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As someone who is inclined to screw up the simplest thing, I take that to be a good thing.
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Concrete, Abstract, or Squoingy?
"I don't believe in giving scripting languages because the only additional power they give users is the power to create bugs." - Mike Breitkreutz, Firaxis -
I'm not missing the point. I don't really give a toss whether you enjoy life or not. the whole crux of my philosophy is that existence is meaningless and that's what makes it so wonderful. Once again:
Life is meaningless which is what makes living so important.Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard DawkinsComment
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Re: Re: Re: Is (your) life futile?
....unless we assign meaning to it, and we do it all the time, to different facets of our life. Still I don't understand what the problem there is.Originally posted by Carolus Rex
Life is still meaningless...
That's debatable - impact on what?The moment I'm gone, nothing will matter anymore: what I did, what I thought, how I lived... The impact will be absolutely zero. IMHO, of course.BlahComment
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What?Originally posted by Frankychan
Yes, Starchilds response was pretty impressive.
It was perhaps well articulated, but basically stuff you find in any mainstream Hollywood feel good movie... I only gave you one example in my response to Starchild (Dead Poets' Society)...
CarolusComment
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Interesting. We agree on the first part, but draw completely different conclusions...Originally posted by Starchild
Once again:
Life is meaningless which is what makes living so important.
CarolusComment
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I've read both (in french), but that was perhaps 12-13 years ago. I think I preferred Camus' La peste to his L'étranger at the time... I didn't like the book by Sartre (Les mains sales IIRC) at all...Originally posted by techumseh
Read Sarte: http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ist/sartre.htm
And Camus: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users...lit/indexa.htm
CarolusComment
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Is (your) life futile?
Ok, let me try to clarify.Originally posted by BeBro
That's debatable - impact on what?
Had I not existed, then nothing in this world would IMHO have changed (for better or for worse). My life (any person's life) is insignificant, it makes no difference if any single person exists or not...
Maybe it makes a difference for any single person (most people are happy to exist and do not want to cease existing), but in a larger context any given life is probably without importance.
I do not know if the total of all these insignificant parts (i. e. humanity) also is insignificant... If humanity is important (which I doubt), then perhaps the parts that make it up (individual lives) also are?
CarolusComment
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Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
As someone who is inclined to screw up the simplest thing, I take that to be a good thing.
CarolusComment
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significance, meaning, importance, etc. all imply a relationship of one entity or object to another. So, if you extended the context of your analysis to be outside all entities or objects of course you will eventuall succumb to the conclusion or irrelevance.
So what?
That's like me saying that there is really no such thing as an endothermic or exothermic reaction because I have taken the whole universe as my system.Comment
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Bah. Existence is a brute fact, get over it (to paraphrase Russel).
So you exist. Whoo-de-****ing-do. So you're insignificant. Deal with it and move on. Take pride in your insignificance! You can go out and actually do things without worrying about the universe at large. It's possible to go out in life and love and mourn and hate and exhault in the human condition secure in the knowledge that the universe won't give a damn what you do.
Gods, can you imagine if you were actually important? That your actions could change the course of the stars or do anything to actually impact the greater cosmos? You'd never do anything. If we actually were significant, we'd end up as cold and distant and silent as the dead.
Insignificance may be the greatest gift available.Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard DawkinsComment
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I also like ignorance... or the arrogance to not care about things outside yourself.Insignificance may be the greatest gift available.Comment
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Re: Is (your) life futile?
Our lives may or may not contribute to undoing the heat death of the universe(even if it involves just proving that such an occurence will never take place). If we can't do that, then everything was and is a complete waste of time.Originally posted by Carolus Rex
Is there any meaning of life at all?
My life is completely insignificant; it won't change one single thing in this world. This assertion is not to be interpreted as an expression of some teenager's low self-esteem or pathetic depression of having been thrown away by a lover...
I truly believe it. Furthermore, I go on to claim that, in the bigger scheme of things, your life and every single individual's life is completely meaningless as well... I make that judgement without knowing you and I firmly believe I'm right...
Does this imply that life at an aggregated level (i. e. the existence of humanity) is meaningless too? Is the sum of a large number of totally insignificant parts also insignificant? I'm not sure about that one...
Discuss, mortals.
Carolus
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
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I would disagree that even on an indivdual level things are that insignificant. As I understand it, and as others mentioned in this thread we construct or assign meaning to things we consider important. But then I cannot say these are all insignificant or meaningless things. Certainly not to me, and to certain people around me.
If you want to measure it in the "grand scheme of things" - how would you do it? I mean when exactly can you say something is insignificant or not? You would need to establish some rules first what counts as significant and what not, and I think that's a massive problem. Is a war significant? Probably that can count....but then, are there only the decisions of the top level staff significant in this war or actions of individual soldiers too, which actually put the decisions in praxis?
The fact that there is no single or universal meaning does not matter to me, since we all have something that has meaning for us - otherwise we wouldn't care about it. And such a "construction" of meaning does not only work on an individual level, but in groups too (so since we usually do not live as hermits, but interact with eachother).....In that sense we all have impact on eachother. Yes, we cannot snip with the fingers and change the world instantly in that way. But that does IMO not say that everything we do is insignificant, if we think it as meaningful.
That's how I (non-philosopher) see it.BlahComment
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Good post (it pretty much sums up people's replies, I guess)!
CarolusComment
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