uwot wrote:Hello Ginkgo
I'm sorry you feel that way. Never mind; if I'm wrong about inference, you can be sure Greylorn will think it worth the hassle.
Cheers.
No, you are actually correct.
Your statement:
The evidence about the physical reality of the universe is not inferential; it is demonstrable, or it isn't evidence
.
You are right if "physical reality" in science is taken to mean non-metaphysical ontology. And it usually is.
[quote=Matt24 post_id=162741 time=1394933018 user_id=9775]
This question has been on my mind the past few years. I had been capable of ignoring it before, or fooling me with short-term goals that would ultimately leave me feeling empty.
But the issue just keeps coming back to me, and I feel I can't ignore it anymore. Because really, what is the purpose of our lives? Is studying, getting a job, getting married, settling down, having children, spending my money on superflous goods and then dying all there is to life? People I interact with seem to be ok with this; however, I find it to be a miserable prospect. So I shall spend my life working at some job (which I might or might not like) just to be able to satisfy my basic needs and buy stuff I don't even need (because after all, food and bed is all you really instinctively need)? And I shall get married with a person I probably picked as I would pick an apple from the greengrocer's: focusing on the external features, just to be able to have sex and satisfy my sexual needs AND/OR have children? Children who will eventually leave your house and repeat the same steps you did? And so I will age with my wife living every day without an objective, just to later die.. alone? It sounds absolutely deplorable to me.
You could say, hey! What about friends and family? What about true love? Aren't those the things worth living for? Well, in my mind, they're not. First of all, how frequent are those hangouts with friends? Probably like once a month, and even less as everyone ages. It's like everyone's too busy living their own lives. And most of the time it becomes a rather dreadful and superficial thing: "Did I tell you about what my son did yesterday?"; "Would you believe what happened at the workplace yesterday?"; "Have you heard that X (a mutual friend) got divorced?".
The very same thing happens with the family. It gets me sad, for example, that my parents practically don't see their siblings much. When I was growing up, my brother was a big part of my life, and I don't really want to lose that (it looks I eventually will). You could say, "hey, but you will have a wife/husband to take care of you! You will have children to raise!". Indeed, but... How do you know you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you've known for two/three years (in most cases!)? What if you "lose" your love for that person? Because honestly, even if you say "Well, I don't love him/her just because of his/her beauty... it's his/her heart and personality I love", how can you be so sure you know that person's heart? And what is your purpose to get married? To have children? Well, why exactly would you want to have children in the first place? I sometimes feel like having children basically means "Nothing's interesting with my life, so I guess we'll give ourselves the task to raise kids just to have something to do".
Others find meaning in doing pleasing activities. Partying, getting drunk or taking drugs (because you could argue that since there is no meaning, then there's no point in preserving your health)... yet that's just a way to ignore the suffering and the distress of life, and you'll eventually have to face the "downs" that come with the abuse of these substances/activities.
This whole analysis can basically be summed up as people doing things with others so as not to realize their life is meaningless and they're eventually going to die like everybody else (without being sure if that's the final end to their life).
I'm not sure if I'm strange or normal; smart or dumb for thinking about this. What is it I'm seeing that nobody else does? Or am I wicked/depressed and need psychological help?
Thanks in advance for your contributions, I would really appreciate somebody talking about this with me.
[/quote]
The meaning of life is that everyone must choose (not find) the answer to that question for themselves. Mine is to be fulfilled in making everything perfect (a direction, not a destination) for everyone, because nothing less is worth bothering with IMO.
Don't sweat the nihilism. Getting past it is a sort of graduation from philosophical elementary school. If you want to drill down to a more bespoke answer, i can help with that in my capacity as a Philosophy Coach, if you don't mind getting extremely personal in the process. In simple terms, it's an accounting for salience, perspective, and priority.
Your wicked depression is a mark of a deep thinker, because ignorance really is bliss, and vice versa. If you still haven't worked it out, HMU.
