Blog > I’m a Minnesota REALTOR® Who Doesn’t Believe in Purpose, And I’m Done Pretending That’s Weird : By Ken Alger, REALTOR® — Minnesota
I’m a Minnesota REALTOR® Who Doesn’t Believe in Purpose, And I’m Done Pretending That’s Weird : By Ken Alger, REALTOR® — Minnesota
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I’m a Minnesota REALTOR® Who Doesn’t Believe in Purpose — And I’m Done Pretending That’s Weird
By Ken Alger, REALTOR® — Minnesota
The Expectation of Order
I’m a REALTOR®. That’s what I do for work, and it’s a job that quietly expects you to sound like you believe in order: the right timing, the right plan, the right path, the “meant to be” house, the idea that if you do things correctly the universe will meet you halfway.
I don’t believe any of that.
Not because I’m bitter. Not because I’m edgy. Not because I need attention. I don’t believe it because I think it’s false—comforting, popular, useful sometimes, but false. I’m an Absurdist and an atheist, and I see reality as what it is: simultaneous processes colliding, branching, mutating, and dissolving, with no obligation to make sense to us.
Baseline Reality
Some things go right. Some things go wrong. Some things never resolve. Some things “work out” and people call it fate. Some things fail and people call it a lesson. Most things simply happen and then time eats the evidence. That’s not cynicism. That’s the baseline.
And here’s the part people miss: it’s okay that it’s like this. Reality doesn’t need a story arc to be valid.
Why Meaning Is Treated Like Oxygen
People want meaning the way drowning people want air. They don’t just prefer it—they reach for it automatically, because a universe without intention doesn’t comfort you. It doesn’t give you a villain. It doesn’t reward virtue. It doesn’t guarantee that effort produces outcome. It doesn’t promise that pain has a reason, or that good people win, or that the universe keeps score.
So we impose order. We narrate. We spiritualize. We turn coincidence into “signs.” We turn survival into destiny. We act like the universe is a parent and not a machine.
What Absurdism Actually Is
Absurdism, to me, is refusing to participate in that performance.
Not because performance is evil. Because it’s optional. Because it often replaces reality with emotional sedation. Absurdism is not despair—it’s the rejection of false rescue narratives. It’s acknowledging that humans demand answers the universe doesn’t provide, and then choosing to live without inventing a cosmic explanation just to take the edge off.
Where Atheism Comes From
Atheism is the simple result of that same honesty. I don’t see intention behind reality. I see pressure. I see selection. I see cause and effect. I see systems responding to constraints. I see complexity emerging without a planner. I don’t need a deity to explain it, and I’m not going to pretend I do.
Evolution, Without Euphemism
Now the part I’m not going to soften :
Evolution isn’t a “maybe” to me. It’s not a cultural identity. It’s not a political statement. It’s not a vibe. It is the most brutally consistent description we have of how life changes over time. It is observable. It is measurable. It is predictive. It explains why we have what we have—bones, instincts, cravings, fear responses, tribalism, attachment, jealousy, altruism, violence, compassion. It explains why we are brilliant in some contexts and irrational in others. It explains why we tell stories at all.
And I’m not interested in the rhetorical dodge people use when they hear that word—“Well, it’s just a theory.” That line is a misunderstanding people repeat because it keeps them safe. In science, “theory” does not mean “guess.” It means a framework so supported and useful that it organizes massive amounts of evidence and keeps surviving every attempt to disprove it. Evolution doesn’t survive because it’s popular. It survives because reality keeps agreeing with it.
What Accepting Evolution Actually Does
If you take evolution seriously—not as a debate topic, but as a fact of the world—you stop believing in intention by default. You stop needing a “why” behind everything. You stop treating human nature as sacred and start treating it as emergent. You stop interpreting every moment like it’s a message. You realize that a huge portion of what we call “meaning” is a story a primate brain tells itself so it can tolerate uncertainty long enough to keep functioning.
What makes people uncomfortable is that evolutionary reality is indifferent. It doesn’t care about fairness. It doesn’t care about your values. It doesn’t care if you feel seen. It doesn’t care if you’re a good person. It does not reward belief. It selects outcomes based on pressure and conditions. And if you zoom out far enough, even the outcomes fade. That’s not a moral claim. It’s a description.
Meaning as Overlay, Not Feature
So when I say “the universe is meaningless,” I’m not saying “nothing matters” in the melodramatic way people assume. I’m saying something more exact: there is no inherent meaning baked into existence. Meaning is an overlay. A human construction. A temporary architecture we build so we can move through life without collapsing under the weight of its randomness.
You can absolutely create your own meaning. I do. Most people do. That’s not the issue.
The issue is pretending that what we create becomes universally true, permanent, or cosmically significant.
Scale
Your life is unique to you. Your pain is real. Your joy is real. Your love is real. Your memories will shape you and maybe shape a few people around you.
But uniqueness does not equal cosmic significance. Experience does not equal universal purpose. And time does not preserve what we insist should last. Entropy doesn’t negotiate. History forgets most people completely. The sun will eventually swallow the evidence. That’s not “dark.” That’s just the scale of reality.
The Part People Resist
And still—again—here’s the point people refuse to accept:
It’s okay.
It’s okay if there isn’t a reason.
It’s okay if nothing is promised.
It’s okay if it doesn’t add up.
It’s okay if your constructed meaning is temporary and will disappear.
Nothing inherently changes because meaning isn’t there. The universe continues doing what it does. Your life continues being lived. The only thing that changes is you stop demanding that reality be comforting before you’re willing to face it.
Why This Is Being Said Out Loud
I’m saying this publicly because there are like-minded people who exist inside normal professions—especially client-facing, “be positive” professions—who feel alone in how they see the world. They aren’t depressed. They aren’t broken. They aren’t confused. They’re just not interested in lying to themselves to fit in.
If you’ve ever felt out of place in a world that treats optimism like morality and belief like maturity, you’re not the only one. Some of us see the chaos, accept it, and refuse to cover it with a story just to make it easier to swallow.
That’s my voice. If it’s yours too, then you already know: this isn’t negativity.
It’s honesty—without needing it to mean anything more than that.