Life

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Preface:

Only true philosophers and wise men have the capacity, ability, and nobility to put the greatest conceptions into definition. We deconstruct the common sense structures of communication, and reconstruct them in new and unique ways. There are many core concepts of humanity: life, god, purpose, virtue, etc. What is the meaning of life? Does god exist? Do people have purpose in life? How ought a person live life? The unique method and path a philosopher chooses within such representations of concepts, is his individual interpretation. Interpretations are matters of perspective. This is subjectivity, absolute division and uniqueness. Nothing can be repeated in life. There is no equality; there is only chaos. The antithesis to subjectivity/perspective, is objectivity. Objectivism claims that equality and order is possible. Events can repeat. Nobody and nothing is unique.

It doesn’t matter whether you value subjectivity or objectivity. Because a true philosopher must incorporate both, together, into one.

Only the greatest philosopher can do this, merge subject and object into one. I can understand contradicting values. I can take any position possible. I will to understand the greatest divergence of thoughts and ideas. It is only through learning all possibilities, and accepting them, that the “greatest” philosophy can accumulate and form, a unification, a binding, an ordering into Laws. The philosopher understand natural laws, contrasted against artificial laws. There are objective and subjective laws. But all law reflects an order. And order is a value. The antithesis to order is chaos. Chaos is the ulterior value.

This preface is necessary, before attempting to define ‘Life’.

Every philosopher must define concepts in a universal and absolute manner. You leave nothing to imagination, exclude no possibilities. You include all possibilities, no matter how realistic or unrealistic they may seem. Is a rock alive? Is a robot alive? Is a gust of wind alive? Is a meteorite floating through space, alive? Are words alive? Are people alive? Is bacteria alive? These questions are formed by the philosophical mind, applying doubt to all existence. Before a philosopher attempts to define a concept such as life, you consider all possibilities, no matter how ridiculous. Because you have no biases, no subjectivity, no perspective. You erase all bias. You erase all subjectivity, nihilism.

You start from nothing. You start from untruth. You start from ignorance.

You are not religious. You are not scientific. You are a philosopher. You start from a blank slate, and begin including all possibilities. Life could be a rock. Life could be a robot. Life could be a gust of wind. Life could be a meteorite floating through space. Life could be words. Life could be people and bacteria. Nobody knows, because nobody knows The Truth. To understand The Truth, all possibilities must be taken into consideration, no matter how improbable, no matter how impossible and ludicrous, no matter how absurd and imaginative. Life is…what?

Life is possible. Here is the first statement and claim. If life is impossible then what is the result? Nobody is alive. Nobody has ever been alive. We are dead now. We will never live. Only a philosopher can imagine such possibilities. All are dead, now and forever. Now who would believe such things? These statements are obviously false, are they not? The common man, unimaginative, anti philosophical, non thoughtful, rather stupid and mundane, presumes so. The average man, who I will call anti philosopher, is full of presumption. He presumes he is alive. And he presumes to know things, about the world, about his life, and about his existence. Now any decent philosopher will inflict him with doubt, and force him into uncomfortable questions. His ignorance would be exposed to the world, rather quickly.

Like a fool who claims to “know everything”, but refuses to answer simple questions when put to him…who does this remind you of?

The anti philosopher “lives” his life. His unexamined life. He knows things. And he lives life. Why does he need to question? He doesn’t. He is ignorant of his own ignorance. He is mostly innocent. He is mostly free from the weight of doubt and skepticism. He is attracted to religion. He takes scientific facts at face value. God exists, to him. And scientists never make mistakes. This is the anti philosopher. Cock sure, full of himself, a braggart, his knowledge is more than sufficient. What he does not know, about everything, he does not want to know. He has “just enough” knowledge to get by, and live his unexamined life, and he does not want more. He is not curious. And he devalues curiosity. Curiosity is for children, not adults.

Because a curious adult, who admits his ignorance, and finds pride in what he does not know, is either an idiot or a fool. This is where the common man with an unexamined life parts ways with the above average man, the philosopher. The philosopher willingly accepts his ignorance and capacity to know about the universe, his mental limits. While the anti philosopher refuses to accept or admit that such limits can exist. This defines the anti philosopher’s ego. His ego is without limits, omniscient, as if he were a god or the god. The common man is unaware that he does not know about the existence of certain things, and certain immutable laws.

Laws like gravity. Or laws like ethics. Or laws like morality. Or laws like biology.

The anti philosopher hates philosophy, wants simple answers to simple questions, and forever will avoid complex definitions, or re-defining, the concept of life. Therefore we cannot hope to entertain such anti philosophy, when considering the importance of the concept of life. We should all presume something about life, firstly, that we live as an action of biology. Because most of you are human. And you presume that humans are alive, and not dead.

And it is from these presumptions that life must begin its definition. So I begin by speaking to, against, and across these (sometimes false) presumptions. Let’s attempt to merge life and The Truth together. Who truly lives? And who truly dies?

