I think the same thing! But what if I'm seeing everything up-side down, or in photo-negative?Ultrajoe said:
Meaning of Life
- Thread starter Somethingironic
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There are two kinds of people in the world. People that believe everything is a miracle and people that believe nothing is a miracle.
I don't know which kind of person is right, but I'll say people that think everything is a miracle seem to enjoy life more.
sorry, old quote.
I don't know which kind of person is right, but I'll say people that think everything is a miracle seem to enjoy life more.
But there are more than a hundred sushi chefs, don't even try to tell me other wise I grew up eating sushi! . . . this Cthulhu is sounding delicious to me.PurpleRain said:
sorry, old quote.
As an atheist, and therefore not beleiving in God, fate, or anything beyond the self, cannot justify there being any 'meaning' to life.
...
Except furthering the brutal domination of universes and dimensions by my Demon God, the mighty Athe.
...
Except furthering the brutal domination of universes and dimensions by my Demon God, the mighty Athe.
Wow... I had something to write but I've forgotten it on the way while reading this thread.
I sure won't sleep tonight.
I'm a christian, but I can't know if that's right, yet. Not until I die will I know if it's right. Because then I will know if I just stop to exist or if there is something more.
So I take up any line of thought. If someone tells me their point of view I believe in them unless I can prove them wrong I guess.
I certainly can't say an atheist is wrong because what they think sounds very more likely than what I believe.
I guess I'm really some kind of all believer of some sort. I think that what everyone has said here could be right. But then again there is no right like someone said earlier in the thread.
And as someone else said, I really think that we need to evolve more before we can answer any of these hard questions. I tried to imagine the universe once. How it worked and so.
After a little while I just got stuck and I couldn't think. I just sat there and was just in some kind of lock. When I came out of it, it had gone half an hour but it felt like it had gone five seconds.
I think I got stuck like that because I tried to imagine something that was impossible for my brain to work out but if we evolve and grow maybe that will be easy to do.
I just want to thank everyone out there because I think it's everything that you've all been talking about in here that makes life worth living. I just wish I was older and knew as much as most of you do xD
I sure won't sleep tonight.
I'm a christian, but I can't know if that's right, yet. Not until I die will I know if it's right. Because then I will know if I just stop to exist or if there is something more.
So I take up any line of thought. If someone tells me their point of view I believe in them unless I can prove them wrong I guess.
I certainly can't say an atheist is wrong because what they think sounds very more likely than what I believe.
I guess I'm really some kind of all believer of some sort. I think that what everyone has said here could be right. But then again there is no right like someone said earlier in the thread.
And as someone else said, I really think that we need to evolve more before we can answer any of these hard questions. I tried to imagine the universe once. How it worked and so.
After a little while I just got stuck and I couldn't think. I just sat there and was just in some kind of lock. When I came out of it, it had gone half an hour but it felt like it had gone five seconds.
I think I got stuck like that because I tried to imagine something that was impossible for my brain to work out but if we evolve and grow maybe that will be easy to do.
I just want to thank everyone out there because I think it's everything that you've all been talking about in here that makes life worth living. I just wish I was older and knew as much as most of you do xD
What's Athe's ranking in the great Pantheon of Parody? I tried to check with the Pastafarians and the IPU folks but neither of them could give me any help, hell not even the High Priests of Russel's Teapot were any use in figuring this out. I'm starting my own den of heathenry and I need to know which one's my immediate superior. Who knew atheism would be so darn complicated?_Serendipity_ said:
I feel that from an evolutionary view to a theological one, Utilitarianism - put briefly, greatest happiness for the greatest number - could be a loose meaning of life for humanity; from a viewpoint that solely concerns advancement, be it advancement of the species, of culture, or technology, that performing everything you can to improve the quality of existence of your fellow man will in turn produce these effects. Of course, creating some kind of utopia won't biologically evolve us, but in terms of self-awareness and ideologies, what the original poster mentioned as sentience, we would advance greatly if the human race as a whole sought to improve itself rather than fulfill more selfish desires - if what truly sets us apart from animals (other than the fact that they use their tongues to clean their bollocks) is our big old brains, then advancement of technology and theology will fulfill an evolution of our minds in some sense.
