No.
And the question is absurd.
I wasn’t not raised in a religious household, but was always interested in the subject. However, I’m interested in the same way that we might be interested in the religion of some tribe in the Amazon. I’m fascinated by what the primatives believe.
That might be insulting, but it’s what I think and feel. Anyway, I have spent most of my life helping people and have a very humanistic attitude. This is because I am not in a fantasy world about life.
No and you answered the question yourself…
Though I would say you make it have a point.
Well doesn’t everyone choose to do so in a way? If they don’t, they commit suicide.
With that said, I think Phaedrus’ post made my point much better than I did. Well said, Phaedrus.
You are absolutely right, life is completely pointless. But this is where people go wrong… becuase most people think this is a bad thing. But who’s to say life being pointless is bad? I think, that life being pointless, is one of the most important aspects that makes it function properly. Imagine life with a single goal or purpose, ironically, what what would make life completely pointless, because it’s just a process to reach an end. Life is not trying to reach an end, it’s a circle, an expression. Beautiful and ugly, there isn’t any other way.
Because of life’s meaninglessness, we are able to ascribe meaning to it. If life was meaningful, there would be no way to derive meaning from it because it would be inherent already, tied to that meaning, or in other words, restricted. For some reason people think it’s a terrible thing that life is meaningless, but I think they fail to realize how this meaninglessness really is. It’s just like people who busy themselves avoiding misfortune, they are so confused, so interested in always doing good, they never enjoy it, because they don’t realize the good depends on the bad. You couldn’t experience anything without a difference, therefore, both of these things are good, because they support each other. Meaninglessness is just as important as meaning. How could you know what was meaningful except against the background of something meaningless? This is the birth of appreciation. It’s all really a part of man’s confusion, and basic ignorance of a mountain having two sides, but the mountain being one at the same time. Non-duality.
I see it like that too. I look at religious behavior the same way I look at the feild of entomology. With detatched curiosity.
If life is an expression, does that mean there is a form to life, like to art? But the formal cause is the final cause in natural things. So then you’re saying the meaning of life is it’s own perfection. What then is the perfection of life to you, and you’ve found your meaning.
You wouldn’t be here online if you thought life was pointless – you’d have no motive to post.
I thought evil was an ontological parasite.
Humor me. Can you give an example where the good depends upon the bad?
torrentfields wrote:
Life is a paradox. Because we live through our ego, our own little worlds, we have the ability to ascribe whatever meaning we wish to our lives. When one begins to know and understand this as truth, they will understand that life in itself does have inherent meaning and purpose. Is it not possible that this restricted inherent meaning calls for the ability to fool yourself into thinking that there can or cannot be meaning? Doesnt that make it all the more beautiful? To have to come to a point to understand that what I was thinking was wrong. We change daily, and our beliefs and opinions change along with our experiences. Our meaning and purposeful lives are being fulfilled whether or not you are conscious of it.
For those individuals who still believe that life is meaningless, I would like to provide new perspective to this thought. I have created a new thread here: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=146751
Okay, I think I’ve got something. If life’s meaning is how i described – that the experience itself is the meaning – it would be true that you would have an illusive, yet possibly variously posited meanings to life. The way for meaning to be stable is if the meaning of it belonged to something outside it, greater than it: such as a benign Creator would be.
I think this explains both torrentfield’s observations and answers the thread’s opening question.
mrn
Ive changed my opinions some-what since my replies to this thread.
“Meaning” has to do with goals right? Isnt it like perpose?
If we want to have a meaning that is over and above life as an organic species of earth, then we will feel that the current meaning is meaningless compared to a better meaning that we had imagined and wanted right?
Satisfaction is probably the only question here…
I dont know a damned thing about God. Most of what i have is theories. I wanna take back my claims because they didnt have any proof.
I try to do whats right. We will see if there is a resurection or heaven or any of that…
My question for you!:
Would you feel life was meaningless if you didnt grow old and die???
If they did cure aging, i would be extreamly joyful about that!
Many religions promise after-life-shit but modern medacine has saved more lives then they did. It sounds nice but it never happened yet.
(* Roots for science *)
Hope it happens soon…
Ive been realy trying to be more sober and modest with my religious beliefs lately…
“Is life meaningless ?”
I will take the liberty and place myself in your shoes and assert that what you mean by life here is the social manifestation of existence, man’s reaction when encountering the world.
Well, yes, life is meaningless.
It is meaningless in the sense that it is disarmingly absurd, it’s existence wholely is unbelievable.
Why is this ? I don’t know, it just is. This is hard to comprehend actually, just think of it: when you are inside its mechanism, immersed in the thicket of its daily routine, you can clearly see and discover laws, establish reasonable rules. What is beyond understanding appears only when you climb up to the sources of existence, when you sit on the margin and look at it in its ensemble.
