The meaning of life?

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skakos
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The meaning of life?

Post by skakos »

A rather simple question, but the most difficult of them all: What is the meaning of life? I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

What do you think?
tbieter
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by tbieter »

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there life in the universe? Why not just a universe of inanimate beings?

Don't these questions precede the question of meaning?
Last edited by tbieter on Sat Jul 01, 2017 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
surreptitious57
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by surreptitious57 »


There is no objective meaning to life which therefore renders the question superfluous
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Harbal
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Harbal »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
I think Rilke must have been having an off day when he said that as the purpose of life is obviously to avoid being defeated by anything.
Dubious
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Dubious »

That depends on whether you're a multi-billionaire or starving to death in the Sudan.

But in the abstract it's any meaning life can give itself there being only ONE deviation from the norm which ever bothered to ask the question among all the variations that ever existed on this planet. What can be the default conclusion but that life inherently is worth nothing beyond the instinct that wishes to preserve it. The mightiest philosophers remains impotent to supply any such meaning beyond myth, religion and wishful thinking...and therefore we create stories in the midst of what Melville called "the howling infinite".
osgart
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by osgart »

:mrgreen: to give your all and die with nothing.
or to become wealthy and die with everything.
or just have a happy time with someone you love.
to give enough to have enough. to build the most powerful machines in the universe.
to reach the finish line and say you have ran the race. to observe the spectacle.
to be spectacular.
just passing through.
to breathe air.
to ponder the end and wonder what happened to the time.
accumulate toys.
meaningful relationships.
to improve the quality of life for all.
celebrate success.
work a dead end job to merely exist.
write a novel.
patiently wait for death.
to live in fear of what's going to happen.
intellectual indulgence.
smoke em if ya got em.
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attofishpi
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by attofishpi »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm A rather simple question, but the most difficult of them all: What is the meaning of life? I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

What do you think?
I think the meaning of life is different for all individuals. For me, and mine, it was to find my soul mate. And when stating that, i don't mean some flimsy belief that - hey this girl could be it, i mean, as a Christian - no matter what i have done (within reason), i earned the right to be rekindled with my past life's love.

That's just my thought on it.
Last edited by attofishpi on Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
ken
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by ken »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm A rather simple question, but the most difficult of them all: What is the meaning of life? I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

What do you think?
Is not the 'purpose' of life rather different than the 'meaning' of life?

Although, what rilke (whoever that is) said about 'to be defeated by greater and greater things', does fit in perfectly with evolution and how human beings keep evolving further and further into a greater and greater things all the time. Those things is Consciousness or God and living together with them in peace and harmony, which is obviously dependent upon on how you observe, look and see things. Although, if you ever watched the news in this day and age when this is written, then you would/could be sadly mistaken for thinking that that is never going to happen.

i am a very uneducated and thus a very nonintellectual person, so when i do not know what the meaning of word is i go and look in a dictionary instead of presuming that i know what a word means. The dictionary i happened to look in that day had 'Life', living, being alive, which fitted in perfectly with the other things that i was discovering at that time, like, what is 'our', human being, purpose for living and being alive, who and what the 'I' is and who the 'you' is, and how they are different, and a few other things. And, the Universe, It Self, is a living thing. Always forming and changing all the time.

Human beings have a tendency to look at themselves as above or beyond other things and so see themselves and what is on earth as the only living things in the Universe. But if they looked more objectively than they do, then they will see just what Life is all about.
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Necromancer
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Necromancer »

Heaven?! Salvation, earthly and/or Heavenly?! To live with God, integrity intact?! :)
Justintruth
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Justintruth »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm A rather simple question, but the most difficult of them all: What is the meaning of life? I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

What do you think?
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haribol acharya
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by haribol acharya »

There is no meaning of life. Life is life and no meaning it can have. Just living it and no need to philosophize it at all. Life is a flow, a stream and we are not given the capacity to know the “whys”. Our brain capacity is limited and what we think and act cannot go beyond these physical peripheries. Whether we turn to science or religion there is no satisfactory answers to our eternal question: what is the meaning of life? We are not more knowledgeable on it than a baby who simply and endlessly asks questions. Yes for a while our Gurus and a few books written about it confuse us for a while and some even claim they have arrived at the meaning of life, but this is simply false. If we believe in God like a primitive there may be a meaning and God might have created everything else in this universe. We have to totally rely on mythologies if we seek a meaning of life.
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THoR
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by THoR »

tbieter wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:12 am Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there life in the universe? Why not just a universe of inanimate beings?

Don't these questions precede the question of meaning?
Before any thing can change or be changed, act or be acted upon, it must exist. Those who might dissent obviously believe in things that don't exist. Fortunately there are now medications for that. This simple, self-evident axiom means change is a 'function of' existence; the phenomenon of existence is the source of cause and effect rather than the result of it. To create is to cause to exist, so from Big Bang to Genesis any theory of cosmic creation is inherently contrary to logic.

Critical thinking applied to one basic principle of logic reconciles the phenomenon of being with the principles of logic without invoking supernatural deities, spontaneous singularities, multiverses or undetectable extra dimensions. Citing empirical data and complex equations would be extraneous, but simplicity has no commercial value, so until the light of logic ultimately penetrates the halls of academia, scholars will continue to engage in synaptic gymnastics, conjuring complicated calculations into esoteric hypotheses designed to justify 'Creation Ex Nihilo'.

Existence Ex Nihilo is justified by the simple and fundamental principle of 'Equilibrium'.
www.theory-of-reciprocity.com
ElroyBe
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by ElroyBe »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
What does that mean? Isn't it better to defeat greater things than have them defeat you? Survival of the fittest kind of thing.
Viveka
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Viveka »

If I were to give two words that sum up humanity's meaning of life they would be: happiness and meaning.
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Greta
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Re: The meaning of life?

Post by Greta »

skakos wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:49 pm A rather simple question, but the most difficult of them all: What is the meaning of life? I prefer the answer of Rilke: The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

What do you think?
I like it. In becoming "greater", intelligent beings must try to solve the problems of life - life's painful reliance of self-destruction for growth (ie. killing and eating, competing for influence) and the concomitant pain and suffering.

I find it meaningful to be one of the links in the chain that could realistically lead to beings who are objectively smarter, more appropriately emotional, more ethical, more aware and less wilfully and accidentally destructive than we are, and who hopefully will suffer and inflict suffering much less as humans become more efficient at minimising the harm caused to gain what is needed.

However, this broader understanding can only act as an optimistic underpinning of wellbeing; one cannot spend one's life in the broader existential picture. So I find it's the simple things that bring additional meaning, which for me would be music and the arts, family 'n friends, the dogs, the garden, bushwalks, filling my face, experimenting with mental states and yammering online :)
Last edited by Greta on Sat Oct 21, 2017 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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