“nothing matters” is scope error. fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective) we are weird creatures with desires and dreams and hopes and ways to suffer and things we like. we dont need some sort of god or higher purpose to justify our existence, just what we personally care about

it’s not about forcing yourself to be happy and make others happy. that’s an obligation, a stated goal ascribed to you despite your wishes. living without “meaning”, or more accurately objective meaning, is the opposite. it’s about doing what you want. not in a sociopathic, solipsistic way, where you dismiss others and any concept of morality out of hand. but almost as play. not that you don’t take anything seriously, mind you, but almost in that you are pursuing your whims as if you were playing a game of Minecraft. Everyone agrees destroying people’s stuff in that game is a dick move, right? And people work together to do random shit in that game all the time. We’re basically (or trying to be) playing Minecraft but the stakes are waaaaaay higher and we’re also witness to an unbelievable amount of suffering caused by structures of capital which supress all of our natural urges unless they can be fully subsumed towards profit.

and this doesn’t even mean that we can’t live without a “higher calling” or “noble purpose”, just that those are goals we become attached to and find worth and joy in naturally, not things we have prescribed to us as a required thing.

we are under no obligation to rationalize our desires and wishes, except when they come into direct conflict with other’s, or when other’s suffering and pain would be a direct result. and i honestly think this is true even if there was a god. Who is a god to prescribe the purpose of our existence to us? Is it just because God is more powerful than us and made us? Powerful people who make things are wrong all the time about those things. Is it because God is meant to be always right? According to whom? In whose interest? For what goals? Unless this God has all goals, that could ever be possible, simultaneously. Which is an absurd and incomprehensible concept. This God would still have no authority over what our goals are, merely the ability to suggest (though in a God’s case, very strongly, but still). Just like everyone else.

So what difference even is it for the world to have a meaning made by God or somebody or to have none at all? You’d have to subjectively accept that God’s goals as being your own, just like you have to for basically everything.

So the only conclusion I can make is that the lack of a God or a lack of truth or meaning means we are free, not doomed. If there is no god, then that God cannot coerce us to follow their arbitrary goals. And if there is no divine, objective meaning we must ALL follow or be punished, than what we want can be our priority. We can make our whole, all-encompassing, undeniably real and objectively true meaning(s) anything our whims pull us towards. Not in a “living in the moment” milquetoast way (i am not attacking mindfulness btw, just the idea that it’s the only respite from meaninglessness or whatever), but in a genuine, powerful, driving and future-acknowledging way that we are supposed to exclusively reserve for “true meaning”. And nobody can take that away from you, because nihilism doesn’t, nor christianity, nor capitalism, nor any philosophical concept known to man, have anything that can debunk or disprove that. We, you, everyone has genuinely good reasons and drives to want the things we want, to have the meanings we find meaning in. To deny that is a fundamental denial of reality, a fundamental denial of one’s very self, not in an enlightened way but in a sad way caused by domination, driven by the constant overshadowing influence of a dead God and a very much alive and very malicious Capital which urges us to justify our every actions and wish. But we don’t have to. We can tell it to fuck off and then we can continue drawing pictures of garfield making out with sans (and then fighting for communism because adobe just sent all of your garfield pictures to some ai chatbot to regurgitate and fuck us all over with infinite slop).