I usually wake up around five and spend another hour in bed before getting up. I use this hour to plan my day (I am retired). This morning I started thinking about winter coming soon and the firewood still out in the yard, seasoning, but it needs to come inside the wood shed because I don’t fancy digging them out from under the snow, so I decided that today: promised to be dry, sunny, and not too hot, would be a good day to start bringing it into the woodshed. Before that, however, I would have to move some very heavy items about 6 feet out of the way in the woodshed to maximize the space available for the firewood.
The next idea I had was about the extra layer of plastic I planned to install to the roof of the greenhouse, and I had the brilliant idea of leaving an air gap between the second and the third layer to maximize the heat insulation.
Then I was thinking about the next chapter of my Physics book I was writing, and decided that I was going to discuss the Mendeleev Periodic Table, before getting into atomic and nuclear physics, because there is so many exciting things to say about those 118 elements, most of us know only about 15-20 and have no idea what roles the others play in our lives. Besides, the life of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev is an adventure story very few people ever heard of.
Recently my neighbor (an 82 year old lady) had a car accident and I spent the last month driving her to all her errands, doctors’ appointments and the long process of buying her a new car (hers was totaled), so I thought I had enough credit with her to borrow her garden tractor with its trailer, because that would help me enormously in moving firewood around.
You see, this is the meaning of life, without any doubt, whatsoever. And it is a very happy life.
Fantasizing about ‘god’, ‘creation’, the universe, life after death and all those wonderful philosophical obsessions are for people who have nothing better to do on this Earth we are all living on.
"Why is there something, instead of nothing?", "Who am I?", "How did I get here?", "What was there before there was anything?", and all the other totally meaningless neurotic obsessions are a poor substitute to a happy and productive life.
So much about Philosophy.
It’s a very good thing that geniuses like Richard Feynman totally agrees with me on this.
The meaning of life.
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Dalek Prime
- Posts: 4922
- Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:48 am
- Location: Living in a tree with Polly.
Re: The meaning of life.
Holy crap, Ned! Let me be the first to say hello and welcome you back to the forum. Great to see you!
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Obvious Leo
- Posts: 4007
- Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 1:05 am
- Location: Australia
Re: The meaning of life.
You are a philosopher of the bloody obvious, Ned. Life is a finite resource and the best way to get your money's worth out of it is to live it fully and extract every possible scrap of meaning from every moment. It's always been forever about the journey and never about the destination, just as all the major eastern philosophies insisted all along.
Re: The meaning of life.
Yes, I know, it is bloody Obvious, Leo!
However:
The simplest things
The simplest things are, by far, the hardest to see:
we’d rather drown in complications;
when we could just simply, happily, be,
we choose to suffer in self-created abominations.
We invent ideologies, wars, financial meltdowns
when all we need to do is:
produce, distribute and consume what we really need
and stop making so many mouths to feed.
Bears, wolves, elk are smarter:
hunt and forage for survival
without trashing their habitat…
…they are not, like us, suicidal.
We waste our enormous brains
on weapons of mass destruction,
and drag the bears, wolves and elk with us
into our self-created mass extinction.
...or...
Extinction
Our ancestors made it,
out of the primordial ooze,
launched life, evolution, intelligence,
and here we are today: the apex of creation,
on the verge of self-annihilation.
Our big brains can solve
abstract mathematical equations,
design intricate and complex structures,
are stuck in the animal’s fear of starvation
and we think that greed is the only possible solution.
So we replace the simple task of living
with complicated games of domination,
squandering our resources in wars and destruction,
never realizing, even for a second:
we are digging the graves
of our own extinction.
However:
The simplest things
The simplest things are, by far, the hardest to see:
we’d rather drown in complications;
when we could just simply, happily, be,
we choose to suffer in self-created abominations.
We invent ideologies, wars, financial meltdowns
when all we need to do is:
produce, distribute and consume what we really need
and stop making so many mouths to feed.
Bears, wolves, elk are smarter:
hunt and forage for survival
without trashing their habitat…
…they are not, like us, suicidal.
We waste our enormous brains
on weapons of mass destruction,
and drag the bears, wolves and elk with us
into our self-created mass extinction.
...or...
Extinction
Our ancestors made it,
out of the primordial ooze,
launched life, evolution, intelligence,
and here we are today: the apex of creation,
on the verge of self-annihilation.
Our big brains can solve
abstract mathematical equations,
design intricate and complex structures,
are stuck in the animal’s fear of starvation
and we think that greed is the only possible solution.
So we replace the simple task of living
with complicated games of domination,
squandering our resources in wars and destruction,
never realizing, even for a second:
we are digging the graves
of our own extinction.
Re: The meaning of life.
Re the OP:
If life is good you don't ask what is its meaning. If lousy, you don't ask about the meaning of lousy since your living it. In both cases any inquiries about the meaning of life become meaningless. However if there were a meaning in the latter case it would be to make it better or die trying. Look at the refuge situation in Europe another potent example in life's drama in attempting the good and escaping the evil.
