Does anything we do make any difference at all?

Question

I sometimes think like this. what does it matter what i do today? it doesn't effect the world. so many people die every day, so many families are hurt. there are few people in history that have made a difference, anything is possible. but it just seems like if i don't do it, someone else will. so we live and we die, just like animals, just like plants. what's the difference? ultimately the world has the last say. we cannot overthrow nature. i believe i'm optimistic, but after drinking i sometimes feel this way. anyone else feel this way sometimes? opinions?

Answer 1

Of course it does. What you don't see it doesn't mean that it isn't there. How can you tell that water doesn't have any smell? You can't. Water does have smell, but human nose isn't sensitive enough to smell it. An elephant can smell water from a mile away. Now, water does have a scent.

Your mind is lock in a box. You have the key, but you might lost it somewhere. Keep looking for that key, and open your mind. You'll think more clearly, and make the right decision.

So, you think that you are here for no reason ha? Well, I don't have the answer to your question, but I got something. I believe that you have a family. You are happy when you see your family. That's one reason to live. You may think that it doesn't matter at all, but it does. Life is a chain reaction. When you make someone happy, that person make another person happy, and so on. So, even if you think that you  only make one person happy, you're wrong. You've just made about 10 people happy? How did I know that? Well, when you jump into a pool, the wave splashes right? The water continue the force moving forward. So, it does matter.

Sometimes, you think you may be worthless, but I don't think so. Your friends may just be happy to see your face. Your family is proud of you even if you've failed everything you did. The most important thing is that you've tried it all. I don't have the answer to the universe, because I'm just an ordinary guy. However, I can give the best advise. The best advise is to never give up no matter what.

Answer 2

Absolutely, what we do can make a difference.

I just answered a question about what a person can do to make a difference, my answer was that we can teach by example by taking responsibility for our mistakes at the expense of our pride. I know this makes a difference because I witnessed it myself and it had a profound effect on my life. I will never forget it for as long as I live. A man I did not know humbly risked everything to right a wrong for which he himself was responsible. It was the most amazing and courageous thing I've ever seen and I will never forget it, or him. Nor will several others who were there. I've spent my whole life, since, working to cultivate that level of courage in myself and in my family.

Yes, we can make a difference. It seems so simple but it is far from easy. If you spent your whole life trying to "leap over tall buildings in a single bound" you would not have worked harder than those who seek to reign in their pride.

Answer 3

I believe that every individual has the potential and the ability to make an impact on the world.  The question is:  How important is it to you to know what impact your thoughts and actions have on the world around you?  During a workshop several years ago, I led a discussion with a number of brilliant, dedicated young men and women who were feeling overwhelmed by the events of their community:  war, violence, drug addiction, etc.  During the process of articulating their feelings about what's happening in the world around them, they came to a consensus that they would like to impact their world in a positive way.  Everyone in the discussion came to an agreement that we would made a commitment to positively impact the world through individual action. That action would manifest itself by individuals committing random acts of kindness and love, and do it anonymously, if possible.  The participants felt that we are surrounded by opportunities to commits acts of kindness and love on a daily basis, and if we just acted on those opportunities, these positive actions would have a cumulative effect, whether or not the individuals who initiated those acts were aware of the impact of their actions.  It's been years since this discussion, and I've heard from the men and women who agreed to participate in this.  They report that it's been fulfilling and exciting, especially when the people on the receiving end of random acts of kindness and love don't know where it came from;  in that way, it relieved them of the responsibility of expressing thanks, and allowed them to pass it on.  

In conclusion, my answer is YES!!!

Answer 4

I just read this, I thought you might get something from it:

The Purpose of Life is to Disperse Energy

Scott Sampson, in What is Your Dangerous Idea?

The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.

The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.

Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, "nature abhors a gradient," where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.

There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life's complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one's bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.

Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature's "efforts" to grab more and more of the sun's flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.

Ecology has been summarized by the pithy statement, "energy flows, matter cycles. " Yet this maxim applies equally to complex systems in the non-living world; indeed it literally unites the biosphere with the physical realm. More and more, it appears that complex, cycling, swirling systems of matter have a natural tendency to emerge in the face of energy gradients. This recurrent phenomenon may even have been the driving force behind life's origins.

This idea is not new, and is certainly not mine. Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the first to articulate the hypothesis, as part of his famous "What is Life" lectures in Dublin in 1943. More recently, Jeffrey Wicken, Harold Morowitz, Eric Schneider and others have taken this concept considerably further, buoyed by results from a range of studies, particularly within ecology. Schneider and Dorian Sagan provide an excellent summary of this hypothesis in their recent book, "Into the Cool".

The concept of life as energy flow, once fully digested, is profound. Just as Darwin fundamentally connected humans to the non-human world, a thermodynamic perspective connects life inextricably to the non-living world. This dangerous idea, once broadly distributed and understood, is likely to provoke reaction from many sectors, including religion and science. The wondrous diversity and complexity of life through time, far from being the product of intelligent design, is a natural phenomenon intimately linked to the physical realm of energy flow.

Moreover, evolution is not driven by the machinations of selfish genes propagating themselves through countless millennia. Rather, ecology and evolution together operate as a highly successful, extremely persistent means of reducing the gradient generated by our nearest star. In my view, evolutionary theory (the process, not the fact of evolution!) and biology generally are headed for a major overhaul once investigators fully comprehend the notion that the complex systems of earth, air, water, and life are not only interconnected, but interdependent, cycling matter in order to maintain the flow of energy.

Although this statement addresses only naturalistic function and is mute with regard to spiritual meaning, it is likely to have deep effects outside of science. In particular, broad understanding of life's role in dispersing energy has great potential to help humans reconnect both to nature and to planet's physical systems at a key moment in our species' history.

Answer 5

"At the waterfall. When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient, calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting man's delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculable mechanism."

"He who lives as children live — who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance — remains childlike."   Friedrich Nietzsche

Answer 6

Actually, it's not nature you can't overthrow. It's God, who controls nature.