I'm coming off as a hippy here, but it is unintentional - I don't mean we should all get stoned and make daisy chains to protest war, I mean that if the universal quality of existance for the human race was much higher, there would be much more of a focus on advancement than the current focus of the modern government, which seems to be primarily interested in oil, bullying smaller countries, and telling us what we're doing wrong - which, seeing as my government recently left a classified document regarding Al Quaeda on a public train, is pretty laughable, and that, combined with the fact that our obese PM is telling us we're wasting food, pretty much wraps up the whole hypocrisy theme. My point is if humanity focused on a new energy source such as utilising Hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, then we'd have no need to focus on conservation or the prices of fuel, and this provides a good example of Utilitarianism - our leaders can A) Take resources from other countries to line their own pockets (selfish, obviously) or B) Concentrate their funding away from war into research for a new, effective and efficient energy source - happiness for the majority, but less moolah for those with shares in oil. This is a much larger scale of what I initially meant, but it serves the purpose of a good example.
And with theology and philosophy - the golden rule, ten commandments, the noodly decrees of the Flying Spaghetti monster - whatever your outlook, greatest happiness for the greatest number is usually the core meaning of the deontological rules you are set by yourself or by your god. The exception to this is probably Nihilism, but helping out those around you will mean they owe you a favour, so even that can come round well for the self-serving gothic types.
So whilst the meaning you take from this loose definition and how you apply it is up to the individual, but Utilitarianism could serve well as a 'meaning of life'.
Wow, I intended that to be one paragraph long...sorry, I guess that was probably too long winded to be welcome here...I'll go hide in my corner now.
I'm coming off as a hippy here, but it is unintentional - I don't mean we should all get stoned and make daisy chains to protest war, I mean that if the universal quality of existance for the human race was much higher, there would be much more of a focus on advancement than the current focus of the modern government, which seems to be primarily interested in oil, bullying smaller countries, and telling us what we're doing wrong - which, seeing as my government recently left a classified document regarding Al Quaeda on a public train, is pretty laughable, and that, combined with the fact that our obese PM is telling us we're wasting food, pretty much wraps up the whole hypocrisy theme. My point is if humanity focused on a new energy source such as utilising Hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, then we'd have no need to focus on conservation or the prices of fuel, and this provides a good example of Utilitarianism - our leaders can A) Take resources from other countries to line their own pockets (selfish, obviously) or B) Concentrate their funding away from war into research for a new, effective and efficient energy source - happiness for the majority, but less moolah for those with shares in oil. This is a much larger scale of what I initially meant, but it serves the purpose of a good example.
And with theology and philosophy - the golden rule, ten commandments, the noodly decrees of the Flying Spaghetti monster - whatever your outlook, greatest happiness for the greatest number is usually the core meaning of the deontological rules you are set by yourself or by your god. The exception to this is probably Nihilism, but helping out those around you will mean they owe you a favour, so even that can come round well for the self-serving gothic types.
So whilst the meaning you take from this loose definition and how you apply it is up to the individual, but Utilitarianism could serve well as a 'meaning of life'.
Wow, I intended that to be one paragraph long...sorry, I guess that was probably too long winded to be welcome here...I'll go hide in my corner now.
Damn hippies. They say they want to save the Earth, but all they do is smoke dope and smell bad!Qayin said:
Sorry, dude. It had to be said. What I meant was welcome. And I certainly can't complain about long posts!
I'll just point out that whilst hydrogen is a fine thing, it's not readily available in quantity. Current methods of producing free hydrogen require more energy than can be obtained from that hydrogen. Until hydrogen can be economically obtained from algae or bacteria or some other process other than brute force splitting water, hydrogen remains an energy transfer medium, not an energy source.
Look Im anagnostic and I just have to wonder, why does there need to even be an easy "e=mc^2" awnser.
Cant it be some thing beyond our coprehention? I mean physics woudl still work even if we didnt under stand it. Science does need faith to work. And if the "meaning" is so grand and all incompassing it shouldnt vanish simply becuase we dont know it.
But then again, maybere the isnt some great hidden meaning. Maybe our only pourpose is the one that biology states "go forth and multiply". Maybe thats all there is.
And then there the fact that maybe just maybe there doesnt need to be some grand all incompassing pourpose, only a plethroa of small ones. Why cant we as induviguals have our own pourposes.
