This. Life is what you make of it. If you feel you have no purpose or meaning, then make one. Make an impact on the world and on the people around you.axeman157 said:
Meaning of life
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It baffles me that people think there is a purpose in life. Life is just existence, you do with it what you want so you may as well enjoy it because eventually you'll be dead.
My personal mantra of sorts: Live to enjoy, for what other purpose is there.
It's essentially the TL;DR way of explaining "The purpose of life".
My personal mantra of sorts: Live to enjoy, for what other purpose is there.
It's essentially the TL;DR way of explaining "The purpose of life".
People often like to say that function or purpose is relative to intention, which is pretty subjective. I think that's a mistake. A spirit level might to me mean nothing more than that it's something related to DIY, but that doesn't make "Doing DIY Stuff" the purpose of the spirit level.i don said:
Purpose and "Point" is about the use to which the thing is put and the difference the thing makes. If all you did was sit at home and play video games, your life would be pretty devoid of purpose. On the other hand, if you made something, or helped some people, or prevented some disaster, then such things would partly constitute the point of your existence.
This is why Suicide out of existential angst is a poorly thought-through position but also quite a tempting one. You do not react to the apparent absence of meaning in your life by ending it, because then your life DEFINITELY has no meaning. The problem is that people with suicidal tendencies find that meaningless to be a spiral of confirmation - they should kill themselves because there is no point, and there is no point because they're paralysed by the possibility that they might never accomplish anything.
The simple fact is that your life might, in fact, be pointless. However, if it is, then that pointlessness is your fault. It's up to you to give your life meaning by putting it to use somewhere. And you have to do this out in the public sphere, where others can see and be influenced by it. That's how meaning works.
sometimes I feel the same way. Especially in the wake of the death of a close family member, I realize sometimes that soon I'm going to be dead, gone, like a puff of smoke. Sometimes I think there really is no purpose, maybe just that whatever god or universal order it was that put us here did it simply so we could have the experience of living, if only just for a while before moving on into whatever the next stage of existence is. (P.S. offtopic but my Capcha was "in the Limelight")i don said:
Relax and enjoy it. The mere fact that we can think about life, the universe and everything in such a way shows how damned good we've got it
#i don said:
I have this idea that the universe is in an endless cycle of renewal.
After hundreds of billions or trillions of years the universe will collapse back together and then re-explode in a continuous pattern. This would mean that there wasn't a specific time that the universe started, it started when the energy from the single point of matter collapsed and caused the big bang.
There's no evidence to disprove the theory that a spiritual being created the universe, so it is a possibility. Our universe may even just be a fishtank in a larger creatures house, which is part of a larger universe. We have no way of knowing right now. The important thing is to find what you believe in, and what is most comforting to you.
I don't think i explained that too well, you don't seem to be fully understanding my point.Steve Butts said:
A rock, for example, cannot choose to roll up hill, everything that happenes to a rock, it has no way of counteracting. Whereas a tree grows towards the light of the sun.
This is not a conscious process, but a descision made deep within the cell structure to govern how the tree grows.
The tree thing is part of the official categorisation of life by biologists, and is a part of mainstream science. This is where i learnt it, and i'm thinking maybe i didn't explain the idea is the best possible way, hopefully the above clears that all up for you.
If at any point, and for whatever reason, there is something when there previously wasn't anything, then that is what starts the universe. Starting "at that specific time" is looking at the question the wrong way around.i don said:
As for how it got there, well, to understand that is to ask questions of causality. Maybe something came from the future, or maybe there was an indeterminate overlap between something being and not being that simply resolved in favour of there being something. Maybe, equally possibly, one possible future gave rise to an observer, and in doing so this fixed that possible future as the actual time line.
We can speculate all we want, but there's something in the thought that says that it is entirely arbitrary which particular cause might have been, and perhaps there could have been several possible equally good ways in which the universe could have started, with nothing to choose between them.
That doesn't matter as regards our being in one of those ways. You're worried because you don't understand, but it is entirely consistent with our existence that there might be no fact of the matter in the universe we live in for the question you're trying to answer. In other words, your problem is you're trying to look outside your current reality for an answer because the question just doesn't have any determinate meaning or consequence in the world you currently live in.
Realising that makes dismissing the problem a lot easier. Either you can choose to find a new world to live in, which you can make on the grounds of the practical difference it makes to you, or you stay put and realise the question is technically nonsensical.
As I've said before, Choose. That's all there is to it.
The creation of the universe is pretty much similar to tripping while walking down the street. It was an accident completely based on luck with no meaning what-so-ever. I don't believe you need a universal meaning to our lives, because then you'd feel like a puppet.
The only thing one should need is a goal, and the will to achieve it. I suppose once you achieve that goal you will have given yourself your personal reason for being alive.
The only thing one should need is a goal, and the will to achieve it. I suppose once you achieve that goal you will have given yourself your personal reason for being alive.
To live like you want till you die simple, no avoiding death so most well do what makes you happy as much as you can.
I don't think I misunderstand. I just can't accept your use of the word "decision," which implies that a tree chooses whether or not to obey its nature. Since there is no evidence of trees choosing to grow away from the sun, growing towards the sun is not a matter of determination or judgment. It's just what all trees do, a universal and unchanging truth for which there is no alternative. Now if you want to claim that light is a trigger for certain behaviors within the structures that make up a tree, I can support that. But those stimuli are all external and at no point does the tree decide how or whether to respond to them (just as a rock doesn't choose to fall). It's own biology has provided hardwired responses from which it cannot deviate.XHolySmokesX said: