|
 geokills
☼··· º¿° ···☼
 
Registered: 05/08/01
Posts: 16,491
Loc: city of angels 
Last seen: 6 hours, 43 minutes
|
 What's Your Meaning? 
#9121229 - 10/23/08 12:21 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
A new friend proposed some ideas regarding the human tendency to grasp for universal meaning in life, and I agree that there is likely to be a simple answer, but I also believe that on an individual level we will all create our own meaning that can vary wildly from person to person. As for the simple answer, I'd propose that while we can never be absolutely certain, we can speculate with some measure of confidence. I am going to extrapolate upon some older ideas here, and if you haven't checked out Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, I would recommend picking up a copy as I think it goes a long way toward explaining the biological meaning behind life.
The guy does a great job outlining the role of our genes, taking the reader as far back as the age of primordial ooze sloshing around a young earth. Where the first amino acids and complex molecules were able to form in the sludge through the reactions/assembly of the available building blocks (chemical elements and energy). These first compounds likely continued to interact with both each other as well as with ultraviolet energy (the sun), and by accident created a molecule that was able to copy itself. This little piece of self-copying code would have been the first of the "replicators", of which we are a descendant.
Because there was such an abundance of the basic building-block materials on early earth, there was likely to manifest a wide array of simple replicators as well. But as they consumed ever-more of the resources that were available to them, competition ensued. Certain groups of replicators were better at lasting longer, replicating faster or more accurately, or could even break apart other competing replicators in order to use their fundamental components towards copying more of themselves.
Through the process of genetic copying/variation and mutation, the early replicators have evolved to build sophisticated survival machines for themselves. The first survival machine would likely have been a simple barrier or membrane, a cell wall perhaps, that kept genetic code partially insulated from the outside environment. By way of chance evolution, some of the more successful replicators became those with big organic bodies that could protect their genes, allowing them to survive and reproduce for longer periods of time.
So in essence, it is not that being human is anything necessarily intended, nor that there was ever intended to be any special meaning to being human beyond the preservation and proliferation of our genetic code. It is simply that our genes were able to construct a well-built survival machine, a survival machine with a larger brain and therefore a wider ability of consciousness, which in turn has given us an evolutionary advantage over many of the other survival machines on this planet (at least for the time being). It is the gene that is the fundamental blueprint for what we have become and why we are here. Our consciousness, ability to think and analyze the world around us and our place within it, is a completely random tweak of development that happened to make us one of the more successful machines.
Of course, this is not to say that there isn't additional meaning to be discovered for each individual unit of consciousness. Because of the way our mind has given birth to consciousness, our survival machine is self-aware with memory, which in turn has manifested cultural influence. What meaning we take away from our experience is the meaning that we have willfully attached to it as individuals, it is a construct of our own mind and is completely subjective; it is our choice. Those who seek a universal meaning in life (beyond the biological explanation noted above), I believe could be engaging an exercise of futility. Those who seek a personal meaning in life, are those who have recognized the ability of our evolutionary tool - the conscious mind - to manifest a reality of its own. A reality where culture and social interaction has created additional meaning, never right or wrong, but entirely personal and open to tremendous levels of interpretation.
So I would propose, not the age old question "What is the meaning of life?", but rather, "What is your meaning for life?"
--------------------
--------------------
┼ ··∙ long live the shroomery ∙·· ┼
...╬π╥  ╥π╬...
|
Lion
Decadent Flower Magnate
Registered: 09/20/05
Posts: 7,357
Last seen: 15 hours, 43 minutes
|
 Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9121329 - 10/23/08 12:44 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
I'm struggling to find a personal meaning in life.
It seems there are states which can be experienced where no meaning is needed...Being is enough. But to cling to those states can cause an erosion of mental and physical wellbeing. These exalted states seem to come about as a product of healthy, conscious immersion in one's environment.
The only real meaning I have found is in striking a balance between discovering who you are, and not grasping at that discovery.
--------------------
|
 Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 67,521
Loc: underbelly
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9121352 - 10/23/08 12:50 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
So in essence, it is not that being human is anything necessarily intended, nor that there was ever intended to be any special meaning to being human beyond the preservation and proliferation of our genetic code.
 Not only that, there really is no "meaning" to the preservation and proliferation of our genetic code. It's the evolutionary pressures on our genes and not any meanings. It just is. Great post dude.
--------------------
“What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.”
― Ernest Becker
"Beneath the civilized veneer, man remains the supreme predator. Cursed with what he believes is understanding, his true soul blossoms godlike in the heart of the nuclear inferno."
|
MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9121410 - 10/23/08 01:00 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
You seem to be conflating the cognitive genre with an ethical and/or metaphysical genre of discourse.
|
Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 67,521
Loc: underbelly
|
|
I wish I was smart enough to know what you just said. And damn Veritas just went back to work.
--------------------
“What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.”
― Ernest Becker
"Beneath the civilized veneer, man remains the supreme predator. Cursed with what he believes is understanding, his true soul blossoms godlike in the heart of the nuclear inferno."
|
deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 52,515
|
|
Quote:
MushmanTheManic said:
You seem to be conflating the cognitive genre with an ethical and/or metaphysical genre of discourse.
You appear to be unnecessarily differentiating two things that are one and the same.
--------------------
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
  
|
mr_kite
The Watcher
Registered: 09/16/02
Posts: 2,577
Loc: shambhala
Last seen: 4 months, 3 days
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9121526 - 10/23/08 01:20 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Amazing post, you've summed up with a lot of clarity what Im sure a lot of people think around but dont have the skill to articulate. 
--------------------
let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love
|
b0red5tiff
NWO Disinformation Agent
Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 17,617
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: mr_kite]
#9121575 - 10/23/08 01:29 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
my goals are beyond ordinary understandings of common man.
--------------------
Trading random Cubensis prints for stuff, PM me!
|
deCypher
Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 52,515
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: b0red5tiff]
#9121582 - 10/23/08 01:30 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
b0red5tiff said:
my goals are beyond ordinary understandings of common man.
I see you don't understand your own goals then. 
--------------------
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
|
b0red5tiff
NWO Disinformation Agent
Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 17,617
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: deCypher]
#9121585 - 10/23/08 01:31 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
sure.
--------------------
Trading random Cubensis prints for stuff, PM me!
|
deimya
tofu and monocle
Registered: 08/26/04
Posts: 825
Loc: ausländer.ch
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9121631 - 10/23/08 01:42 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Life is all but random, life is all but designed.
When pushed far enough out of equilibrium, a pool, or system, of unmeasurably many, persistently interacting constituents become very "activated". That is any fluctuation gets amplified, instead of damped, such that combined with irreversibly, they drive the system into new branches of its many allowed states. The constant influx of energy and matter that keeps the system out of equilibrium enables it to explore its possibilities and to brew in them in a transitory way.
The equilibrium state of a system is simply dictated by maximizing disorder, for there's immeasurable more ways of being disorderly than to be ordered, such that probabilities are against you if you ever dare getting out of equilibrium by yourself. Indeed it will be exponentially more likely that you fall back into equilibrium.
Out of equilibrium, more general principles dictate how the system will evolve, disorder maximization doesn't hold any more. It so appears that there would be a more general "minimum disorder production" principle that dictates what happens in out-of-equilibrium situations like, for example, primitive Earth, or the whole galaxy for that matter.
Out-of-equilibrium, matter expresses itself. Life is a state of expression of matter, it is the exploration of what is possible in a certain set of physical laws.
As such, there is no meaning in life, there is no consciousness that isn't illusory, but there is a possibility to express which braided its way from subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to macromolecules to DNA and RNA and cells to life forms. At the core lies an irreversible, changing, transitory evolution, from bottom to top to bottom. With many forms expressed transitorily, but always with conserved energy.
|
MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: Icelander]
#9121690 - 10/23/08 01:55 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Icelander said:
I wish I was smart enough to know what you just said. And damn Veritas just went back to work.
The cognitive (scientific) genre of discourse and the metaphysical genre of discourse are different categories with different "rules of discourse." Phrases about "meaning" in the metaphysical sense cannot be judged by the cognitive genre, because the cognitive genre has no "rule of discourse" to apprehend such a phrase. In Humean terminology, "meaning" is a relation-of-ideas and the cognitive genre is only concerned with matters-of-fact. Similarly, Kant would complain that "meaning" is a priori and biological evolution is a posteriori.
I'll explain this in layman terminology later. Basically I'm just arguing against scientism.
|
Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,088
|
|
Quote:
culture and social interaction has created additional meaning, never right or wrong, but entirely personal and open to tremendous levels of interpretation.
This encompasses the metaphysical and ethical genres, as they are both creations of human cognition, and not inherent qualities of existence.
|
Apollyphelion
Dungeon Master/Princess(1009)
Registered: 03/15/07
Posts: 12,948
Loc: Festival of Deaths
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: Veritas]
#9121820 - 10/23/08 02:15 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
It is really hard for me to read the word
"meaning"
and not really read "resonance"-
What is the resonance of life? A huge orchestra
maybe too detailed?
--------------------
"I'm looking at you looking at it"
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL PLEASE! www.youtube.com/apollyphelion
"I am a woman
Inside a Man
Inside a Horse
Meow!"
Creator of the World's Worst Comic Book
|
redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 13,629
|
|
I hope that is natural and not just my pressure
i hope it is my pressure too
--------------------
~~~~~
|
Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,088
|
|
Resonance-pusher!
|
TheGoodLife
Stranger
Registered: 06/01/08
Posts: 81
Loc: California-Los Angeles
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: Veritas]
#9123018 - 10/23/08 06:12 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
what's our meaning? good question. Many answers. My answer though is that there is no specific meaning to this experience we call Life. We just live it based on our own experiences. Everyone lives life viewing out of a unique paradigm.
|
Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 67,521
Loc: underbelly
|
|
I'll explain this in layman terminology later.
Bless you son.
--------------------
“What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.”
― Ernest Becker
"Beneath the civilized veneer, man remains the supreme predator. Cursed with what he believes is understanding, his true soul blossoms godlike in the heart of the nuclear inferno."
|
MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: Veritas]
#9123384 - 10/23/08 07:21 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
This encompasses the metaphysical and ethical genres, as they are both creations of human cognition, and not inherent qualities of existence.
Ahh yes, well that would be true... but the "cognitive genre" refers to "phrases" that have a basis in empirical knowledge. Personally, I think they should just call it the empirical genre to avoid confusion!
|
Sleepwalker
Overshoes
Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 3,632
Last seen: 43 minutes, 31 seconds
|
Re: What's Your Meaning? [Re: geokills]
#9123414 - 10/23/08 07:25 PM (3 years, 7 months ago) |
|
|
My meaning for life is to search for meaning...
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit 
Reply 
