What if the meaning to life was satisfaction purely due to the fact that there was no other meaning that life could possibly be? Think about it like this, sooner or later, no matter how far humans go in time–won’t we be replaced by other species’? And then what if they forget us? What if we decompose and it is almost as we never existed?
Based on this assumption: that there was no meaning to life and that everything we do is insignificant and time will sooner or later forget us, then how can one person become timeless? Never forgotten?
No chance of that happening! ‘Words never die’ they say…but that’s all it is…a simple concept that does die. Many people try and fill our heads with pointless words of wisdom, they say that though we will die, the memories of us will always live on in somebody else who really cared for us, that is a really ‘nice’ thing to say and to a certain extent, it’s true but for how long?..Until that person dies?
I can see what your saying though, it’s quite a scary thought to think that the human race will die out, but only because we’r here and now and alive to contemplate this, but once your here and now is over, it’s completely irrelvent, and to even call it irrelevent is pointless because even that doesn’t explain it.
No chance of that happening! ‘Words never die’ they say…but that’s all it is…a simple concept that does die. Many people try and fill our heads with pointless words of wisdom, they say that though we will die, the memories of us will always live on in somebody else who really cared for us, that is a really ‘nice’ thing to say and to a certain extent, it’s true but for how long?..Until that person dies?
I can see what your saying though, it’s quite a scary thought to think that the human race will die out, but only because we’r here and now and alive to contemplate this, but once your ‘here and now’ is over, everything that ever happend didn’t just happen, if u know what i mean?
When there’s nobody left to actually bare the thought to ‘remember’ then who else will?
Ignoring the wonderful attacks brought ever so courteously by whitelotus, may we get back to the topic at hand?
We influence the world and the universe with our actions. For every movement we make, every thought that we have, and every bit of energy that we use, the universe will never be the same. So in that sense, we will BE effectively immortal, for our impact on the universe will last until the end of time.
On the topic of the meaning of life, I would agree with ditto. Hell, if you’re alive, you might as well enjoy it.
How has my being changed the Universe? How has your being changed the Universe and how will it effect the Universe in such a way that it will be the same again? We are infinitley small relative to the Universe, though our minds can only begin to question the Universe, we can never begin to have any kind of effect on it.
I made no claim as to the magnitude of the difference we made. However, we do have an effect, regardless of how small it may be. If one grain of sand on a beach is displaced, the beach has been altered, although in an insignificant, barely measurable way. Even if we have no more importance than a grain of sand, we have left our impression on existence.
Does any individual know how significant they are? What difference do you make?
Is the publisher more significant than the author whom she publishes? For without the publisher then the author couldn’t get published. Yet without the author the publisher would have nothing to publish. Still, there are far more authors than publisher. Many clamor to get published while only a few succeed.
Does the painter who dies, penniless and alone, but whose work goes on, after his death, to have massive attention and influence on other painters have significance?
Is the hunger for significance nothing more than a dressed up version of the desire for fame? Yet celebrity creates images to which few human beings can actually live up. The famous performer becomes a servant of their Image. Their behavior becomes narrowed, controlled by the effort to maintain their image.
Fame alone does not satisfy the hunger for significance in part because we usually act for a highly specific audience.
When taken into a big enough scale then nothing an individual does can register as significant. We don’t live at that scale so our sense of significance is different. Other people and our relationships with them is what make our life feel significant.
Beyond our death? Hopefully it is not our problem anymore.
this is why perspective-free conceptions of knowledge are patently ridiculous…
lets say that we decide thay yes, we are signficant (or no, we’re not).
now lets say we encounter another communicable species who disagree… they say that no, we’re not (or yes we are).
now how would one settle that dispute? through the employment of reason to decipher the truth of our signficance? from some omnipitent court of appeal? god? would monkeys know?
to say that there could be any answer to such a question lying outside of us, and that where-ever we found an answer it would then be “true” rather than just apparently reasonable to us from our perspective is sheer fantastic metaphysics…
to pretend to be able to step outside of yourself, even out of humanity in this case, well how do you suppose your going to do that? is the non-standard design of my guitars tremmelo slot significant? well it is to me, for now, but how do you suppose we can decide if that is a “true” significance as a “feature of reality”…
or is even asking that just meaningless platonic jargon?
how so… just to be sure I looked significant up and it means exactly what I thought it meant…
and I still wonder where people are pretending to stand in the universe in order to answer the question… because it will obviously be a matter of perspective…
well first off I was assuming that, rather than going on some unwarranted etymological outing, we were using it in its standard modern english meaning.
but ok, lets stick with what you’ve offered (somewhat cryptic as it is)…
first off, i was asking how we could know we are significant as a way of pointing out what a ridiculous question it is. my point was that there is no court of appeal for significance. if it is anything it is some perspectivical (as is anything) affair… and the question in this case becomes meaningless… like “are we warm”.
now, “the attempt to become a sign is the fear of death”. I’ll need you to elaborate here. I’m not dissagreeing yet… but i can’t tell exactly what you mean (although i’ve got a feeling of where you MIGHT be comming from… would you describe death as symbolic rather than significant?)
anyway, back to the thread… i dont even know what it would mean for humans to be significant. mabey someone should explain (i dont think it can be done without collapsing the question) what it would mean if YES humans are significant.
“Yes humans are significant”
“what proposition have i just endorsed” (without using the phrase “humans are significant” again… that’s just chanting 3 words over and over)
And if you were not here, would u remember him? No!..And if there was nobody here to remember him, then what? He will only be remembered for us as long as the human race is here…if he’s lucky anyway.
symbols are a different class of sign… in a lot of theory anyway…
and you have some ridiculous ideas about linguistics… just because you have assumed some vulgar evolutionary stance on every single subject doesnt mean the rest of us have to completely disregard mainstream scholarship…
although it seems that we do in order to converse with you in any way that you will pretend to understand…
, i didnt think it would post my first reply. Sorry!