Does Life really require a meaning as extracted by some profound philosophical insight?? If there were one it would be profoundly incorrect!
Hi Ned! You left when I coincidentally first showed up here ... from elsewhere. Happy to make your re-acquaintance. Once again, I like your poetry. Keep it coming!
If life is good you don't ask what is its meaning. If lousy, you don't ask about the meaning of lousy since your living it. In both cases any inquiries about the meaning of life become meaningless. However if there were a meaning in the latter case it would be to make it better or die trying. Look at the refuge situation in Europe another potent example in life's drama in attempting the good and escaping the evil.
Does Life really require a meaning as extracted by some profound philosophical insight?? If there were one it would be profoundly incorrect!
Hi Ned! You left when I coincidentally first showed up here ... from elsewhere. Happy to make your re-acquaintance. Once again, I like your poetry. Keep it coming!
Re: The meaning of life.
Dalek, Dubious, thank you for the "welcome back", but I am not really here -- only a very good friend of mine who is also on this forum tells me, from time to time, about some of the debates going on in some of the threads and this time I could not resist making a comment.
This time of the year I am extremely busy with my life: writing, gardening, winter preparations, our busiest back-to-school period of our book business, etc., so I have very little time left for the internet.
However, the topic of the "meaning of life" keeps coming up (especially on philosophy forums) so I couldn't resist contributing my 2 cents' worth.
Just one more comment on the same subject: So many human beings wrestle with the 'meaning' question and I did, too, in my teens, before I realized that the solution to the problem lays in analyzing the meaning of the word:'meaning'. I figured it out, back then, that the way we use this word in all other context is synonymous with 'purpose' or 'function' and, in this context the only possible answer could be: the meaning of life is life itself.
As Edward O. Wilson wrote in the Meaning of Human existence (chapter The Meaning of Meaning) :
There is no final answer (other than 42) so the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get on with making the most of our existence on this Earth. And it can be a very happy existence if only we decided to live and let live.
As a gift to Dubious, here is my summary:
Counterpoint
My species
invented
death camps,
guillotines,
vivisection,
ethnic atrocity,
but discovered
sonnets,
counterpoint,
impressionism,
microphotography...
...no surprise that
it has evolved
a paranoid
schizophrenic
personality.
This time of the year I am extremely busy with my life: writing, gardening, winter preparations, our busiest back-to-school period of our book business, etc., so I have very little time left for the internet.
However, the topic of the "meaning of life" keeps coming up (especially on philosophy forums) so I couldn't resist contributing my 2 cents' worth.
Just one more comment on the same subject: So many human beings wrestle with the 'meaning' question and I did, too, in my teens, before I realized that the solution to the problem lays in analyzing the meaning of the word:'meaning'. I figured it out, back then, that the way we use this word in all other context is synonymous with 'purpose' or 'function' and, in this context the only possible answer could be: the meaning of life is life itself.
As Edward O. Wilson wrote in the Meaning of Human existence (chapter The Meaning of Meaning) :
The reason, I believe, why so many people can't accept this is their reluctance to accept the infinite nature of the universe, as opposed to the finite human experience. Reality is an onion with infinite number of layers and we forever try to peel them back to arrive at a 'final' core answer to all of our questions. That is why gods were invented: the final answer to all that we don't know and are afraid of.Humanity, I argue, arose entirely on its own through an accumulated series of events during evolution. We are not predestined to reach any goal, nor are we answerable to any power but our own. Only wisdom based on self-understanding, not piety, will save us. There will be no redemption or second chance vouchsafed to us from above. We have only this one planet to inhabit and this one meaning to unfold.
There is no final answer (other than 42) so the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get on with making the most of our existence on this Earth. And it can be a very happy existence if only we decided to live and let live.
As a gift to Dubious, here is my summary:
Counterpoint
My species
invented
death camps,
guillotines,
vivisection,
ethnic atrocity,
but discovered
sonnets,
counterpoint,
impressionism,
microphotography...
...no surprise that
it has evolved
a paranoid
schizophrenic
personality.
Re: The meaning of life.
I'd like to think it was up to me how I should achieve a happy and productive life, rather than it be your decision. You may not fantasise about God but, judging by how much time you spend on forums like this, I do wonder if you are fantasising about your wood shed.Ned wrote:
You see, this is the meaning of life, without any doubt, whatsoever. And it is a very happy life.
Fantasizing about ‘god’, ‘creation’, the universe, life after death and all those wonderful philosophical obsessions are for people who have nothing better to do on this Earth we are all living on.
"Why is there something, instead of nothing?", "Who am I?", "How did I get here?", "What was there before there was anything?", and all the other totally meaningless neurotic obsessions are a poor substitute to a happy and productive life.