Homework #30, The source of emptiness

All of these websites discuss feeling meaningless, and how people feel like whatever they do, they are still unimportant. The first quotes say that we look for meaning in materialistic things, and that the materialistic things are to blame in the first place for us feeling unimportant. It's the reason people shop to try and fill the never-ending hole in themselves.Though this may be a little inappropiate and the connection may not seem too clear, it reminds me of something Fat Bastard said in Austin Powers. He said in one movie: "I eat because I'm unhappy, and I'm unhappy because I eat. It's a vicious cycle. Now if you'll excuse me, there's someone I need to get in touch with and forgive: meself" (To read all about the lovely Fat Bastard in Austin Powers, go here. Basically, my connection is that people shop because they are unhappy, and that they are unhappy because they eat, and like the quote says, it's a terrible cycle.

Another name for the feeling meaningless is the theory of nihilism, that no matter what a person does, they still don't mean anything. That the world does not stop for one small individual, and that whatever we dod, the world doesn't care. A man once said to me, "The world could just do like this *he shook around a bit* and we'd be gone." In life, people are always striving to be noticed, and important. They -including myself- want to find a way to be come immortal, and to live forever. If we know we cannot die, it might help people feel important. To feel untouchable, invincible.
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Dan Bruiger, "Emptiness of Modernity", http://www.leftfieldpress.com/essays/emptiness-of-modernity.htm This is a small essay talking about the emptiness in modern times, and in materialistic things. Some quotes from the essay are:

"The emptiness infects the very objects that are supposed in the materialistic society to be the source of all satisfaction. We seek in luxuries and conveniences compensation for the loss of nature and vitality, and for the essential poverty of the Ideal manifest in urban landscapes."
"What characterizes the emerging global culture is just this loss of local initiative: consumer society has emasculated itself by trading self-reliance for convenience and imagined security."
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Pradip Mukherji,"Life - LIFE IS EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS" http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/philosophy/life/meaningless-life.asp A quote from this website is "Moving up the five levels of consciousness in the waking state we realize that nothing ever happened. This world is just a projection of the Universal Mind. But in the emptiness and meaninglessness of life we experience fulfillment and wholeness"
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James Park, "Our Existential Predicament: Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety & Death" (just like Andy's charts)http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/XP69.html This is a whole book -I only glanced at it- , which discusses in detail the reason for feeling meaningless. It says that we cannot measure the meaning in our life, and that "short-term purposes and relative goals no longer satisfy us. " It also says how we want to feel important, and that we feel like the little things that we do build up and don't matter. This website poses a lot of questions and things to think about, and not a lot of answers.
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Also by James Park, "Looking for the Meaning of Life", http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/CY-MEAN.html "My early sense of meaninglessness was directly related to death: If we all must die, can life have any ultimate meaning? " and "But when we say that life is meaningless,
we question the assumed standards of meaning themselves. We know that we can spend our lives working toward relative goals. But is that meaningful?"
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