Whats the meaning of life?

killJOY · Fission Joined: Feb 21, 2005 Posts: 2310 Location: ^NNE^

1. First, we'd have to decide what it means to say life has "meaning."

2. Once you realize it doesn't matter, it follows that it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter.
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Budmeister · Tar Sands Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 37

The Meaning of Life is Ass. You spend your entire life trying to kick it, cover it, or get a piece of it. Think about it.
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Daculling · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Apr 12, 2005 Posts: 1333

Jack · Moderator Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4891

Life is limitation - of time, of resources, of knowledge.

Thus, the meaning of life is how one deals with those limitations.
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rkerver · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 8:14 am Post subject: Re: Whats the meaning of life?

Laughter is the best cure for depression. Just because we live in depressing times doesn't mean we have to succumb. 42 was the answer a few years ago. Now its 23.

Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4027

doufus · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 02, 2005 Posts: 208

As they say- life isn't a problem to be solved but a mystery to be
experienced.

The kind of anguish you're experiencing is pretty ego driven- but normal
for most of us. Can i suggest reading some nondualism literature.
However, if your ego is doing a dummy spit over the prospect of its own demise then ND is pretty heavy going because
it's fundamental conclusion is that you don't exist at all. javascript:emoticon('

')
Embarassed

Now, for adherents to western individualism and the cult of "me" this is
utterly unacceptable. And I have at this point probably been dumped into the " nutcase folder" of hundreds of mailboxes.

But (!) the unfolding realisation that we are ALL, each
and every one of us, headed for a pine box is actually the driving energy
behind everyday ego dynamics as we strive for power, possessions
and stimulation- anything that can distract us and/or protect us from
this unavoidable truth.

And the lengths we go to in our denial are truly amazing. We invent fairytales we call religions that will save us if we perform the right rituals and believe the right things. We create empires of possessions,
build pyramids, preserve our corpses, dull our minds with drugs and
entertainment. Sometimes we even eat pizza. Yep we'll do just about
anything to take our minds off our inevitable last breath.

But consider it this way. The universe is an ocean of consciousness
that has always existed and always will. Flecks and drops of spray
surge back and forth all of the time. One of them is you and in your
moment of flight and momentary consciousness you look down and say "Well f^&%ck me! Who am I? Where do I come from? I must be
important. What am I supposed to do? How am i supposed to live?
What am I here for?"

Of course, being blissfully unaware of your own true nature as a
part of this infinite ocean, you wallow in your own angst and
ego. You indulge in all sorts of fantasies and enterprises to
reassure yourself that somehow, someway your very important
self will not return to the ocean it came from. But of course it will.

One commentator noted that we see ourselves as points of life
in a dead universe when in fact it's the opposite. Our temporary
connsciousness momentarily isolates us from everything that is.
Consequently, we are actually points of death in a living, conscious universe.

If u take that approach, then death isn't the end of you and your
incredibly important ass. It's a return to everything that always
was and always will be. Not you as in the bag of neuroses and
desires you drag around each day. But you as a droplet of
consciousness rejoining its ocean once more.

But the more you dwell on you, the worse it will get.

Get some nature time if u can. In between the bugs and discomfort
you might recapture the feeling of "merging" we get when we look at the
stars or natural beauty. You might regain your sense of place in the
scheme of things. You might hear the ocean you come from and
realise that it's where you belong and where you will ultimately go.
And in that same moment, you might be lucky and understand that
there never was a you in any case. But that's way beyond your
average fashion following, media educated, American Lemming.

So go order that pizza now and fer chrissake stop thinking about yourself
and just look around and be amazed.

here endeth navel gazing 101.

Embarassed

Yavicleus · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 16, 2004 Posts: 364

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Raxozanne · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:22 am Post subject: Re: Whats the meaning of life?

Madonna has been trying to answer this question for decades and the best she's found is Kabbalah Laughing

ashurbanipal · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 1:11 pm Post subject: Re: Whats the meaning of life?

Interesting question, and one for which I have no complete answer. But I have a couple thoughts:

1) Doufus' post is quite incisive, but I think we need to understand the implications of what he's saying a little better. If the universe is actually continuous in this way (I believe it is) then nothing ever really dies, nor is consciousness anything that should be thought of as localized. We tend to perceive consciousness as localized, but this view may be naieve, as are so many other "intuitive" positions.

2) Therefore meaning both is an is not an invention of the human mind. Lao-Tzu remarked that nature is not human-minded, but the flaw in this line of thinking is that human minds are natural, part of nature and a product of natural forces. Without human (or similar) minds, there would probably be no such thing as "meaning," but this does not imply that meaning is unnatural or artificial, or that the meaning one gives to one's life is somehow less than the meaning that was supposed to have been granted by religion. The meaning of life, to me, is in whatever I happen to be doing.

3) This is not to disparage religion per se. I think that religions have generally wrecked the intentions of their founders and central figures. Gnostic religions (such as Buddhism or Sikhism) fare better in this regard than agnostic religions (such as any form of protestantism), but I don't know of a single religion that is completely blameless in this regard.

"God" is as good a term as any to focus on, here, as this seems to be a stand-in for the "final meaning" of many religions, and it seems to figure prominently enough even in those that focus on something else. Most people don't know what they mean when they say "God," having some vague concept of an old man with a long flowing beard on a golden throne in the clouds. Obviously, this is an absurd concept of God unless it is taken metaphorically, in which case it becomes unclear. I think, though, that if we see "God" as an abstract concept that denotes the intimate interconnectedness and reflectiveness of all things, then the idea becomes a little better. Thought of in this way, it's easy to see how "God" might be thought of as being omniscient, say, since "God" would be everything that is known.

Once one has this clearly in mind (and I'll expand on the concept more for anyone that wishes to follow out the line of thought a little further), reading those oft-heckled ancient scriptures takes on a completely different meaning. One thing that we might learn from them is that any meaning is enough for life; all the answers given above by the posters to this thread, even the absurd ones, work if they have the actual support of your person.

4) Death is indeed the supreme question that waits at the end of life. What is paradoxical-seeming about death is really quite elegant on analysis. It has seemed to some that, if death is really a final end to life, then life must have no meaning because of its temporality. But if we subtract death from all consciousness, are we so inspired to seek a meaning for life? I don't think we would be.

In any event, I don't think death is the end of anything important. There are some good reasons to believe that consciousness survives death in some way; the arguments for a strictly mechanical view of life (under which I would subsume many different positions such as functionalism, identity theory, Dennetian meanderings, etc.) are surprisingly weak. While some version of materialism continues to be the default position of most academics, this seems to be changing slowly but surely. I can expand on this if anyone is interested.

In any case, I don't think that pure analysis is ever going to approach something like an ultimate truth. I think rather, such a truth, and any attendant meaning, will have to be experienced. And there is a whole literature out there for how to do that.

JayBee · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Whats the meaning of life?

erl · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 21, 2005 Posts: 792

Before addressing the underlying question, there is an issue of standing:

Why is this thread in the Peak Oil Discussion forum?

Either the Psychology or the Open Discussion forums would seem more appropriate.

Buy, hey, who am I to decide such weighty issues?

rogerhb · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 3:59 pm Post subject: Re: Whats the meaning of life?