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Any attempt to define life in existential terms, will, by it's very nature, defy understanding, due to the unique abilities and characteristics of the individuals endeavoring to understand it. THEREFORE......
Any definition actually arrived at can only apply to, or be said to be true of, it's author.
Any other method of defining life is preferable, and philosophically "Okey-Dokey". :D
The meaning of life is so simple and obvious that we all ignore it.
Why? Because it does not care about the individual. It makes you a cog in the great machine.
The meaning of life is to procreate.
Everything about you revolves around your desire/abilty to fertilize an ovum, or bear healthy children.
Many species take this philosophy to the limit. The black widow eats her mate, bees sting to death neuter workers when they have completed their work, etc.
Many feel that death is a passive process, but in fact, it is an active genomal process. Genes get closed down, packed away by histones. They use our sexual abilty or activity as markers. The concept that 100 years is a long time comes from our biased frame of reference.
Consider this: An actual experiment was performed that prevented an organism from advancing to the next stage in its life cycle. When it did resume it's normal cycle, it's life span was tripled but fecundity was not effected. So if we can arrest the human genome, we can live indefinately. This goes back to my point that death does not come passively, but our own genome shuts us down actively as our abilty to reproduce declines or is irradicated.
Ever notice that young women are totally desirable, but how many women over 50 (post or peri-menopausal) are even remotely tolerable. Look around yourself at the mall. Tons of teenage hotties and ZERO decent looking 50 year old. (Please refrain from posting about some exception you know about- that detracts from the overall theme).
The point is this: We are like cells of an organism. We provide and essentiatial function, but are individually trivial. The survival of the organism is the top priority.
What is this "organism"? Well, the universe or more focally, the planet. Consider yourself a cell contributing to survival of mother Earth, and Mother Earth as cell in the body of the universe.
This is my off the cuff answer. I have not attempted to post an irrefutable discussion as this topic merits a book and not a 50 line post.
ahh, we did a whole unit on this is philosophy class this year. the meaning of life is what u make of it. setting goals and achieving them. thats it! :P :P
(okay, yes, the meaning of life for animals is to eat, survive, and reproduce, but humans are so much more than that, so go by what i said before.)
:w00t:
The meaning of life is that it has no meaning. It makes it surprising.
Your class is confusing the issue.
There are two distinct questions:
1) I am here, what should I do?- That's what your class was talking about. Adding meaning(purpose) to a life. I want people to think about me and be happy they made my acquaintance. I want to be an inspiration of conduct and integrity and, damn it, I want to make people laugh.
2) What is the meaining of life? I answered this. Your purpose is to support the organism. You are a cell, a functional unit.
We ARE animals. We differ only in our ability to recognize our own mortality. Because of this we create religions to comfort this fear. Don't fool yourself, you are an animal.
How can you say you are more important than your dog. Is he not unique, does he not have a personality? Yes, his level of sophistication is primitive, but how can you justifiably draw a line, that separates humans from everything else. You can only do so because you want to.
The real question is "how did we come to exist?"
evolution. charles darwin. natural selection. survival of the fittest. we have a functioning mind. we can question things, unlike animals. now we wonder. it can be simple, but we make it complex.Quote:
The real question is "how did we come to exist?"
z
Why is there matter? Why is there a universe, at all.
Evolution is real, but fails to adequately describe "creation".
As I suggested before, man created God to easy explain the mystery of our existence, but this is only a ruse to ease our troubled minds.
I would have to ask you what your scientific training is when you talk about Darwin and Evolution. The hitch in this whole discussion is the creation of a self replicating organism.
At this point, I would have to know your level of education in order to explain this further. We are not a conglomeration of complex molecules created from the input of energy. Our propagation requires much more, but you can only appreciate this with some scientific training.
As far as questiuoning things. Ever see a dog run up to something, stop, turn around, get a bigger lead, try again. Again, his level of questioning(analysis) is simple, but still functioning.
So much of what we take for granted as "higher consciousness" is really primitive behavior which has been lost from it's source. My example has been music. Why can we appreciate it, why do chicks love the ugliest musician? I feel that it relates to the lost mating call. The mating call was used by birds to determine that the male was "mentally intact". His genome was functioning enough to produce the corrert response and this was felt to reflect the integrity of his genome. This is pure specualtion on my part, but the point is that sometimes we fail to appreciate the animal in us and call it something more profound.
If I divine properly (and I think I do) the question as originally posed, "....tell me the meaning of life", it is necessary to point out, for reasons that should be obvious, "meaning" and "purpose", as words, are not interchangable. The substitution of the latter for the former fully changes the intent of the question.
That aside, I must say, Hobbes, your discourse was extremely well reasoned and executed, except for that one tiny flaw.
Z-is dat you-formerly of "lil" fame?
hobbes - ok i didnt read your whole post. but just like man created god before to explain the unknown, we know use science. its basically biology from chemistry from physics. until the conscious mind came along, u could actually predict exactly what would happen based on the laws of the universe. the question is not why are we here. theres no reason. are you looking for a big reason, such as godlike, or just a reason such as the laws of physics. no matter what, the real question is "Where is the universe?". think about that and its even kinda scary. open your mind to that idea. where are we? we are here cuz of coincidence? obviously, otherwise we wouldnt know we were here, we wouldnt exist. this exact time. but this exact place? where did this "big bang" take place exactly? i dunno... but the meaning of life is something stupid, like god. (no offense, but i dont believe in god).
where is the universe? :huh:
j2 -Quote:
Originally posted by j2k4@30 March 2003 - 19:12
If I divine properly (and I think I do) the question as originally posed, "....tell me the meaning of life", it is necessary to point out, for reasons that should be obvious, "meaning" and "purpose", as words, are not interchangable. The substitution of the latter for the former fully changes the intent of the question.
That aside, I must say, Hobbes, your discourse was extremely well reasoned and executed, except for that one tiny flaw.
Z-is dat you-formerly of "lil" fame?
ebonics, huh? how old are u? :lol: lol.Quote:
Z-is dat you-formerly of "lil" fame?
and yes, this is the poster formerly known as lil_z. im back. :P