The Temerist Manifesto

We have found ourselves lost in a never-ending quest to find meaning in life. We have been convinced that life must have a meaning and will have a meaning, if only we could but find it. There must be a divine plan to it all, for nothing meaningful can go unplanned.

Life is meaningless. This is not meant to be disheartening nor meant to be taken as a plea for the mass suicide of all the human inhabitants of our planet (although I must admit this would solve many of the problems we currently face—overpopulation for one). Life is meaningless. These words should bring joy and gladness to your hearts, filling you with endless possibilities of ways to fill the now vacant hole for the rest of your physical existence! Life is meaningless. Don’t get lost down the hole of oblivion, searching for the single Truth. There is no single Truth. There is no meaning to anything beyond that which we have imposed upon it. A line of literature can have as many meanings as intelligent minds exist (the fact this leaves us with four or five meanings is irrelevant).

Life does not inherently have any meaning. The meaning must be created, fabricated, conjured, chosen by the particular person whose life it is. Your life and her and his lives will have completely different meanings. The meaning is created, artificial. It is a simplified representation of an unsimplifiable series of events, emotions, thoughts, feelings, persons, places, ideas, ornaments, colors, hopes, and dreams that can never be explained or given meaning, as meaning can never be adequately given to this elusive thing we term “life”, life is meaningless.

Life is not pointless, however. Life is very pointed. Needles and sharks' teeth. But the points don’t matter. The points are irrelevant. All our lives can have points. The point is the purpose. The purpose of life is unique to that life. It is possible one’s life may serve only to help someone else have a better life. Other than that this person’s life may be wasted, and serve only as a large “DO NOT ENTER” sign before a giant pit of failure and destruction, a “Do Not Try This at Home” notice on the bottom of the screen showing a drunken truck driver run over seventeen cars and a motorcyclist. He was an alcoholic and did nothing with his life. He died and took with him thirty-seven others. Is this person’s life pointless? On the one hand he has caused no one knows how many people to think the slightest (if at all) bit about driving drunk, and has possibly saved someone else from this same fate. On the other hand, his life was wasted on booze and liquor. Was his life pointless? The truth is, it doesn’t matter. A point or purpose is an objective. As life is not finished until death; no one can ever adequately say what the true objective of the life was until the person in question is on his or her way to a grave or an urn, and by then, the question is as important as the favorite color of your great-great-aunt’s dog, Fluffy. Maybe this color was very important to Fluffy. He loved this color and basked in its comforting wavelengths..... But Fluffy is dead, and so is the old bat.. It is inconsequential.

In short, life’s point cannot be discerned until the life has ended. When the life has ended, the point is useless, as it no longer exists.

If life has no meaning, and the point of life is irrelevant, that rope is looking awfully tempting. But don’t tie it up and secure it to that tree branch just yet. If life is both meaningless and pointless, that means we are free. We are free from having to find the One Ultimate Truth. We can be perfectly content in our ignorance, knowing no one can truly ever know. If Ponce de Lion knew the Fountain of Youth did not exist, do you think he would have dedicated his life to searching for it? By damn, no he wouldn’t! Maybe he’d enjoy himself a little more. He’d stop being so preoccupied with this youth spring and focus a little more on the here and the now. He’d play games and get drunk and go to bars and shoot some hoops with the boys.

Do this. Enjoy your life. From now until the day you die. Pick up a few sports, get your body in shape. You’ll need it when you’re eighty-two years old trying to set the land speed record on a tricycle. Proceed into the vast unknown of the future with a remarkable arrogance and heedlessness. Cry out to those who may scorn, “I don’t know where I’m going, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell me!” Life is more exciting this way! Life is more fully lived. Life is merely the postponement of the inevitable meeting with death. Why not brush up with this grizzly fellow a time or two? Why not push life to its utmost limits? Why not be able to say, “I did whatever the hell I wanted and I damn right loved (and lived) every minute of it!”?

Lay down your metal detector, you fool! You’re on a beach! Stop searching for gold and jump in the damn water!