Is it OK not to think about Meaning of Life ?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Saint, Sep 3, 2003.

  1. Esoteric Tragic Hero Registered Senior Member

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    The meaning of your life is whatever meaning you want to give it.

    Only little children and trained rats need a preset meaning they can follow.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2003
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  3. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    I want to be
    Happy and also Benovalent at the same time.

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  5. Benevolent?
     
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  7. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    having true happiness within yourself and do good to people.

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  8. notme2000 The Art Of Fact Registered Senior Member

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    Socrates said, "Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live."
     
  9. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    "good" ?
    "bad" ?
    Don't tell him I said this but socrates was a moron.
     
  10. Sicksixix Registered Senior Member

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    :]

    Life... haha its so easy its right in front of all of our eyes. Literally.
    The meaning of life is life... existence. Death. Absence of existence. Our mission is to get from point A(nothingness) to point B,(absolute existence) whatever that might be like... I sure look forward to experiencing it in its full glory.
     
  11. G71 AI Coder Registered Senior Member

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  12. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    happiness is not absolute.
    what i feel happy might grieve you;
    i think, as long as what we did is not against the public wellfare, then we can be happy about it.

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  13. Cyperium I'm always me Valued Senior Member

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    It's great that it makes you feel good, but it wouldn't work for me, I would feel like I was running around inside a box. I guess I put more meaning to me than I deserve. But that's only because I've seen that so many things have a purpose other than what I first thought, so I decided that I wouldn't "fixate" my purpose, but constantly searching for the higher one, right now I'm at the purpose of "being happy", "trying to make good consequences" and "searching for purpose".

    The "searching for purpose" is the freedom, that's what makes me feel like I am outside the box, cause we'll never know exactly how everything works, or why. It's a constant change of perception, allways something new to discover.
     
  14. onemonkey Registered Member

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    7
    as i believe someone said earlier the mere fact that you are asking this question indicates that you are thinking about it
    and i am doubtful you would stop even if we told you it's okay to grab a beer and settle back to watch reruns of I love Lucy (or however that clichee goes)

    -search for the meaning of life?
    -nah, the folks at sciforums said i could be excused.

    but if that is what you want then yes, it's perfectly ok, there is no test at the end.

    if what you are actually asking is what do we think the meaning of life is, then at present i can't tell you. I am working on it, but I'm still in the research phase..

    as a matter of fact, only last week i wrote to every philosopher in the UK asking them exactly this question. their replies are here:
    http://phil.onemonkey.org
     
  15. tablariddim forexU2 Valued Senior Member

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    I think, almost everybody, must ponder the meaning of life at some point in their lives, even if it’s just a fleeting thought, but I think the majority of people don’t dwell on it. Those that do so a lot are probably sad, lonely, bitter, dissatisfied with life and afraid of people. We’re talking about the general majority here; people who are miserable at the best of times.

    Some are dreamers, some are quasi philosophers, some are religious or spiritual searchers; constantly asking the impossible question, as if a correct answer would make them happy and free them from even more selfish introspection, but all they achieve in this introspect endeavour, is actually to escape from life; from living a life. I wouldn’t say that this class of person is entirely unhappy with life, because they do seem to find a disproportionate amount of joy in their brain-racking pursuits, which might make up for their lack of alternative pleasures

    The happiest people seem to share traits such as being positive, trusting in strangers, being hard working, enjoying helping others and being forgiving of almost anything or anybody. They genuinely enjoy life and revel in simple pleasures, showing enthusiasm for most things, from shopping to cleaning out the bathroom, from a walk in the forest to partying till dawn. Their values are not about winning one over the next person. Their simple philosophy is that life is short, so count your blessings and make the most of it.

    These people hardly ever dwell on trying to decipher the meaning of life; they are usually realists and see things in black and white with no inclination for futile, time-wasting endeavours. There are so many other important things to attend to when you have a life and are intent on living it.

    My wife is the happy person above and I’m the dreamer person above that; almost everyone else I know is the miserable person mentioned in the first paragraph.
     
  16. Canute Registered Senior Member

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    OneMonkey

    Great project. (But, as one respondent said, to academic philosophers it's a meaningless question).

    I'd say it has whatever meaning we give it, that meaning is in the eye of the beholder, and that I can know the meaning of mine, but never yours.

    When someone says life has no meaning thay are speaking for their own.

    All depends what 'meaning' means I suppose.
     
  17. orthogonal Registered Senior Member

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    Barnyard animals provide a good example of how not to make a fuss about what it means to live - they just live. Standing in a slaughterhouse queue, a mature sheep, for example, accepts an impending bullet-in-the-brain with perfect metaphysical vacuity. Huge numbers of men live according to this model. They've little else on their minds other than than to keep their bellies full and their testicles empty.

    Does it matter that we should raise our snoots out of the feed-trough long enough to behold ourselves in the abstract? I can live with the fact that some humans will prefer the feed-trough to abstract thought - in fact, I expect it. We are all humans, but in his book, Creative Being, Eliot Deutsch wrote,

    "A person is an achievement...Personhood is an articulation of one's being."

    It might be possible to be a person without knowing what it is to love, though I doubt it. It might be possible to be a person without compassion, though I doubt it. And it might be possible to be a person without knowing wonder, though I doubt it. When the Italian chemist and writer, Primo Levi, first arrived at the Monowitz concentration camp in the 1940's, he made the mistake of questioning an order. He was told, not so gently;

    "Hier ist kein Warum."
    "Here, there is no 'why'."


    Indeed, a world in which I were capable of asking "why," but not permitted to do so, would be for me a kind of Konzentrationslager.

    Humans and other animals inhabit a forest of things, but the French poet, Charles Baudelaire, correctly noted that people inhabit a "forêt de symboles." Symbols symbolize. Philosophical thought is that noble enterprise whose aim is to understand what we mean by our symbols.

    Michael
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2003
  18. Technar Registered Senior Member

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    Saint, is it all right to labor in vain?
     
  19. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Negative !
    Every labor must have reward !

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  20. Technar Registered Senior Member

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    Saint, would death of the life, identified with the planet Earth, make your labor vain?
     
  21. P. M. Thorne Registered Senior Member

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    CANUTE SAID:
    //
    "If you consider that your life has no meaning then it doesn't. You are not just correct you are inevitably correct. You have decided it is true. Your belief logically entails your conclusion.

    "Just don't make the mistake of thinking this applies to anyone else's life."
    //

    ........Kind of goes with, "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he," doesn't it?

    I just have to wonder why "Saint" would be asking such a question of strangers. Or perhaps the question was hypothetical.

    PMT
     

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