Yet why cant our orn induvigual pourposes overlap. After all we only truly exist through other people. Be it that we love them our hate them, they help us understand and see our own existance.
Cant it be some thing beyond our coprehention? I mean physics woudl still work even if we didnt under stand it. Science does need faith to work. And if the "meaning" is so grand and all incompassing it shouldnt vanish simply becuase we dont know it.
But then again, maybere the isnt some great hidden meaning. Maybe our only pourpose is the one that biology states "go forth and multiply". Maybe thats all there is.
And then there the fact that maybe just maybe there doesnt need to be some grand all incompassing pourpose, only a plethroa of small ones. Why cant we as induviguals have our own pourposes.
Yet why cant our orn induvigual pourposes overlap. After all we only truly exist through other people. Be it that we love them our hate them, they help us understand and see our own existance.
Both of you should go to page two and read post 63, it explains alot of why we cant tell you if your blue is our green. My next post after that (just look for my avatarUltrajoe said:
) explains a bit more about perception.The world we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, is all in our heads. It is our brain that determines what is real and what isn't. Some people believe in ghosts, others dont (like me). The people who see ghosts, actually see them, and alot of the times (at least in my town) more than one person sees them (like apparently a guy in a white track suit walking across the street into the front door of our old apt., but noone ever comes in, and he never left). Video games are (usually) a reproduction of our world, or something similar, visually. We all know about speakers, radios, etc. reproducing sound around us. The Japanese are working on a smell recorder (yes, smells), and so far they have had success with apples, cherries, and a few other things. Force feedback mildly reproduces touch, its only a matter of time before games can reproduce smell and taste (again smell is in the works). Now, with the 3D visors (goggles sounded cheesy) that block out the world around you and surround headphones, the game IS your world, mind you, you can leave it at any point but the point remains (thats how I like my games, the more separated from real life I am for the gameplay duration, the better). Especially racing games, with FFB wheels, the G25 (OMG that is an orgasm and a half, so real, so nice... Sorry if orgasm isnt allowed on the forum, that can be edited out, but I own a G25 and honestly, best wheel ever made), head tracking, surround sound, G-force simulator... The only thing it lacks now is the smell of burning rubber and/or fibreglass particles.
I'm working on building a full-out racing sim, high powered PC, G25, Stereoscopic visors (Vuzix makes military class visors so their consumer class better be good), and a G-Force simulator, even if its only 4 actuators on a plank of wood. you will find I like a game FAR more when I can really get into it VR-wise (good gfx, sound, etc.)
Oh i know all that, but its still a great mystery.mew905 said:Both of you should go to page two and read post 63, it explains alot of why we cant tell you if your blue is our green. My next post after that (just look for my avatarUltrajoe said:
I have come to insight about few things in life:
1. Life is illusion.
The experience we have of our lives is only an illusion. Life is just a dream. Here is an example of what I mean. Next time your go outside at night, bring a mirror with you. Hold the mirror in your hand and angle it so that your can observe the stars above you. Now look up, and look at the same stars with your own eyes. What do you see?
I cant see the difference between stars that I see in mirrors reflection and the stars when I look at the sky. Both pictures look exactly the same to me. How can both pictures seem real? I´m aware of that first one (the mirror) is only a "virtual reality" but who can guarantee me that light coming from the space isn´t just the same thing? Now, I believe that light bouncing of mirror could be more correct/true than light being interpreted by my brian, because mirror is more objective while I´m judgmental...
2. The cake is a lie.
We cant reach to common conclusion about "meaning of life" because there is a issue with scientific approach. All knowledge is a lie, perhaps untruth is a better word for what I mean. Most of knowledge human being have access to is based on mostly lies and that clouds our judgment and effects how we make our decisions in life. Believing in lies make your experience of life a "hell" and believing in things that are true turns your life experience into "heaven". Remember that voice in back of your head that sometimes makes you insecure? It is connected to the lies that we believe in. I guess it has to do with words, which are very powerful tools, because they create images inside our mind.
Every time I level up my educations of any world religion, I reach similar conclusion. Knowing this helps me to enjoy the ride
1. Life is illusion.
The experience we have of our lives is only an illusion. Life is just a dream. Here is an example of what I mean. Next time your go outside at night, bring a mirror with you. Hold the mirror in your hand and angle it so that your can observe the stars above you. Now look up, and look at the same stars with your own eyes. What do you see?
