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Sammysong
Dreamer



Registered: 09/09/12
Posts: 584
Loc: Idios kosmos
Last seen: 6 years, 2 months
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Why Is Life "Good"?
#21796215 - 06/12/15 06:56 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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And conversely, why is death "bad"?
Is life considered "good" simply by virtue of finding ourselves here within it? Not one of us (at least as far as we can know) requested to join this existence, so why do we remain? Why do we cling to it so dearly?
If you think that life is "good" then what exactly do you find "good" about it? Isn't life filled with pain & suffering, fear & despair, illness & disability and cruelty & injustice. What is ultimately "good" about any of that?
I'd like to discover why you find that life is worth protecting and preserving.
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Ferdinando


Registered: 11/15/09
Posts: 3,664
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21796290 - 06/12/15 07:44 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Mitsubishi is going to take the rest of the day off at 320
-------------------- with our love with our love we could save the world
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youknowyou
Stranger
Registered: 07/27/14
Posts: 247
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Id think its because you can grow when you're alive, you can learn, ect.
learn to love, to feel, rather then to think.
we have a lot to learn
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Ferdinando


Registered: 11/15/09
Posts: 3,664
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I agree with you know who I think collectedness is good, bus maybe it isnt, bus some things are I think we should all stay alive
-------------------- with our love with our love we could save the world
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21797941 - 06/12/15 02:59 PM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Sure, life is filled with shit, but why disregard the positive? Do you find no value in art, music, science, love, literature, relationships, etc.? Personally, I think the good in life makes it worth living in spite of the bad. If you find no value in life, then why are you still here?
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hTx
(:



Registered: 03/27/13
Posts: 5,724
Loc: Space-time
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Life's good because i feel good.
-------------------- zen by age ten times six hundred lifetimes Light up the darkness.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 2 days
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21798197 - 06/12/15 03:57 PM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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If you were in balance yourself, you would have the answer and would not be asking the question. I was a late-bloomer. I didn't kiss a girl til the summer following high school graduation while most of my friends had been sexually active in some degree since junior high. Ten years of university life followed high school, interspersed by a couple of half-year absences when I took jobs. In grad school I got into a relationship with a woman and married her, leading to a terrible marriage of almost 10 years. I left my marriage, my house, some good neighbors, and my private counseling practice (for the most part). Four years later, at age 43 I found another good woman, bought my first house, still had the same employment that I had had for ten years (which lasted another 17 for a total of 27 years), and at age 60 I retired and receive a monthly pension. It's only 43% of my highest earnings, but we inherited a condo which we rent, although tomorrow we have to deal with an on-going shower-leak problem. In another 4 years I'll be taking Social Security thereby increasing our monthly income. I was also frugal enough to tax shelter money for most of my career, and I inherited some money which I kept in the stock market til recently and put into index funds.
I enjoyed my career and was devastated to have lost the position due to lack of funding, but after the year of panic subsided (re-reading The Power of Now really helped), I am blissed out in the warm Miami breeze, pulling weeds in the shade, planting new trees and palms, even painting the wood on the house. By day I sweat and get dirty, but night I sip red wine and watch movies and choice programming with my Lady. When my younger still-working friends visit us on their week ends, sometimes I actually use a bit of cannabis again (even though I have a rep for having abandoned it by 1979 after 10 years of use). I just replaced my 39 year old Belgian carpet with a new Iranian, hand-knotted carpet, and a smaller Indian runner. I'm a home-body and we have a number of wool oriental rugs around. A person can sit down practically anywhere from kitchen to hallway runner to bathroom and contemplate a "magic carpet ride" if they're tripping. 
Meanwhile, my wife is a political person, reads a lot and listens to NPR (WAY too much for my liking). Her interests remind me of the global horror, from Chinese persecutions, spying, oppression and cyber-terrorism to the shit in the Middle East, the goddamn Conservatives in the US, along with the growing oligarchy, plutocracy, and bigoted 1%ers. A wealthy asshole bought the golf course behind our home - the reason I bought this house - leveled the old-growth trees and left a temporary wasteland of bulldozed soil and 20' mounds of steaming mulched trees. We have displaced birds, raccoons, possums, snakes, frogs, lizards, iguanas, and a family of foxes trapped within the confines of my 115 home neighborhood. The density of population is going to grow exponentially as builders develop the very last parcels of land in north Miami-Dade County, FL. Many of the plans are for rentals and as we are transient enough down here, this usually means that crime will increase. The new million dollar home buyers aren't the problem. But, this property has been home for 19 years. I felt that the LORD provided after 4 years of post-divorce renting, and the house had everything on my wish list back then. I could use one more dedicated guest room, but we don't have long-term guests so it's OK.
I don't know if I've done a decent job here, but I've attempted to weave the bad with the good to create an image of the fabric of life that I am trying to describe to you. Until I was 43, life pretty much sucked despite all my schooling and privilege in this country. Some of that had to do with MY choices even though I blamed my ex-wife for a while. But I married the psycho and I ignored the signs. Marrying her indirectly fucked my planned career when I moved to a state that wouldn't recognize my graduate school program, so I was personally AND professionally screwed. Still, I learned to make lemonade with the lemons that rolled up on Life's slot machine, even though Life would've been sweeter had cherries come up. But I married a lemon, a damaged and dangerous soul. MY bad. I was deficient in Manipura chakra motives and was subject to Manipulations by others because of it. I needed more of the god Ares in my personality, is another model for looking at it. I was out of balance, or my chakras were out of balance, or I was not paying homage to the god of War, Ares, also the ram Aries in the Manipura. All the same stuff, different ways of saying that I was deficient and out of balance. Once balance was restored for me (in my case embracing my repressed anger and using it constructively), my life changed and the last 19 years, despite loses and setbacks, have been the best since my 4 years as an undergrad age 18-22. Maybe read Gods in Everyman by Jean Shinoda-Bolen, M.D. which helped define where I needed balance, or Gillette & Moore's books http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gillette+and+moore Just an idea.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (06/12/15 08:03 PM)
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xFrockx


Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 10,455
Loc: Northeast
Last seen: 12 days, 5 hours
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Life is life, no need to say whether its good or bad.
Death is a mystery.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21800328 - 06/13/15 12:36 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Is life considered "good" simply by virtue of finding ourselves here within it?
Good question. I am not sure life is good either, although it seems to be something implicitly evaluated. Quotes appreciated! Maybe it is just something to be experienced.
Life does not seem present the the oppurtunity of rationale like of "to be or not to be" which would answer such question of life's value, because they're not found in its scope.
I would say this is not because we only know the "light side" of the two, but because life is physis, growth unfolding and becoming, and "being", the ideal representation itself may be considered an illusion.
So, to the good, I think a good in principle, anyway, is to seek to end of such "slings of fate". I don't think the original question or engagement holds any negative perspective. I think it is well put. Maybe as Buddhists and stoics put it, it is pointing the way of seeking the voidence of life's suffering through life's process.
Edited by Kurt (06/13/15 01:23 AM)
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
Loc: Under the C
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: hTx]
#21800391 - 06/13/15 01:02 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
hTx said: Life's good because i feel good.
James brown is dead.
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secondorder
Amanda Hug'n'kiss



Registered: 04/05/15
Posts: 532
Loc: Queensland, Australia
Last seen: 9 months, 6 days
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong] 1
#21801145 - 06/13/15 08:31 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Sammysong said:
Why Is Life "Good"?
Cause I get to eat a cinnabon whilst jacking off.
But in all seriousness, experiencing life as 'good' or having a genuine belief that it is 'good' makes it good. Where else could values be located other than in the realm of the subjective? When I am enjoying something, the experience is a subjective phenomenon, but my involuntary evaluation of the experience as 'good' gives my experience the objective title 'good'.
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Tropism
ChasingTail


