Why are we here?

0:00 – Introduction
0:50 – Why bother asking why we're here?
1:53 – Reason #1: Enhancing our experience of life
3:15 – Reason #2: Discovering our deeper possibilities
4:50 – The anxiety of confronting life's uncertainty
6:53 – The anxiety of deviating from social norms
9:19 – Deferring to religious belief-systems
12:41 – The narcosis of commodity/entertainment culture
15:06 – My answer: Phenomenological holism
16:27 – My answer: Riding the wild stallion of life
18:14 – My answer: Becoming the artists of our answers to life's riddle

[devarshidave]

Dear professor your videos have helped me a lot in difficult times so thank you so much!

[dlloydy]

Great topic Eric. I personally don’t think the fundamental questions are talked about enough. Too often it’s about what we have compared to what they have instead of simply being grateful to be here in this time and for what we have already.

If you’re not happy with what you have now…why would you be happy with more?

Alan Watts summed things up nicely for me.

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” - Alan Watts.

[donniewest]

Dear Education Resources Information Center (ERIC),

Thanks for uploading! Love the videos!

[MirzaKapanadze-yh]

I can listen to your videos for all day. So so wise and insightful! Really appreciate you ! Thank you for helping us!

[RavenPisces]

*"because we're born into this world"~Eren Jäger*

[jrtg]

We're here to know that being here isn't such big of a deal.

[XenosbioZ]

Happy New Years to you too! Literally closed my eyes as you spoke and felt the weight of the universe! Wow!

[torquesjr]

Dear Eric, I've been watching/lurking for a while now and really been enjoying your content, but holy moly this was such a good video! However, I have had trouble distilling why I feel this way.. After having pondered this for a considerable amount of time (probably too much at that) I decided simply to state how much it resonated with me. Hope you have enjoyed your Christmas and thank you so much for this gem of a video!
Greetings from Denmark and a fellow computer scientist, gone hobby (for now) student of psychology.

[sajadtorkamani]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This question has been plaguing me for the past few years and I always find solace when listening to your thoughts on it. Thinking about why we are here or why anything exists has such a dizzying effect that it makes me want to laugh, cry, scream, rage, dance at different times. What a life!

[shalomlynch]

Your video makes me feel in tremendous solitude and company !! Thank you so much for share your thoughts with us .

[frank]

The turning point for me came when I realized that my life experience is meaning enough. I don't need to look outside of my existence to know why I am here.

[magickfire]

Thank you, professor, for sharing your wisdom with us. It is greatly appreciated. Have a great year in 2022!

[Bazzo]

I love the style and content of your videos. Incredibly thought provoking and inspiring. Long may they continue.

[kiddogonzalez]

These videos are much appreciated, thank you,

[HieuNguyen-bxlo]

Appreciate your works. This video and “The Holism …” video are so wonderfully helpful to me. Thanks

[haniffhaniff]

Another masterpiece. Keep up prof. Belated merry christmas

[BlackWolf]

Thank you! Great video as always! And as always, take care of yourself Eric 👌🏻

[nasar]

Happy New Year, Mr Dodson. Grateful, as always, for every single video of yours. Much love and appreciation :)

[satanickmukhuty]

Hello sir,

This is Satanick all the way from Kolkata, India. I have been listening to you (on both your YouTube channels) for the past several months, and I must say, you are the best thing I have discovered on the internet in recent times. Honestly, I have become a fan of both your eloquence and erudition. With this comment, I would like to let you know that you're truly touching lives and the light of your wisdom is reaching places you would perhaps least expect of.

However, I have also a question to ask: since you have dwelled a lot on the topic of addiction — how it is the single most pressing crisis facing humanity today — would you say that this need to explore the fundamental questions of existence can itself become a form of fixation in a person?

Once we open ourselves to the indifferent and contingent nature of the universe, true that it can induce a degree of anxiety and a sort of restlessness to "know" the unknowable that lies beyond, but can it not also make us profoundly disinterested in the functioning of day-to-day life, disconnecting us from everyone and everything as we know of?

I love the metaphor of the stallion you have used in this video. I guess my question is what happens when that galloping horse suddenly falls into the proverbial "existential slough" and finds himself, like an addict, quite inexorably stuck? How does he flex his powerful sinews all over again knowing that the wild race he was running is "pointless" in the first place?

I am not sure if I am really getting the point across, but if you understood my predicament and gave it some consideration would be grateful.

Much regards and love, and a happy new year, too, in advance!

A fellow student of life.

[johndawson]

Thanks for this. Your personal view on things reminded me of Camus' view in the Myth of Sisyphus.