I cant see the difference between stars that I see in mirrors reflection and the stars when I look at the sky. Both pictures look exactly the same to me. How can both pictures seem real? I´m aware of that first one (the mirror) is only a "virtual reality" but who can guarantee me that light coming from the space isn´t just the same thing? Now, I believe that light bouncing of mirror could be more correct/true than light being interpreted by my brian, because mirror is more objective while I´m judgmental...
2. The cake is a lie.
We cant reach to common conclusion about "meaning of life" because there is a issue with scientific approach. All knowledge is a lie, perhaps untruth is a better word for what I mean. Most of knowledge human being have access to is based on mostly lies and that clouds our judgment and effects how we make our decisions in life. Believing in lies make your experience of life a "hell" and believing in things that are true turns your life experience into "heaven". Remember that voice in back of your head that sometimes makes you insecure? It is connected to the lies that we believe in. I guess it has to do with words, which are very powerful tools, because they create images inside our mind.
Every time I level up my educations of any world religion, I reach similar conclusion. Knowing this helps me to enjoy the ride
Nihilists are gothy? Come now, we're a bit deeper than those simple minded creatures. My color palate stretches across the board, and I've never put more than two thoughts towards suicide. Rather than accepting these non-existant "objective" morals put forth by all these religions (have you ever noticed that almost all religions have basically the same moral code?) we can simply sit down and track the philisophical origins of our moral system, we'll find that every one of your commandmednts (or the golden rule) are based pretty firmly in logic, rather than faith.
It's simple, actually. We want civilization to work. Civilization is nice. In order for civilization to work, we need a couple of ground rules: no killing, hitting slapping, dive bombing, etc. It's a sort of social contract we grow to learn and accept as we grow up, but so few people actually learn *why* we go by these rules. It's so ingraned into your psyche by the time you're capable of rational thought that it just *feels* right - and thus, like a "divine" sort of moral code. It's not divine, it's just basic. Like learning to talk. However, *we* wrote the code of morals, they *do* exist, and I like to think that adhere to them more than most - if only because I know *why* we have them.
To the guy (I can't find your post now) who was sort of omni-religious: I agree with a lot of what you said. We may be pretty knowledgeable compared to, I don't know, a treefrog? But in all truthfulness the extent of our knowing is so wholly dwarfed by our ignorance - how can we really *know* what's going on out there? At the same time, I choose not to follow any established religion specifically *because* they were invented by an even more ignorant version of the modern day man. Lot's of superstitions and old outdated thinking involved. I much prefer new ideas.
And as I said before, (I think I said this?) there is no objective, all-purpose meaning to life, because meaning implies intent, and therefor, creation. We weren't created, (or so I see it) and therefor have no inborn intent. Intent is given by the sentient. A rock has no purpose until someone decides to use it. And a person has no meaning, no higher purpose until they decide they have one. Whether you live for God, procreation, or you choose not to live at all (though I have rather oogy feelings about suicide) there really isn't a wrong answer.
...
Okay, suicide might not be "wrong", but to my credit, it's really not right either. It's just more fun to live.
It's simple, actually. We want civilization to work. Civilization is nice. In order for civilization to work, we need a couple of ground rules: no killing, hitting slapping, dive bombing, etc. It's a sort of social contract we grow to learn and accept as we grow up, but so few people actually learn *why* we go by these rules. It's so ingraned into your psyche by the time you're capable of rational thought that it just *feels* right - and thus, like a "divine" sort of moral code. It's not divine, it's just basic. Like learning to talk. However, *we* wrote the code of morals, they *do* exist, and I like to think that adhere to them more than most - if only because I know *why* we have them.
To the guy (I can't find your post now) who was sort of omni-religious: I agree with a lot of what you said. We may be pretty knowledgeable compared to, I don't know, a treefrog? But in all truthfulness the extent of our knowing is so wholly dwarfed by our ignorance - how can we really *know* what's going on out there? At the same time, I choose not to follow any established religion specifically *because* they were invented by an even more ignorant version of the modern day man. Lot's of superstitions and old outdated thinking involved. I much prefer new ideas.
And as I said before, (I think I said this?) there is no objective, all-purpose meaning to life, because meaning implies intent, and therefor, creation. We weren't created, (or so I see it) and therefor have no inborn intent. Intent is given by the sentient. A rock has no purpose until someone decides to use it. And a person has no meaning, no higher purpose until they decide they have one. Whether you live for God, procreation, or you choose not to live at all (though I have rather oogy feelings about suicide) there really isn't a wrong answer.
...
Okay, suicide might not be "wrong", but to my credit, it's really not right either. It's just more fun to live.
Hmm. I've re-read this original post a few times and I find that it is rather 'opaque'.Somethingironic said:
Using the title 'Meaning of Life' may have drawn a lot of people into the thread for a lively discussion (although, I feel it got rather sidetracked on the subject of Qualia), but I suggest that it may have been more apposite to have titled it 'Life is what we make it' - i.e. we have freewill and the choices that are open to us to pursue in life are the sole means by which we author our destiny.
Actually, the traditional notion of "Fate' is in conflict with the notion of unfettered choice and may call into question the tenability of the assumption of freewill given such examples as Alcmene (who was the mother of Hercules, fathered through deception by the god Zeus), the same could be said about Mary, mother of Jesus, but I decided to choose a less incendiary example.
I will skip over issues I have with your assumptions that only humans are capable of choice (surely Clyde the orangutan in the Clint Eastwood film 'Every which way but loose' was capable of making choices?) and that your assertion:
"There is such a thing as destiny as technically, every possiblity could be mapped out. (not by man, we are nowhere near intelligent enough)"
is somewhat undermined as I feel that you are overlooking the influence of both Chaos Theory and Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Instead I will directly address what I think is your main point, because time only flows in one direction (Feynman diagrams notwithstanding) we conceive of our lives as being a sequence of "irrevocable acts" - choices are made that cannot be undone. Not all choices are open to us at all times and the choices we make change that "possibility space" (removing some choices that our previous action has made impossible and making other choices available - not necessarily 'good' ones) and your personal philosophy that this succession of choices determines your state of affairs in the future ("AKA destiny") as if this outcome exists even though the outcome resides in a future that doesn't yet exist...
Hmm. When you say:
"But it is the choice that leads you into said destiny"
I have a real problem with this, as I don't think anyone can know what choices will be opened up to them, or made inaccessible, as a result of a prior choice. We can guess and generally be correct over short periods of time, in uncomplicated contexts with few dynamic variables in familiar and well understood scenarios (like: "Making a cup of tea"), but even inter-personal romantic relations are so hard to predict that there are bestselling books on the topic (like: "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray). Repeated, pragmatic pursuit of a yearned for destiny is no guarantee that the identified goal will be reached during your lifetime, or that the desired state of affairs will still matter to you - i.e. you may achieve your goal of becoming a millionaire, but be too old and infirm to enjoy it.
Ruminating on this further, I think people look at other people's life-histories (reading celebrity biographies, etc.) as they have this notion of following (or avoiding) a similar destiny themselves. They look for patterns: "Where did X get their lucky break?" "Did they recognize it as such at the time?" "How did they overcome their problem with Y?" - which they feel they could apply to their own lives. The problem with all this is that you only get the biographies of those whose life-histories consisted of an interesting sequence of choices that the biographer was able to find a connecting theme for which dramatized the person's life with some notion of inevitable destiny. You must realize that the media select, emphasize and dramatize reality as story, as consumers of media like to be told stories not a billion flat facts.
Because media is a part of culture and culture changes the way we think about reality, others and ourselves, it is forgivable that you made the mistake of saying that the choices we make in life lead into our (single) destiny. We simply cannot talk about destiny before we have lived a life as the choices we make take us into many alternative possibility spaces and create usually humdrum, unthematic, undramatic, lives with multiple future personal and inter-personal state of affairs.
So. To summarize, I don't think you can talk about your own personal destiny as you are obviously here in the present talking about an unknowable future and destiny is really something other people infer from your life-history after you are dead (or have won a Gold Medal at the Olympics, say) - i.e. after the events important to the formation of your life-history have all taken place and have been deemed to be successful, usually by someone else.
