Why does life have to mean anything?

[Paladin]

From the Greek philosophers to modern day thinkers like Frankl, Tillich, et.al.
we have sought for the reason that life exists. Not to get nihilistic or existential here but why does life have to mean anything?

 

[Jim M2]

Great question, it's one of the reasons I'm here!

Here's what I'm guessing for the atheists. Life in the big picture dosen't necessarily have meaning for humans or have meaning for an individual. Some cataclysmic event may turn our existence into a cloud of vapor. What then would have been the meaning of our lives? In the smaller picture it may matter to you how you behave and how you are perceived by others and by history.

Here's what I'm guessing for the agnostics. If you're an agnostic type then you can't say one way or another about the big picture. Again, in the smaller picture it may matter to you how you behave and how you are perceived by others and by history.

If you believe in a personal God who cares about people then life does mean something because there is an afterlife that is influenced by your actions in this life.

 

[Eudaimonist]

From the Greek philosophers to modern day thinkers like Frankl, Tillich, et.al.
we have sought for the reason that life exists. Not to get nihilistic or existential here but why does life have to mean anything?

I think we should distinguish between "the reason that life exists", and your personal reason for continuing to exist. These can be two very different concepts.

My life does have meaning for me, and it has nothing to do with evolution, abiogenesis, cosmology, etc. This is not a question answered for me by looking at the distant past and attempting to trace the causes that led to my existence. Rather, it has to do with examining what I am, a living, biological, and internally purposive entity, and it is from this nature that certain values can matter to me and provide justification and meaning to my chosen purposes.

So I agree with you that "life" in the purely abstract or general sense does not need to mean anything to oneself. However, this need not lead to nihilism.


eudaimonia,

M.

 

[inhumility]

My life does have meaning for me, and it has nothing to do with evolution, abiogenesis, cosmology, etc. This is not a question answered for me by looking at the distant past and attempting to trace the causes that led to my existence. Rather, it has to do with examining what I am, a living, biological, and internally purposive entity, and it is from this nature that certain values can matter to me and provide justification and meaning to my chosen purposes.

Sir, to me, this question has been well answered by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), under the head "The Third Question: THE OBJECT OF MAN'S LIFE AND THE MEANS OF TIS ATTAINMENT ", please read just two pages of his book “The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam”, http://www.alislam.org/books/philosophy/1q3.html
Thanks

 

[Eudaimonist]

Sir, to me, this question has been well answered by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), under the head "The Third Question: THE OBJECT OF MAN'S LIFE AND THE MEANS OF TIS ATTAINMENT ", please read just two pages of his book “The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam”, http://www.alislam.org/books/philosophy/1q3.html
Thanks

Thanks, but I've already seen good answers.

Please read this. Thanks.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Eudaimonist]

From inhumility's link:

An intelligent person can appreciate this problem in this way also, that the purpose of everything is to be determined by its highest performance beyond which its faculties cannot operate.

I agree with this. I wonder if it is an Aristotelian influence on Islamic thought.

Thank you for the link.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[~Jonathan~]

For me, the meaning of life is the meaning I place upon it. I pesonally do not believe in God, Gods, an Afterlife, Past Lives, Reincarnation etc etc. I believe that once I'm dead that's it but that doesn't take anything away from life or living, for me it actually gives me being here an added resonance, the fact I'm going to cease to exist forever means I grasp every day and don't waste a second of it.

 

[Virtual_Cliff]

According to Marge Simpson, IIRC, life is "just a bunch of things that happened". In the narrow sense, people always try to see patterns in things, from a succession of throws on a dice to a random pattern of dots on a page.

In the wider sense, for me, life - all of it - is a celebration of the overwhelming love of God, and I don't care if there's an afterlife or not. It's just beautiful.

 

[Eudaimonist]

In the wider sense, for me, life - all of it - is a celebration of the overwhelming love of God, and I don't care if there's an afterlife or not. It's just beautiful.

I think that's a very healthy attitude. And in spite of being on different sides of the theism fence, we have something in common.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[wil]

Somewhere along the line we became thinking, contemplative, questioning beings. Following Maslow's hierarchy we've attained our basic needs and had time to consider the questions...

If we were porpoises, not looking for purpose, or dogs not looking for G-ds, or snakes not looking for sneakers...(sorry my brain is having fun this morning)

Anyhow if our existence were eat, sleep, play and propagate, not necesarily in that order or in equal frequency then it wouldn't be an issue.

However the combination of frontal lobe and cerrebellum and all these little neuronets and synapses causes us to ponder...and believe there is more meaning...we still look to explore the stars, the macro and the micro, the threads that hold it all together...and explore the ethers that what we cannot see. For this we develop telescopes, microscopes and religions.

 

[Tao_Equus]

Hmmmmm so tempted to go off on a Monty Python tangent but instead I'll go off on a seerious (sic) path, bumbling ever so humbly in the footsteps of the 20th centurys' greatest philosopher , the inimitable Douglas Adams.