What is life?

What is death?

My first statement is this: life and death are values.

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They are invaluable values, this could be added as a corollary.

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For me, the philosopher doesn’t separate his past from his philosophizing, he incorporates it, and builds upon it. He incorporates who he his, his memories, his hopes, his fears, his loves, his hates, his beliefs, his doubts, all of it. Philosophy is a means to an end for him, the end being - whatever thirst he wishes to quench, whatever hunger or void he wishes to fill, whether it be his narcissism, his vanity, his curiosity, his doubt, his need to have an answer to every question dear to him, not necessarily to every question, but to deeper and profounder questions than the common man. His need for deep insight into the laws, or features, patterns of physics and psychics, his need to know, is not an abstraction, but limited, peculiar to himself, to each philosopher. We all have our focuses. A man cannot hope to solve every problem during a single lifetime, it would take an infinite number of lifetimes to have a satisfactory answer for every question, so we pick and chose our focuses, according to our personality, our past, and additionally, we philosophize to command, to lead others. We philosophize with our feelings, because we turn to our feelings for value, insight and direction, as well as our thoughts, our reasoning, as well as our thoughts.

As for life and death being values, sure, it depends on context.

There is no birth without blood.

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In order to become a complete philosopher, or an artist, or anything for that matter, you have to be able to unite the whole of yourself with your craft, so there’s no coarse line, or no line whatsoever between it and you, it pervades you, and you pervade it. Otherwise, you’re a commercial philosopher, or a dead philosopher, or a would be philosopher, not a philosopher at all. This is a tremendous undertaking, not for the faint of heart, only a few people who were also highly intelligent have managed to accomplish this, in my estimation.

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You have to live and breath everything you write, or it’s dead.

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A true philosopher knows how to write in such a way as to make his thoughts relatively immune to doubt. Since a pseudo philosopher, a wannabe philosopher, is full of doubt already, she understands her own weaknesses already. She understands how other philosophers will doubt her, attack her claims, and attempt to impose doubt into her arguments. There is a weakness here and there, an oversight, a logical fallacy here, here, and here. Then there are all these contradictions and implications. What is the consequence of this statement, or that? The pseudo philosopher anticipates all these doubts.

She writes something that is very difficult to doubt.

But a master philosopher, a true philosopher, a pure philosopher, a proper philosopher, does this so well, perfecting his craft, that maybe 100 or 1000 years pass, before a philosopher is refuted or falsified. This is why many past philosophers, all white european males, geniuses, are still revered today, as if they were still alive. It is because their thoughts are still as powerful as ever. They have not been overturned. This is also the reason why philosophers are so rare in time. Maybe 300 years go by, and there is not one single philosopher alive during this 300 years. Because, a philosopher is not needed often. And a philosopher is not needed necessarily.

A lot of pseudo philosophers, wannabes, have come and gone, leaving no great mark. But the great ones endure forever. That is the mark of great philosophy.

So in this exposition of life, defining life, let this become the greatest mark for 1000 years. Let’s really understand life. Let’s really reach into it, and pull its guts out with our blood stained hands and arms. Let’s wrench this bastard child free from the womb. Philosopher comes screaming and wailing into life. This is how true, proper, pure philosophy is born. Absolute philosophy.

Life is born.

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Are you sure you’re ready for that?

You may not like what you find.

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Meh… been there, done that… moved on…

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A philosopher must start again as if he were a child. For the meaning of life I believe comes when a person truly learns it for themselves. The only difference being a philosopher must take out all factors including those that may influence them in their decisions. A philosopher must think before speaking. However starting off with a blank slate all over again after living how many years with one that has been scratched, written on, damaged, is hard for most, even the philosopher. No one is able to completely let go of everything and then look at the would through intelligent eyes, because once we come across life and learning it is already subjective. This subjectiveness is what keeps the philosopher behind.
Perhaps the anti philosopher is the one with all the intelligence. He is the one that is living his life un-phased by the thoughts that could keep him awake at night, the thoughts that may keep him away from enjoying life.
Although I do not believe the anti philosopher to be the smartest I do believe we should not write him off as being “ignorant”. He is dealing with life as he knows it. He is living by his slate. He has learned that maybe the questions philosophers ask are not good for him. He has learned that the subjective is the objective. Whereas the philosopher separates these two.
A philosopher should realize that objective may not exist and that the world he lives in now may be objective.
In truth nothing exists until experienced, and a philosopher knows this, but I don’t think a philosopher can experience enough to experience objective. He is dead until he realizes that a) his world and what he sees is objective. or b) his slate is not big enough to capture the objective and analogize it.

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Which one do you want to keep: first statement #1 or first statement #2?

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Both, if you had been following the logic, my pupil, then you would have realized that the claim that life is possible, was compared to its antithesis that life is impossible. Since we cannot analyze life as an impossibility, and take it for granted that humanity is alive, then this claim must be reappropriated and justified after other sufficient premises are set.