As to the 'Meaning of Life', I have already addressed this point in another thread "The thread for random statements", so if anyone really wants to know, ask and I'll repost it here.
Through introspection I came to realize that the most important thing in life is to come to fully understand oneself. Everything one experiences is filtered through ones own consciousness and paradigm. Understanding oneself leads to understanding this filter and thus provides a better sight of all things. Not only that, but understanding oneself will also lead one to know how to be happy and fulfilled, since all needs and wants are within the self.
I also came to realize that there must exist a central truth we all revolve around. By 'all' I mean all things which exist- every bit of energy and every atom. The sum of all things is this truth, or God, if you will, and since we all exist we are all part of it. We revolve around the undefined center of the universe, because no one thing can fully comprehend the magnitude of something which is infinite. The world is ruled by paradoxes and spirals.
In simple terms, the aforementioned truth is the meaning of all existence. Understanding it is not the point. Instead, the point is to understand that one cannot grasp the meaning of life.
We strive for meaning and ultimate relevance because our logic must have it. Why do something if it is ultimately meaningless or worthless? Any worth or emotion or value underlies a meaning- something which is relevant. The lesson I learned from knowing to stop chasing the meaning of life is that there is no absolute worth or relevance to any one thing. Not one of us is infinite or perfect, and so what we have is relativity. What matters in life must be relevant relatively to every person who decides what they want.
Knowing yourself lets you decide what's best for yourself, giving you the ultimate power over your life, as absolutely meaningless as it already is.
I also came to realize that there must exist a central truth we all revolve around. By 'all' I mean all things which exist- every bit of energy and every atom. The sum of all things is this truth, or God, if you will, and since we all exist we are all part of it. We revolve around the undefined center of the universe, because no one thing can fully comprehend the magnitude of something which is infinite. The world is ruled by paradoxes and spirals.
In simple terms, the aforementioned truth is the meaning of all existence. Understanding it is not the point. Instead, the point is to understand that one cannot grasp the meaning of life.
We strive for meaning and ultimate relevance because our logic must have it. Why do something if it is ultimately meaningless or worthless? Any worth or emotion or value underlies a meaning- something which is relevant. The lesson I learned from knowing to stop chasing the meaning of life is that there is no absolute worth or relevance to any one thing. Not one of us is infinite or perfect, and so what we have is relativity. What matters in life must be relevant relatively to every person who decides what they want.
Knowing yourself lets you decide what's best for yourself, giving you the ultimate power over your life, as absolutely meaningless as it already is.
i know many people have probably said it but im gonna throw it out there again...
42
ahahahahaha sorry
ill go shoot myself with a rusty screw driver now
anywho, in my pessamistic world i feel the meaning of life is to get by without being screwed over by the government or anyone else who likes to manipulate innocent bystanders as they float on a raft made of simpsons merchandise in a sea of adverts for pretty much everything from cheese to condoms
also the seabed is made of liiiiies XD
42
ahahahahaha sorry
ill go shoot myself with a rusty screw driver now
anywho, in my pessamistic world i feel the meaning of life is to get by without being screwed over by the government or anyone else who likes to manipulate innocent bystanders as they float on a raft made of simpsons merchandise in a sea of adverts for pretty much everything from cheese to condoms
also the seabed is made of liiiiies XD
I'm really not out to conduct a stealth attack on your original post, but as evidenced by this it does seem that you were rather opaque. The trouble with forums is that you don't want to write too much, otherwise you feel damn certain people won't read it and will just respond to the post title (actually, this may have happened here too...), but this compels you to over-reduce what you mean to say, present your point in confident, important-seeming, bullet-points (as if to assert that you do indeed know exactly what you have said, when you don't) and over-generalize.Somethingironic said:
I'm not saying that you are guilty of any of these things, just that we should all endeavor to preview our posts and imagine how they could be misinterpreted by other readers. I tend to try so hard to not be understood that I over-qualify my statements, provide unnecessary examples and write over-wrought, overly long posts - which I suspect nobody reads.
By the way...
I've had no reaction to my offer to repost my long definitive response to the question "[What is] The Meaning of Life?" from another thread...
Ho hum.
Life is ment to be lived, if at the end of the road you look back and all you can say is,"Damn, that was fun.", then you've done alright.