCEPT but not acceptance of the Reality. Knowing that nothing matters one slides further into depressive states and nihilistic ennui, searching for the Lie that works best for them, and slowly going insane because of the stress of knowing that their life will end and that the stress they're under will hasten that end. Because when you -know- that it's all lies you can't ever -truly- believe them. You can fake it, feign it, for a day or two, maybe a month, a year. But that creeping knowledge that the world is just one infinitesimal uncaring part of a much grander uncaring machine which one can never affect in any meaningful way just tears those lies apart and invites madness.Lovecraft could never reach Option 3. He got stuck on Option 4 and couldn't -imagine- someone finding option 3. At peace with the frailty and finite nature of existence. That's why all his protagonists went mad when they were confronted by the truth of reality. Slowly, inevitably, with all lies revealed, they succumbed to that nihilistic ennui and collapsed into lunacy.</blockquote>

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