This is how the context must change from the possibility of life, to life as a value. Because if life is impossible, then you must explain and define how this is so.

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I found good and evil, in everybody. Humans don’t realize where evil comes from, within yourselves.

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I’m sorry I asked.

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I know. And I will never forgive you.

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This is like when David Lewis explains why we don’t bother with impossible worlds.

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This is false.

You cannot wipe the slate clean. You can reexamine your beliefs, but you already have some, and some experiences and reasons for believing them, so you don’t just discard them, you start with that, and then you reexamine some of these beliefs, experiences and reasons in a highly rational state of mind, but you don’t just throw your previous beliefs, experiences and reasons away, unless you can prove your beliefs weren’t founded on sufficient experience and reason, sufficiency itself being contentious. Furthermore, you can’t reexamine all of your beliefs, although many beliefs may be grounded on a few fundamental ones, you can only reexamine so many, so as philosophers, we tend to focus on the more fundamental, and each philosopher has their focus, the subjects that most interest them. There is no blank slate, you have a history, a past, you use that along with the philosophical method to achieve a more lucid state of consciousness.

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Yes.

There’s a fine line between love and hate… between saint and sinner.

No two beings are identical but… we’re all Ariel Sharon, Bugsy Sigel, Meyer Lansky and the Red Shields, we all have the potential to be that evil.

Furthermore, hate is inevitable and necessary, hate makes love possible.

Love can be painful when lost… hate can be pleasurable when won.

Some people are innocent, they’re not aware of their own eternal savagery, they’re not aware that nurture is founded upon nature, they think artifice precedes nature. These are the blank slate people, the egalitarian people, the free will people and the noble savage people. Only these people are welcome in the Garden of Eden, because even though they’re capable of evil, they’ve repressed it as much as humanly possible, they’ve been repressed by church, school and state. As philosophers, we no longer spiritually dwell in the Garden of Eden, our home is in the open plane, but pseudo-philosophers, the ones who haven’t peered sufficiently deep into their own souls to find the cadaver, the rotting carcass that awaits them, think they are. They are the feelers of light, the religious ones. The ones in the middle are the ones who know evil, but think it can be easily corrected, or that it needs to be, instead of utilized.

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It need not be “utilized”.
Just because it always has been, doesn’t mean it has to be… else you wouldn’t be here.

The issue is What you love or hate, not Who.

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Cartesian Doubt applied to Life

A true philosopher can never take what is most obvious, and commonly true, as a premise behind his presumptions. Therefore, regarding any introspection, inquiry, and investigation of life, must reject the premises and presumptions that life is automatic. You must not falsely presume that you are alive. Because what is life? To presume that a person is alive, a human is alive, is to skip over the question of what life is. It takes the conclusion of the question for granted.

It seems too obvious that humans live. Humans are conscious and sentient. They are born, grow, and struggle to survive. They are animated and active, as are most other organisms deemed alive. Therefore humans count yourselves as alive, along with all other organisms. Yet, is bacteria alive? Is it conscious or sentient? Is nucleic acid alive? Is carbon or silicon alive? Is a virus alive? It is possible to doubt many aspects of any living organism. And at many points, the “liveliness”, its capacity to be alive, is dubious.

So the point is, humans judge liveliness of organisms based on subjective criteria. It is mere opinion that this organism is alive, or not. It is your subjective belief that a virus is alive, or dead. You don’t know. And taken further, a comatose patient lays in a hospital bead on life support, heart still beating, but no electrical signals in the brain, no consciousness, no sentience. Is this human alive or dead? Again, you don’t know. And because you don’t know, the judgement of life lingers.

It is possible that some organisms are more or less alive than others. And only after you take the totality of an entity’s existence, can you begin to properly judge the merits of its lifetime. It is not enough to say, at any single point, that any organism is alive or dead, or living or dying. Instead, the whole of ‘life’, the whole conception of life, must be doubted, fully and completely.

You must doubt all that is life, and all that is alive. Because this is your duty as an aspiring philosopher. You must apply doubt to life and its conception, its procreation, its origin.

What is the origin of life? What is the creation of life? What is the seed of life? What is the beginning of life?

Does life have a beginning, an end?

These represent the first set of questions which will arise when the whole conception of life disintegrates under the inquiry of proper philosophical doubt.

Are you alive? No, presume not.

Am I alive? No, presume not.

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Insightfoul,

Life - is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate. + The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.

What’s your problem with this definition?

You seem to conflate life with sentience. A plant may or may not be sentient, yet, there seems to be little doubt they’re alive.

My personal interpretation of life is if it displays the characteristics of the definitions above, or if it displays signs of dying or death, then I consider it alive. I call life that which is in a temporary animated state that is contrasted by it’s permanent death, inanimation and entropy. If something actively resists entropy, I interpret that as strong evidence for life.