If we were to picture ourselves as pigs living in the sty, than how meaningless would our efforts appear when someone from outside the sty came and looked at us… Life is absurd, don’t ask me why, take my word for it. Everyday life builds its rules on false premises, which can only lead to a string of absurd acts. Thinking of it is sad, living in such a life is really exasperating… Man’s reflecting at his own existence is Hamlet in front of Yorick’s skull. When pondering upon your life you can only be struck by its futility - anything else is shallowness. Gazing into the abyss of his being, stunned by the poise with which he has been able to play a game of masques all his life, one is left with nothing to utter, except maybe an inward "Alas… ", expressing the entire sadness of playing an absurd game.
Yes, life is absurd, as long you limit yourself to it. The only modality through which one may ever give some meaning to it is by yanking himself out of the row of routines and diving into an ideatic pool, which means that one must set the goals somewhere beyond the ordinary, day-by-day-world. That is to say that, if the pig set his sights on getting to the other side of the sty, even if he got there, he would still find himself in the sty, meaning he hasn’t accomplishedmuch. Therefore, his want must be somewhere outside the sty - a transcendental purpose.
You need be a philosopher in order to do this. Philosophy is not an abstruse concept, it is accessible to everyone and it expresses the human being at its highest. Every philosopher that I know off that ever dreamed of an ultimate finality to life couldn’t remain rooted in a formalism that excludes ascension towards a superior sphere of knowledge. After all, this is what philosophy is: making a stay in the normal flow of existence and letting the thoughts shape existence and the will to guide it.
Absurdity is an illness, a lethargy, an emasculation, a shortage, a void, an absence. To indulge in it is to assent to the pointlessness of life alltogether, thus becoming an accomplice to it. Denying it is to fool yourself. The only way is to surpass it - through art, religion, aesthetics, drugs, it is not my place to judge, as long as the end is as far in the distance as possible…
You have written well, I think, and with more style than I did – in fact more clearly. I’d just like to jump of this last thought of yours.
The will must be satified. That is why thinking about meaning is not enough, as it does not engage the whole person. But the person who loves has found meaning. A meaning he can hold in the present.
I don’t think only philosophers can find meaning. Case in contemplation, married people give themselves in love to something equal to themselves, their partner, and to their children. I think this provides meaning for most people.
And if the marriage is under God, they really do give themselves to something greater: to That which one is to love with all one’s mind and heart and strength. If only we would all write philosophy this way, for the intellect does not suffice. It is love of wisdom that does.
(Also, you realise, drugs are not an answer to apathy – they only mask it.)
mrn
I’m not religious, and life still has meaning for me.
Meaning is inevitable.
I’ve yet to find one TRUE nihilist.
Could you explain, for discovery’s sake, whence you get meaning from in life?
Does it correspond to any theories forwarded in this topic thread?
mrn
asking embarrassing questions
that are none of my business
Old_Gobbo is right, and I can prove it.
Taken from my other thread…
When looking at experience, ie. all aspects of life, from an objective standpoint it becomes evident that everything that occurs in life has equal importance. I can derive at this fact by examining the definition of objectivity: of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers. If this is the case, all experience must be perceived as equal. For to interject any thought in order to place value or judgement on the experience would diminish the objectivity in this case.
Now that experience can be denoted as equivalent from an objective standpoint, there must be some value placed upon it as to analyze experience itself. For it is not enough to simply say all experience is equal, but rather it is evident that experience can lie equal at two different antitheses. Meaningful, or having some specific merit for further basis or meaningless, being insignificant and having no basis for further revelancy. In trying to distinguish between which would be more closely associated with truth, the meaningful hypothesis seems to be more sensical.
It is difficult to claim all experience equally insignificant for the simple fact that we can claim it to be not so. This appears to be begging the question, but allow me to explain further. All experience is dependent upon the self, subjective in nature, so meaning can be ascribed to experiences according to the individual. This notion in itself is enough to decry the notion of experience being insignificant, for in labeling the experience insignificant an individual is ascribing, or giving some quality or value to experience as well. To be able to label experience significant, or insignificant yields the assumption that all labeling in itself is significant. When one labels experience insignificant, that is the meaning to their experience. The fact is to them, that experience has no specific meaning or significant point, and presumably when taken as a whole has no effect on any other aspect of their life or life in general. This in itself denotes meaning, for to be able to place any value, including placing no value to something, provides to that something meaning. To say something is pointless or meaningless, is essentially to say that the something is in contradiction to what is meaningful for that particular person. For instance, to say that a television program was pointless, is basically the relative point of view that the television program did not coincide with what was meaningful to the person at that point in time. To say that experience or life is insignificant and has no meaning, is essentually to say that all experience or life is in contradiction to what could be relevant or meaningful for them. Subjectively they have an opinion or belief on what should be meaningful and relevant, but since experience does not live up to this belief, it is labeled as meaningless.
