Fake Art, Real Artist
Some people argue that there is no inherent meaning or purpose to art. It's like trying to write on water or build houses out of sand - everything we create will eventually fade away and disappear. We've only been alive for a brief moment in the grand scheme of the universe, and we'll be dead for much, much longer. The universe has existed for 10 billion years and may continue to exist for another 70 billion years. Compared to the history of the universe, your life is equivalent to non-existence: it did not exist in the past 10 billion years and will not exist in the future 70 billion years. Eventually, the universe will end in a state of heat death. No one will remember us or our creations after a certain amount of time has passed. So, in a way, there's no real meaning to anything we do.
But I don't think that means we should give up on trying to find meaning and purpose in our lives and our creations. We have to create our own meaning, even if that meaning is only temporary. We have to ask ourselves, "Is this life just a play that I'm watching, or can I make a difference in some way?
As physicist Richard Feynman asserted, there may not be any fundamental, intrinsic purpose to the universe. Even if there were, we would just end up asking "why" over and over again. It's illogical to believe in an eternal afterlife as there's no evidence to support it. It's like the time before we were born, where we had no knowledge or awareness of anything, including ourselves, our loved ones, or the world around us. After we die, we will be in a similar state of non-existence.
In physics, the arrow of time arises from entropy, where the second law of thermodynamics demonstrates that entropy only increases, causing disorder in the Universe to rise, while concentrated free energy decreases. Living things are capable of locally reversing entropy, as humans do with their actions. However, in doing so, we globally accelerate entropy, leading to the eventual heat death of the Universe. The more complex systems we create, whether it's through art, mathematics, civilization, computers, or family, the faster we push ourselves towards that end. Ultimately, everything will be at the same energy level, resulting in an indistinguishable, unified entity.