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trip forever
Stranger
Registered: 08/21/09
Posts: 5,873
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True Meaning Of Life
#16095257 - 04/15/12 09:22 PM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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What is your perceived view of the true meaning of life?
What do you think it is? Not what it actually may be, but what do you perceive to be the true meaning of life?
For me, nothing.
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RonaldFuckingPaul
Our Dear Leader
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The meaning is to find meaning.
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torus314
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to find meaning.
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trip forever
Stranger
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: torus314]
#16095553 - 04/15/12 10:48 PM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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So if you're definiton of the meaning of life is to find the meaning of life, then what do you find once you found the meaning?
What is the meaning (to you as of now) if you were able to believe you found the meaning,
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TravisMcDee
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Inside you is a center, the nexus between matter and anti-matter, a minute particle which provides a pole for consciousness energy to move to and from. one extreme perceives minute scales of creation and darkness the other all the opposite. your perceptions are energy translated through thought matrices that progressively reveal the qualities inherent in the programs. We are beyond consciousness yet blinking on and off to fast to perceive yet evident,,you are already everything you will ever know.
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husmmoor
Invitro
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...the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being -C.G. Jung
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Shh
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: husmmoor]
#16096123 - 04/16/12 02:01 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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I believe the purpose of Life is to remember and re-create Who We Are (which is God/energy/Love/whatever you choose to call it). I believe the purpose to Life is for the individuation of God we know as the soul (the consciousness driving our physical experience), to know in physical experience what it knows of itself conceptually. As in, we only have the concept of ourselves as kind, until we do someone a kindness and experience ourselves as kind. Life is not a process of discovery, but one of creation. We are here to create the people, places, events, challenges, obstacles, opportunities and circumstances for us to re-define and experience who we are relative to those circumstances. Basically, we are individuations of God, having purposefully forgotten that fact, so that through experience we may Create-by how we think about them, do about them and be in response to them, thus knowing and creating ourselves (God) anew!
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Linus
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: Shh]
#16096138 - 04/16/12 02:12 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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I like that a lot, "to find meaning" I just say its to do whatever makes you happy as long as your not hurting anyone else which i guess gives you meaning. Of course for most the people along the journey will be far more precious then titles or material goods.
-------------------- I've done a lot of drugs in the past, I still do. Abracadabra
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GuruBushHippie
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Quote:
trip forever said: For me, nothing.
-------------------- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I cut straight through the forest, and that has made all the difference.
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Xeny
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Reproduction
-------------------- Ik hou van je While you're still sleeping the saints are still weepin' cause things you call dead haven't yet had the chance to be born. -Scatman John
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saintphotios
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: Linus]
#16096210 - 04/16/12 02:53 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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I think using that terminology is misleading. When someone asks what the meaning of life is, I think they're usually asking what is the purpose. In order for life to have a purpose, life must first be created with a specific intent. The purpose of a light bulb is to illuminate. It was created for that purpose of illuminating.
If all that exists is energy and matter set in motion by purely natural causes, it seems pretty clear that to talk about life having a purpose is utter nonsense. The idea of purpose is incompatible with that conception of the universe. Based on that framework, our own individual lives can't have purpose because they too were created by natural causes. The only thing we could attribute purpose to would be our own actions, and only to the extent to which we can be said to have created our actions. If you believe in non-deterministic free-will then this works. If you deny the existence of free-will, then again even our will is the outcome of natural processes and also lacks real purpose. So at this point I think you'd have to say that no part of life can really have any purpose whatsoever. We can call things like our ambitions, desire and life goals "purpose" ... but we're really just talking about pro-attitudes and emotive states.
For instance, I'm a Christian. I believe the entirety of creation represents the extension of God's essence into God's energies, and that a major part of the purpose lies in the reunification of God's energies into participation in the Divine essence. Insofar as life is concerned -- theosis. To the non-Christian or non-theist, this is nonsense. But the point is that the purpose lies in the reason for it's creation. The key question is, what is the creation of life intended to accomplish. Without a creative agent determining this intent, that question has no answer.
All that to say, I think attributing purpose to life is a theistic attribution -- or at least some form of intelligent, intentional creation of life. Without this key attribute, talk of purpose is meaningless. And I think that sums up what we're referring to when we talk about the "meaning of life."
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husmmoor
Invitro
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Quote:
saintphotios said: I think using that terminology is misleading. When someone asks what the meaning of life is, I think they're usually asking what is the purpose. In order for life to have a purpose, life must first be created with a specific intent. The purpose of a light bulb is to illuminate. It was created for that purpose of illuminating.
MDMA was, I believe, first patented for the purpose of dieting.. but would you claim this is, today, the true purpose of MDMA?
I don't think the assertion of "meaning/purpose of a thing is determined completely at the moment of it's creation" makes that much sense IMHO.