Now that it has been established that experience cant be insignificant when considering the relative nature of the assumption, I will now attempt to prove experience significant using the same format.
Since all experience appears to be relative, life in itself speaks to each individual in a particular way suited for the individual. For experience gains its relative revelance only when it is experienced by the individual. There can be no other experience outside of this. In pondering objective experience, it appears that it cannot exist within the mind. Even when opening oneself up to higher consciousness, it seems as though things would be experienced objectively, but not entirely. This brings us back to the suggestion that all experience would be experienced equally. It is suggestable that this experience cannot be completely objective, for it is human nature to have some type of emotion or feeling. Emotion derives from thought, and all human beigns experience it, whether enlightened or still asleep. It is probable then that even when experiencing life from a standpoint of objectivity, or simply equivalency; for objectivity cannot be established any further beyond this notion of equivalence simply due to our nature, there is some thought about the experience, which inevitably renders meaning for the reasons described above.
The human species uses it’s brain to solve it’s problems,
but these problems that it attempts to face are optional.
We overwealm ourselves if we think about imposabilities,
therefor we overwealm ourselves when we think about life from a far.
Satisfaction is all about expectation and focus.
To you’r life looks absurd, and to me it did to, and it still does in many ways, but that is because of all of the “problems” it contains, and these “problems” exist because of a lack of power/understanding.
If you want to bust a chunk out of this meaningless life then perhaps you should become a scientist. If old age were cured and also decay (which causes memory loss for example) then the individual could eventualy solve all of the problems that he was able to focus upon in his imediate range of comprehention.
If we cannot do this personaly, we can still add somthing to society and our future as a whole. Progress is very slow compared to the will and dreams of the human spirit, but please do not overwealm yourself.
Many philosophers focus so much on the realy big and psycological things that they have a hard time feeling anything for the smaller things in life that should not be as important as they are.
Even if we did reach some sort of ultimet level,
we would then also be able to formulate theories of an even higher level then try to aim for these.
Unlike hundreds of years ago, life is much easier now.
Instead of working hard to live, we (on average) have more time for entertianment, luxuries and hours of time in which we can sit and dream of a better way of living. Unlike the dark ages, we now have the option of facing what humanity and mortality realy is.
It’s not so much I know what it is, or where it is derived from… I find meaning in living. It is a game, an excersize for the consciousness for the sake of excersize.
To find the real truths we need to take certain drugs so we are not clouded by our own self of self… but even then all the answers point back to the fact that it’s fun to be alive - if you simply think of it as such.
I believe the human race has separated themselve so far from nature, religion is needed for strength. I’m not saying I’m for it or against it. We have created so much to make our lives easier we start to convince ourselves we are better than any species that inhabits this Earth with us.
We are nature just as a tree,dog, or whale. Why do we have religion and they don’t. We do work hard for the things we need… our day to day jobs. Though, you may have a job thats keeps you happy.During that work day most people can think of other things they would rather be doing and I’m sure they would be happier at that. Once you think we are on a planet… not even the biggest one… and we have this WHOLE universe outside us,yet, the human race is concerned about themselves as if we are the MOST inportant. So holding on to that small bit of confusing, contradicting religion keeps us sane?
My real name wrote:
mrn, you make great injustice to love, by lowering it to the base level of man-woman relationships. Britney Spears declared her love in front of God and divorced the day after. “to That which one is to love with all one’s mind and heart and strength” is nice to dream about, but is practically inferior to superior forms of love, that are the love for wisdom, the love for an idea, a concept, the love for humanity, the racoons, and ultimately, the love for God. You see, I don’t condemnd passionate love, but I tend to find it blemished by the numerous impurities of every-day life. I also fail to see how one can find an answer to all his problems simply by consenting to a formal act, as if getting married would atone for the absurdity of existence. I repeat myself: one must try to look beyond the sty in order to transcend its frivolity.
As for finding meaning in accomplished love: it is impossible for me to see why you consider meaning a thread that unfolds itself, the continuous satisfaction of the will. I may be wrong, or it may just be a difference of perspective, but while you discover meaning isochronous(:D) with every brick laid, I perceive meaning in the bricks that are yet to be laid.
Mucius Scevola,
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Note that I intentionally capitalised “That” as referring to God.
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True love of a marital partner and family is love of the ontologically equal, which is better than most loves and is only trumphed by love of God – or maybe of polity, which is also love of the ontologically equal which the state defends.
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If you live for the future bricks, you never live in the present. Sure you might have an eye toward that, but can one be satisfied living in the future? One must attend to the sacrament of the present moment.
mrn
…wearing my Christian personalist clothes today