I have often heard people say things like "I don't believe the universe or our lives have any meaning, so I choose to make my own meaning."
If the universe is meaningless, and all the things in it are equally meaningless (ourselves included). How is it possible to create meaning? How can a meaningless thing or action within a meaningless system have any meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1?
It has meaning because we want it to have meaning, and that's enough. The universe didn't come with meaning a-priori. We're not here because the universe has meaning; it's the other way around: the universe has meaning now because we're in it, and we choose to ascribe meaning to it. It's not 0 + 0 = 1, it's 0 + 1 = 1.
Think of it this way: does a pretty, shiny rock on the beach have meaning on its own? Not really. But if a human finds it and loves it, and it brings joy, now it has meaning. And that human treasures it and passes it down generation by generation, and now it has even more meaning. And now someone looks at this rock and thinks about their great, great, great grandmother finding it on the beach, and thinks about their great, great, great grandchildren receiving it in turn, and it brings them joy, and the meaning continues to increase.
The universe is a pretty, shiny rock that humans have found.
> If the universe is meaningless, and all the things in it are equally meaningless (ourselves included)
That is an assumption in itself. No one is obligated to act under that premise.
> How is it possible to create meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1?
We perceive meaning all the time. This thread came to be because many people hold some meaning or another to the topic, the thought of discussing it, or something else along those lines. There is no reasoning to this phenomenon. It is not even an axiom, something taken to be true and not provable (or disprovable). If we didn't ascribe meaning to things then this conversation wouldn't be happening. I don't live in a world without meaning because I just don't. I couldn't imitate a bacterium if I wanted to. Now it's just a matter of whether I find it permissible for me to act on personal desires.
> That is an assumption in itself. No one is obligated to act under that premise.
No, it is not. By definition, "[t]he universe is often defined as "the totality of existence", or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist."[0]
If we hold that everything is without meaning, we cannot hold that anything has meaning. It would be a contradiction.
Even if the universe is all of existence, that the universe holds no meaning is an axiom. If that means that I can't hold anything to a meaning, I reject that axiom because I do hold things to have meaning. I'm not mindlessly typing out this reply; I have thoughts about philosophy that I think to present. I at least hold meaning for studying philosophy and participating in a discussion about philosophy.
If the universe is meaningless, and all the things in it are equally meaningless (ourselves included). How is it possible to create meaning? How can a meaningless thing or action within a meaningless system have any meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1?