Nothing is important

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Cioran said it...

"How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence. If I had to choose between the world and me, I would reject the world , its lights and laws, unafraid to glide alone in absolute nothingness.

Although life for me is torture, I cannot renounce it, because I do not believe in the absolute values in whose name I would sacrifice myself. If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason. What if there were only absurd motives for living? Could they still be called motives? This world is not worth a sacrifice in the name of an idea or belief. How much happier are we today because others died for our well-being and our enlightenment? Well-being? Enlightenment? If anybody had died so that I could be happy; then I would be even more unhappy because I do not want to build my life on a graveyard. There are moments when I feel responsible for all the suffering in history, since I cannot understand why some have shed blood for us. It would be a great irony if we could determine that they were happier than we are.

Let history crumble to dust! Why should I bother? Let death appear in a ridiculous light: suffering, limited and unrevealing; enthusiasm, impure; life, rational; life's dialectics, logical rather than demonic; despair, minor and partial; eternity, just a word; the experience of nothingness, just and illusion; fatality, a joke! I seriously ask myself, What is the meaning of all this? Why raise questions, throw lights, or see shadows? Wouldn't it be better if I buried my tears in the sand on the seashore in utter solitude? But, I never cried, because my tears have always turned into thoughts. And my thoughts are bitter as tears."

...and I concur.

Nothing most people do in life matters.

There isn't anything in this world, that's really that important. Important is what you make it. Different things are important, to different people. I see it on WrongPlanet, and off the Internet. If we were all the same, the world would be a pretty boring place.

when nothiong matters, everything matters

You are welcome TallyMan, be yet another gem from EM, my opine.

For me, EM Cioran writes the way I think... as such, he is the forefather of mine own thoughts, and I (along with copious others) claim him for my own. I describe Cioran as a sort of dark comedian of narrative thought. He himself simply says: "I’ve invented nothing; I’ve simply been the secretary of my sensations." He has a beautiful way, a lyricism of thoughts put to words.

A few more gems from EM that apply this 'nothingness' thread:

"When you understand that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever."

"Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth."

And finally & vis a vis finality, his Coup de grâce:

"There are nights when the future cancels out, when only one of all its moments subsists, the one we shall choose in order to exist no longer."

Personally, I have already spent far too much time trapped within my own mind to now do that on purpose.

Understood, and yet, to each their own. As to such a 'Final Exit' (if even there were any finality to it, unknown) I personally have never subscribed to the belief nee tenant some that suicide is a selfish act.

Now, perhaps some agreement exists because (as some are want to say) extinguishing oneself would be a selfish act as such... indeed and to wit, who in the taking of their own life would not be selfish as it were? It is hardly an impersonal act.

Then again, to continue 'living' merely for another/the benefit others seems to me the height of selfishness - in reverse. Too, it is (if not interesting) then comforting to know that we have the ability to end our own lives, be it one full of suffering or merely an interminable & incurable happiness that we cannot stand a moment longer, tho we had no say in the matter by appearances in our arrival here.

Wonderful titles, Cioran's works: "The Trouble With Being Born', "The Temptation To Exist", "Drawn & Quartered", "On The Heights of Despair" - not exactly or so much Paradise by dashboard light as... well, let EM tell it:

"Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough."

As your profile references Buddhism, you might find the following of interest. Cioran has said of it - "Buddhism calls anger corruption of the mind, manicheism root of the tree of death. I know this, but what good does it do me to know?"

Cioran was looking for nothingnesss, the void, the Buddhist nirvana. Only when man has reached this is real freedom and real happiness possible - looking for Nirvana via dark and negative means, where Buddhism takes a somewhat lighter path. But in the end they're looking for the same & it is no surprise that Buddhism was the only religion Cioran felt any affinity with.

"Buddhism shows you your non-reality" he once said, and that must have been music to his ears. But in the end he realised he couldn't go all the way with Buddhism, even though he recognized everything; renouncing the will, destruction of the self & as such victory over the self. He acknowledged for instance he got angry very easily; that is completely unacceptable in Buddhism.

Enjoy.

I concur.

The Ego attaches universal importance to itself because that is it's entire universe. It's worst fear is being extinguished, being nothing. Do we know what we truly want? Does it make sense objectively to want to survive, to exist?