Its all to do with the maths of infinity. Because infinity seems to be a fact all possibilities cease to be such and become probabilities. And because of the nature of infinity every probability has space to become fact. (But can one limit all probabilities by merely contemplating that infinity itself does not exist???). Therefore that life has meaning is not a possibility but an infinite probability. And somewhere babel fish do exist!! And Slartibartfast designs fjords!!

But seriously now. Life does not have to mean anything. Its importance is completely dependant to each individual on how they percieve the cosmos and their place in it. Some care about this issue and ponder the question, some dont. I suspect everybody participating in CR does.

To Eudaimonist, I followed your link. Like many things I read here or by way of here, it was well worth the reading. What struck me most tho was how similair it was to the philosophies of Luciferianism I have seen on CR.

Great thread, looking forward to reading more

Tao

 

[Eudaimonist]

To Eudaimonist, I followed your link. Like many things I read here or by way of here, it was well worth the reading.

Thanks!


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Thomas]

Not to get nihilistic or existential here but why does life have to mean anything?

As Plato said:
"The life which is not examined is not worth living."

The ability to wonder is the greatest gift we have.

Put another way, if man never thought about his life, we'd never have climbed out of the trees (or whatever it was we did).

Thomas

 

[flowperson]

I have always believed that G-d created life and set it into forward motion so that there would always be a future, for without awareness, which is a primary attribute of life, time would mean nothing and life would be meaningless. My belief is that this holds true for single-celled organisms and Humans alike, the full spectrum of life.

flow....

 

[RubySera_Martin]

From the Greek philosophers to modern day thinkers like Frankl, Tillich, et.al.
we have sought for the reason that life exists. Not to get nihilistic or existential here but why does life have to mean anything?

QUESTION: Do you enjoy life? If so, it has meaning. If you don't it probably does not have meaning. It's all just hard work, and pain and no reward and we might just as well stop trying to avoid all those on-coming cars and get killed the next chance we get. Of course, we might end up only getting badly mangled and crippled instead of getting killed properly.

 

[RubySera_Martin]

If you believe in a personal God who cares about people then life does mean something because there is an afterlife that is influenced by your actions in this life.

In case you didn't know it, belief in God does not necessarily include belief in an afterlife.

Jonathan said:

the fact I'm going to cease to exist forever means I grasp every day and don't waste a second of it.

I think in order for anyone to say this they need one of two things:

• a terrible fear of non-existence, or
• a very meaningful life....

I've now read the rest of the posts and I have not changed my mind. Take this from someone who thinks the book of Job is a fairy tale. His problems were over in a few months. Jesus got to die after thirty-odd years.

 

[~Jonathan~]

I think in order for anyone to say this they need one of two things:

a terrible fear of non-existence, or
a very meaningful life....

All life has meaning and yet has none.

 

[Virtual_Cliff]

This isn't necessarily so. It may be true that some people are so scared of death they live in denial of it. But it is also true that many people fail to take this life seriously because they view it as a temporary aberration.

Everyone should have a meaningful life. What a trajedy to look back on a life wasted on money and status, for example.

As for Job, there's a very big difference between myth, full of eternal truths, and a fairy-tale. But that's another subject.

 

[~Jonathan~]

Personally I don't live in denial of death. Knowing I'm going to cease to exist makes me live my life as fully as possible. I don't fear death because when I'm there I won't know anything.

 

[RubySera_Martin]

Everyone should have a meaningful life. What a trajedy to look back on a life wasted on money and status, for example.

What "should be" and what actually is can be two very different things.

As for Job, there's a very big difference between myth, full of eternal truths, and a fairy-tale.

I should clarify what I meant by fairy-tale. I meant that if one's troubles and depression last such a limited time as his did they are hardly worth crying about. When life is a grinding burden every single day for decades on end, as most of my life has been, it is meaningless. It cannot be enjoyed. Job felt this way for a very short time only. The rest of his life was normal and enjoyable. And Jesus got to die after only three decades. I have lived at least a decade and a half longer than Jesus was on this earth. At thirty I still had some hope, some untried solutions; at forty I'd exhausted all the ideas anyone could offer within our faith community. Yet there is no end in sight. This is a tragedy, not because I wasted life in pleasure but because my life contained no pleasure. I used to use the word "boredom" to describe the experience; a spiritual director said a better word would be meaninglessness. This is a condition in which I lived for several decades. In comparison, Job's troubles are but a fairy-tale, a passing moment, yet it was considered bad enough to put into a sacred text. I think the reason people refuse to believe me and my account is that they are overwhelmed with the tragic sadness of the situation. Yet my life is but one of many lives that are/have been totally devoid of happiness and the joy of life. I think those people who will immerse themselves for five minutes in the feeling of hopelessness and joylessness some of us have endured for decades--I think they will understand the need for meaning in life. I am convinced that those people who insist that there is no meaning in life, yet they want to get the most out of life--I am convinced such people haven't a clue what meaninglessness is. Now if you want to add to that meaninglessness and pain, all you have to do is disbelieve the truth of the things I have written here.