Quote:
saintphotios said: If all that exists is energy and matter set in motion by purely natural causes, it seems pretty clear that to talk about life having a purpose is utter nonsense. The idea of purpose is incompatible with that conception of the universe. Based on that framework, our own individual lives can't have purpose because they too were created by natural causes. The only thing we could attribute purpose to would be our own actions, and only to the extent to which we can be said to have created our actions. If you believe in non-deterministic free-will then this works. If you deny the existence of free-will, then again even our will is the outcome of natural processes and also lacks real purpose. So at this point I think you'd have to say that no part of life can really have any purpose whatsoever. We can call things like our ambitions, desire and life goals "purpose" ... but we're really just talking about pro-attitudes and emotive states.
The idea that will and natural causes are incompatible is IMO simply a figment of our (current) lack of understanding and lack of proper language. Basically the inability of science to come to terms with such an abstract philosophical quantity/quality and vice versa. I'm certainly also not too happy with the compatibilist accounts, but if the alternative is incompatibilism - whether in the form of deterministic materialism or libertarian free-will - then I know what I 'choose'.
But anyway I fail to see how freedom/non-freedom of the will is really essential to your argument when your conclusion is that the only meaningful conception of the meaning/purpose of life is to use our "free will" to acknowledge the pre-determined meaning/purpose of life!? If I get it right.
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2bakednate
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To exsist, to survive, to learn, to grow, and to die. But without a divine to tell us why, there is no true meaning, lifes purpose can be anything, or nothing.
-------------------- "The reason is for us all"
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Buster_Brown
L'une
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: Xeny]
#16096279 - 04/16/12 04:08 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Xeny said: Reproduction
If the kingdom of God is within you, I think there should be more of you comfortably ensconced with minimal expectations.
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saintphotios
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: 2bakednate]
#16096308 - 04/16/12 04:27 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
MDMA was, I believe, first patented for the purpose of dieting.. but would you claim this is, today, the true purpose of MDMA?
Purpose can change. I think the key factor here is intent. There's nothing inherent in the physical substance of MDMA that has anything to do with psychiatry or recreation. Those things come from human actors assigning purpose to it. Sticking to the chemistry analogy, nitroglycerin has both explosive properties and medicinal properties. It has no inherent explosive or medicinal purpose apart from assignment by intelligent actors -- what are they using it for. In the case of life, physical processes can't assign purpose. They simply unfold. If there's no intelligent agent involved in the creation of life to assign purpose, then there isn't one.
We can say that in the case of nitroglycerin there is no purpose involved in the creation of it, and that purpose isn't assigned until it's used -- whether that be an explosive or medicine. And this might lead us to say that the purpose of life is determined by the living thing itself in each individual case -- so as to say that purpose is relative to the individual, yet still exists. But I think that's confusing purpose with potential. The potential something has is what it's capable of. The purpose of something is what it was designed to do. When we talk about the purpose of life, we're not talking about the possible infinite number of things that life can accomplish. Relative or not, we're talking about the specific objective(s). Outside some kind of theistic framework, that doesn't seem to make much sense.
Quote:
The idea that will and natural causes are incompatible is IMO simply a figment of our (current) lack of understanding and lack of proper language. Basically the inability of science to come to terms with such an abstract philosophical quantity/quality and vice versa.
I mentioned will as a possible exception if you're someone that adheres to that view. But whether they're compatible or not, there still doesn't seem to be much room for purpose in that framework.
Quote:
But anyway I fail to see how freedom/non-freedom of the will is really essential to your argument when your conclusion is that the only meaningful conception of the meaning/purpose of life is to use our "free will" to acknowledge the pre-determined meaning/purpose of life!? If I get it right.
It doesn't... I really only included it to cover all the bases. If you are someone that adheres to strict indeterminism, you could still only really say that your actions possess the purpose that you assign to them. But that still wouldn't give a rational account of life possessing purpose. Basically, I'd still hold that purpose in reference to life only makes sense in some type of theistic framework. Whether or not even our actions can possess purpose is limited and I really meant that to be a side note and it doesn't affect the overall argument I was trying to make.
Edited by saintphotios (04/16/12 04:31 AM)
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ
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true meaning of life, for me? "I" am not important. so in my opinion; it's to find a meaning and reason towards the existence of humans overall, in general.
as a whole.
if the meaning of living is nothing, then we all might as well nuke ourselves into oblivion. we're just going to end up extinct anyways, and all for nothing? hmmm, seems nihilistic and silly.
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desert father
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the true meaning of life is to continue life.
-------------------- vi veri veniversum vivus vici What she said : "I smoke 'cos I'm hoping for an Early death AND I NEED TO CLING TO SOMETHING !"
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4896744
Small Town Girl
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Quote:
desert father said: the true meaning of life is to continue life.
Why?
-------------------- Live your Life!
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desert father
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Re: True Meaning Of Life [Re: 4896744] 2
#16096947 - 04/16/12 10:08 AM (11 years, 11 months ago) |
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because if life does not continue, then there is no more meaning.
the potential to find any true meaning in life fades as life fades away.
-------------------- vi veri veniversum vivus vici What she said : "I smoke 'cos I'm hoping for an Early death AND I NEED TO CLING TO SOMETHING !"
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BlueCoyote
Beyond
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yah, its meaning is to continue the (self chosen/contextual/...) meaning itself.
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