[quote="The Voice of Time" post_id=162753 time=1394945539 user_id=7289]
[quote="Matt24"]but it's not like you can do it without any money at all.[/quote]
I did it without money ;)
Although I also had a part-time job as a beggar x)
[/quote]
You can't do it without resources, but those resources can be social skills or social credit or social empathy or luck or hope or not caring if you die, or money...
Consider the possibility that you, at the level of mind, are not a created entity: not by God, not by biology. Your mind has two components: brain and beon (a.k.a. soul). The beon component is that which wonders, and which asks thoughtful questions.
The purpose of life is simply to bring beon to conscious self-awareness, at a level that it can someday sustain without the help of a brain/body system.
Matt24 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 16, 2014 2:23 am
This question has been on my mind the past few years. I had been capable of ignoring it before, or fooling me with short-term goals that would ultimately leave me feeling empty.
But the issue just keeps coming back to me, and I feel I can't ignore it anymore. Because really, what is the purpose of our lives? Is studying, getting a job, getting married, settling down, having children, spending my money on superflous goods and then dying all there is to life? People I interact with seem to be ok with this; however, I find it to be a miserable prospect. So I shall spend my life working at some job (which I might or might not like) just to be able to satisfy my basic needs and buy stuff I don't even need (because after all, food and bed is all you really instinctively need)? And I shall get married with a person I probably picked as I would pick an apple from the greengrocer's: focusing on the external features, just to be able to have sex and satisfy my sexual needs AND/OR have children? Children who will eventually leave your house and repeat the same steps you did? And so I will age with my wife living every day without an objective, just to later die.. alone? It sounds absolutely deplorable to me.
You could say, hey! What about friends and family? What about true love? Aren't those the things worth living for? Well, in my mind, they're not. First of all, how frequent are those hangouts with friends? Probably like once a month, and even less as everyone ages. It's like everyone's too busy living their own lives. And most of the time it becomes a rather dreadful and superficial thing: "Did I tell you about what my son did yesterday?"; "Would you believe what happened at the workplace yesterday?"; "Have you heard that X (a mutual friend) got divorced?".
The very same thing happens with the family. It gets me sad, for example, that my parents practically don't see their siblings much. When I was growing up, my brother was a big part of my life, and I don't really want to lose that (it looks I eventually will). You could say, "hey, but you will have a wife/husband to take care of you! You will have children to raise!". Indeed, but... How do you know you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you've known for two/three years (in most cases!)? What if you "lose" your love for that person? Because honestly, even if you say "Well, I don't love him/her just because of his/her beauty... it's his/her heart and personality I love", how can you be so sure you know that person's heart? And what is your purpose to get married? To have children? Well, why exactly would you want to have children in the first place? I sometimes feel like having children basically means "Nothing's interesting with my life, so I guess we'll give ourselves the task to raise kids just to have something to do".
Others find meaning in doing pleasing activities. Partying, getting drunk or taking drugs (because you could argue that since there is no meaning, then there's no point in preserving your health)... yet that's just a way to ignore the suffering and the distress of life, and you'll eventually have to face the "downs" that come with the abuse of these substances/activities.
This whole analysis can basically be summed up as people doing things with others so as not to realize their life is meaningless and they're eventually going to die like everybody else (without being sure if that's the final end to their life).
I'm not sure if I'm strange or normal; smart or dumb for thinking about this. What is it I'm seeing that nobody else does? Or am I wicked/depressed and need psychological help?
Thanks in advance for your contributions, I would really appreciate somebody talking about this with me.
This question haunts every thinking person so no surprise that it bothers you again and again. I can certainly answer that but cannot explain by reasoning because that would need a very long answer and I cannot do that right now.
I point or purpose of the life is life itself. You do not need to find any other purpose as it is already provided.
In other words, do what best you can do in you circumstances at any time. Engage honestly and fully, no matter what you are doing, whether it is job, business, profession, even sex. That is all you need to do and your purpose of life will be achieved automatically whether you will be able to achieve what you want or not. Results are not the purpose but efforts are.