people. we all give our own lives thier meaning.
true, but its not enough.
we need other people in order to give outselves meaning, we need something to relate to in order to say to ourselves that what we are doing is good. (if there is no bad then there can be no good and vice versa). confirmation that comes from outside
the sharing of different experiances/advice/opinions is the sole purpose of communication.
How do you know if the meaning you give to your life is right? Or is there no duality of right and wrong? What about when each of us decides to give meaning to each other’s lives and the universe as a whole? Sometimes we believe the other person has elevated our life and take on that person’s meaning about our lives. There are also subtle outside influences which we may not be immediately aware of which have influenced our conception of the meaning. Many times we get angered when someone else tries to give us the meaning of our lives which differs from the meaning we gave ourselves. We debate endlessly about the meaning of the universe, and those debates also can get heated at times. Our passions get lit up as soon as we encounter a force beyond ourselves that wages war with our views. We strive to put out the flames and feel the cool breeze by perceiving that we have defeated the other in an argument or going to the extremes of annihilating the existence of the other. What is this all for? We seem to want to become the holder of the sceptor of truth and reign over the kindgom of men’s thoughts no matter if we claim the truth is absolute or if it is absolutely relative, this is our goal. We want to grasp our truths with an infinite passion. And, one who holds power over the thoughts of men is a World-Historical Unique Overman. This Unique also creates the untruth simultaneously as he creates the truth, for his subjects form a crowd and the crowd is the untruth - only one attains the goal.
I wonder about this.
Even being interested in philosophy and seeking out these debates I’ve often found that “the meaning of everything”, “the origin of the universe”, “what’s it all about” and so on - seem to be of little interest to most people.
Also those particular types of question seem to be often raised by people in a sort of question begging way - usually people with some form of religious agenda.
On the other hand - the original question from Trevor - what gives a person’s life meaning is one that constantly nags at most people who ever manages to get a moment to stop and think.
Krossie
I wonder about this.
Even being interested in philosophy and seeking out these debates I’ve often found that “the meaning of everything”, “the origin of the universe”, “what’s it all about” and so on - seem to be of little interest to most people.
Also those particular types of question seem to be often raised by people in a sort of question begging way - usually people with some form of religious agenda.
On the other hand - the original question from Trevor - what gives your life meaning is one that constantly nags almost anyone who ever gets a moment to stop and think.
Krossie
You feel confused as if you have to know God reasons for your life in order to receive of Him some happiness to be, it is all about His complicated ways to say to very limited beings in thinking feelings they are, the meaning of your life is to be happy, very simple and the only truth anybeing can see, now if you don’t know what make you happy feeling that all what you see is doll, this is what you have to think in depth, general views of God without awareness of their particular use to your personnal feelings of being alive would not help you at any sort, at the opposite it will increase your mind frustrations who is refusing to look at himself
What do you mean by ‘meaning’ in the first place? And in the second place, why do we need meaning? There are questions quite difficult to answer, but necessary in order to arrive at an understanding of what you’re asking by ‘what gives life meaning?’
An example of the trickery of the questions; do animals, or plants, have meaning in their lives?
animals or plants are not happy in any way that is why God didn’t allow them to think for a better ways what he offered to men, do you want to be master of your destiny or you prefer to not see and eat the earth?
Krossie - your comments are of interest to me in two ways. The moment. We need to ponder meaning only if we are not pre-occupied with survival, which I took to be your point. But meaning and moment are related in another way, which I am not sure you are alluding to, although you may well be. Metaphysical meaning requires that we freeze ideas, that we stop process. This is how idea becomes Idea, for instance. When we treat classes as objects, we take a snapshot, blow it up, and worship it.
We think there are truths, so (the reasoning goes) there must be truth. Or even Truth. The abstraction becomes more real than that from which it is abstracted. This is the whole idea behing Plato’s Forms. We know cats, so there must be Cat. Any metaphysical Meaning is arrived at this way.
l
Even these two senses of “moment” are related, I think. If you can freeze time by reflecting on ideas in the abstract, you can (erroneously, in my view) believe that process itself can be stopped. It can, in your head, but all manner of fictions can live in your head.