Registered: 09/12/09
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21802256 - 06/13/15 11:59 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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I'd like to discover why you find that life is worth protecting and preserving.
Seems the only rational option imo. If this is a one time deal and the slightest change of perspective (even if the slightest bit of delusion) has an overarching benefit to my life's emotional state, then that is how it will be. Really I'd guess it comes down to value centers and meaning displacement. If negative sensory information (pain, suffering) outweighs or is given more meaning than positive (happiness, pleasure) then overall life is not good, if the reverse then it is. At some point I need to put my meaning on the ineffable wonder and absurdity of this place over how shitty is, for my own personal enjoyment.
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Gheda Linto
Just Swell


Registered: 09/26/14
Posts: 77
Loc: Australia
Last seen: 8 years, 6 months
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Tropism]
#21814093 - 06/16/15 10:35 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Well good is an interesting concept on its own. Can you name one thing that is good that doesn't affect human conciseness, either directly or indirectly. Can you name something bad that doesn't affect human conciseness either directly or indirectly, what I mean is that good and bad only depend on their relativity to sentient beings, so life is both good and bad because it can be both, but only while you're alive. Death and pre-birth are neither are far as we know. What I think matters is permanent value, whatever you do while you're alive will be permanently part of the universe whether there is a permanent physical trace of it or not. Outside of good and bad are values and they appy to everything-life-matter-math etc they all equal something regardless of anything, what do you want to be outside of happy or rich and all that shit, what do you think has value? Do you think Ghangis Khan conquered Asian so he could be happy or because he thought it was good? Life is you're leverage against oblivion, be something that has value to you, will it matter after you're dead, no one knows, not scientists not priests anyone who says they do is lying. Good and bad are only relative to people and animals and only temporarily,but value/meaning is permanent. If value/meaning doesn't mean something to you you're dead or lying, the fact that you would ask why life matters obviously means you care about value/meaning so that's my answer to you're question I guess.
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nuds



Registered: 03/28/15
Posts: 578
Loc: Australia, NSW
Last seen: 6 months, 51 minutes
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Life is.
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usulpsychonaut


Registered: 05/12/08
Posts: 2,814
Loc: Northland, New Zealand.
Last seen: 2 years, 2 months
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Re: Why Is Life [Re: nuds]
#21835488 - 06/21/15 04:44 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Yeah life is. Staying alive is the natural impulse, good and bad.
I'm a welfare lifestyle, outcast, socially defective 39 year old fair skinned New Zealander and I consider myself the 1%. I don't run anything but life is so easy. The stress of no money/boredom has been bad, but its not as bad as starving, war or having a job. The culture here was bad, I could not shake the programmed desire for female companionship, so much pain. MGTOW fixed that bug. Now I really enjoy stuff, pain free.
Edited by usulpsychonaut (06/21/15 05:21 AM)
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Ferdinando


Registered: 11/15/09
Posts: 3,664
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personally I was just relatively intimate with no phenomenon is bad. intimate enough.
-------------------- with our love with our love we could save the world
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Ellis Dee
Archangel



Registered: 06/29/01
Posts: 13,104
Loc: Fire in the sky
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Why Is Life "Good"? [Re: Sammysong]
#21845407 - 06/23/15 10:12 AM (8 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Sammysong said: And conversely, why is death "bad"?
Is life considered "good" simply by virtue of finding ourselves here within it? Not one of us (at least as far as we can know) requested to join this existence, so why do we remain? Why do we cling to it so dearly?
If you think that life is "good" then what exactly do you find "good" about it? Isn't life filled with pain & suffering, fear & despair, illness & disability and cruelty & injustice. What is ultimately "good" about any of that?
I'd like to discover why you find that life is worth protecting and preserving.
It is a bias based on being alive. Pro-lifers for example, if they were all dead, would not give a shit.
-------------------- "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do."-King Solomon And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
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