My basic philosophical outlook on life is: we are born, we eat, we defacate, we copulate and then we die. Everything else is just details to fill in the blanks.
Are there any philosophers out there that have views that are even slightly similar to mine and if so, which of their works should I read?
True! But you didn’t mention that you also write to philosophy forums in between expounding these fundamentals. As for ‘works I should read’, what more do you want to know?? Life already supplies the details.
Oh yes! I like your chronological order of events.
Chalk it up to intelectual curiosity. I don’t think we’d have the body of philosophical thought we do if anyone who had a particluar out look on life never bothered to find out what others thoguht.
Are you just asking what books are good to read if you want to know about the “meaning of life”? I’d read some selections from the Upanishads, then I’ve got this other book by Jean LeCleriq or something that’s on monastic culture called “the love of learning and the desire for god”, which is like a histoy of monks basically. Elaine Pagels has a good book called “beyond belief”. After that stuff, I’d suggest some existential stuff, maybe Kierkegaard, or Hiedegger, stay away from the politics of Nietzsche or Sartre for a while. This way you can get acquainted with philosophical literature without being overwhelmed by its inherent bullshit. Once you get fed up with all that nonsense and start wanting knowledge which is of a higher standard of evidence, move on to Schopenhauer, Kant, or someone else that’s actually worth a shit. If this stuff sucks way to bad to read, then start over with Aristotle, or Plato. Then once you’re thouroughly confused, read the Tao Te Ching and just relax man. There’s nothing you can do about the forces of nature except to try and understand them and not be outdone by them. Most of the meaning that people feel in thier lives is entirely in thier heads and has nothing to do with fact based reality.
Learn the religions, then learn the rhetoric, then get some good knowledge about reality itself as described by the most confusing bastards ever and go have fun being right all the time.
Then you’ll know the meaning of life. Maybe.
Edit* If your life has no meaning right now, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a proper ethic at least. I know I said avoid Nietzsche, but there’s a book by a guy named Berkowitz on him called “the ethics of an immoralist”. It was the 1st philosophy book I read when I was in high school. If you’re short on meaning you may be short on morals as well. You don’t have to have morals, but a proper ethic is always beneficial to you. It’s a start at least!
Good luck with the meaning of life. Let me know what you come up with.
Sorry for the double post man. It just came to me. You should first read Thomas Nagel’s article entitled “Birth, Death, and The Meaning of Life”. That should get your gears turning.
Let’s talk more about this whole “lifes meaning” thing…
How can we have no objective meaning, if purely real and objective events in the universe both sustain and cause our inherent existence?
The grass and the trees don’t even think about the fact that they are making all life possible for us and for the other land-animals. They don’t even have a sense of meaning, but, they definitely have an influance over the whole of our existence, here.
That’s an example – of a life-form that doesn’t even feel meaningful, and yet it makes much other forms possible.
Does humanity know what it is making possible, and what it is leading to? Does the individual know that every thought, feeling and action he ever does – radiates as a subtle, invincible and eternal chain reaction throughout the known and the unknown cosmos?
2000 years ago, we had DNA. But did we know that?
We still had it, even if we didn’t know it.
Having a meaning – is different than understanding, feeling or knowing something meaningful. Meaning and purpose in nature are very high forms of awareness, it’s hard for left-brainers to really pick up on all that… Really.
I say that if you tend to be left brained, that you may need to build up some constructs before you can get all right brained about things. Even then you may not ever effectivley communicate the meaning of the things that you feel and know.
The fact that photosynthesis converts Co2 to O2 is a matter of function. Thats the biological function of celulose. The greater meaning of that function is supplied by “us” human beings. We attach meaning to their function when we opine that they influence our existence. If cellulose didn’t convert Co2 to O2, we would either have never been or eveolved in a completley different manner. But thats neither here nor there. Thats just the way it turned out.
Thanks for the reading list. I’m really big on Nietzsche right now. Kierkegaard I can’t get into cause I’m repulsed by Christianity. Plato I liked a lot when I was younger. I might go back to him…