“What gives life meaning?”
Death?
death denies meaning of life
Hi Fausty
Well I suppose (for me) the best description of life (or technically Nietzsche’s eternal return) is the one the one that Deleuze uses in his Nietzsche book and its an image he grabs from the French poet Malamere (spelling??)
This is the idea of dice having been thrown rolling in the air. As the dice are in the air they contain in them the sum of all possibilities as to where they might land. If you want to be a pure empiricist you could add velocity, angle, gravity (what ever!).
The point is this pure moment of possibility and becoming which happens (in small ways every day) that islife.
Any way for me its very much about self creation and self realisation and not any frozen forms or icey Gods!
krossie
(Murdoc are you a Heidegger fan?)
To be honest, I haven’t read many philosophical works so I would have to say no. I say what I personally and whole-heartedly believe.
Obviously I am going to disagree to this statement. I am wondering if you made this statement without support to simply get me to explain why death is the meaning of life …
So here goes:
Picture this if you will: Eternal life. Life without death. What would drive you to get up every morning if you had an eternity to live life? What if your teacher gave you an endless deadline to get that homework in? Would you do it? That deadline gives the homework meaning.
Naturally, young people take life for granted because in their perspective they have so much of it. As I look around it almost seems as if the older you get the more appreciation for life you have. You pick up jogging or go to the gym and you eat healthier (gotta watch that cholesterol). Death drives us. Without it there would be no reason to live.
what are you describing is how death force you to see the preciousity of life force you to recognise that you want to stay alive, but it is so an humiliating dead end like your teacher example who will not give any meaning to what you write except the conscience of what you must obey, no murdoc i don’t see at all grown up more true to what they saw of themselves or God, childrens are much more nice because of the illusion eternal life because they less fear death they can see wilder in sane thoughts that we can fix anything we have time, that is why after twenty all become the same one saying i will not do any i will never think of being happy or helping another to be NO i had my big lesson of life as you want me to do i am your slave for everything you want me to do, please please let me just breed few more years and don’t kill me in pain
Maybe our lives have meaning because we were meant to be living? But this would obviously hint at some sort of religious origin…(which is entirely probable)
Utlimately I think that our lives have meaning because we have resources at our fingertips that could enable us to do great things. All that is missing is one’s drive to be meaningful. Now what drives a person to making their life meaningful? Love for self or another?
How is one supposed to answer such a question without guessing for themselves , how do you figure it takes a noun and not a verb ,
what is the goal of this thread and how would you put it to good use later ,
do you preferto answer your own questions or expect them from others?
I think this question is due to a grammatical error, and is not itself a generally meaningful one. As Krossie pointed out, it is meaningful to theists, but they have the answer as soon as they ask the question, so for them and them alone, the question is meaningful, but trivial.
For everyone else, the question comes from the notion that meaning is an actual thing - that, in its general formulation, it exists somehow. There is no Meaning to Life. But that does not leave us with necessarily meaningless lives. It is a point that I make repeatedly, I know. But, since nobody listens, it can’t do any harm to repeat it.
Our lives may have meaning. But this formulation, while grammatically correct, is better rephrased to “our lives have meanings”. All these meanings put together do not add up to “meaning”, they add up to “all those meanings”. Meaning does not exist, we have no reason to suspect it does, and this condition does not equal meaninglessness. “Meaning” is a second-order abstraction that has a use, and a misuse.
Go get a meaning, if you feel you need one. But call it a purpose, instead, because that is what you really mean, and if you use this word, you will avoidsome unfocused and misdirected angst.
We borrow the word meaning, when used this way, from theism, which uses it as a synonym for “God’s purposes”. That is all the mystery there is to it. Isn’t language fun?
the only explanation i see is to force some understanding in submission
Faust I quite like your idea of meanings plural or personally defined purposes.
That does seem to provide “meaning” for some people though!
Krossie