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mrbreeze_gw

What is the meaning of life?

mrbreeze
18 years ago

Yes I know its a Monty Python movie...

and I know that the answer is also 42...

but what else?

Comments (51)

  • clintdawley
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The meaning of life?

    I've always thought it was to learn and appreciate everything around you...you know..be a lifelong student. I always enjoy days when I learn something new or become aware of something I didn't know existed.

    I'm in awe of my surroundings on a daily basis. I think this fresh perspective keeps us challenged and young.

  • clairewags
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    To be the glue, not the grease.

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    did you not take your meds today?

  • komi
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    water. water is the meaning of life, from which we may conclude that I may have a life, but if I do, it certainly has no meaning.

  • ladybug_ok
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    You mean life is supposed to have one??? Oh Oh, I'm in trouble. ;)

    Maggie

  • Driftless Roots
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    to save all beings

  • mrbreeze
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Even the beings that are clearly, beyond all doubt, pure evil and are upon this earth for no good reason other than to torment mankind, i.e. squirrels?

  • aachenelf z5 Mpls
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    unless one produces lots and lots of children, there is no meaning or purpose to life

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Shady, that must be a joke.

  • cbrf4irider
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    to continue your lineage, to procreate. to be.

  • Sue_
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Well, I happen to have a prepared answer to this, since I tend to hear it from time to time from my students. Here you go:

    ------------

    What is the meaning of life? Like most "big questions," this question is not difficult to answer, once we become clear about what we're asking. The reason that this seems unanswerable is that it is deliberately unclear deliberately, because any normal conversational use is intended rhetorically, and, further, is intended to imply a sort of individual despair which is dependent upon the presumed unanswerability of this question. Thus, any conversational use implies that an appropriate and sensitive response is not to give an answer. Philosophical discussion is not beholden to these considerations, and thus we may profitably ask and answer this question.

    Ignoring this contemporary and deliberately obscurantist usage, we should then ask what the hell we're talking about when we ask what meaning life has. First, we'll talk about different types of "meaning" which we might, or might not, attribute to life in general, and then we'll discuss which of these are appropriate to what we might mean by this question. Once we have made clear what kind of thing would even count as an answer, our work is essentially done.

    What do we mean by 'meaning?' We clearly don't mean 'meaning' in the sense of the relation of a word to it's referent, but rather 'meaning' in a more humanistic and, so to speak, meaningful sense. We might think of 'meaningful' as that which an old brooch or gold watch might have, or that particular kind of meaning which one wedding band might have in distinction from the countless other bands with which we have a lesser connection. This we can call 'subjective meaning,' which we can describe approximately as that meaning which something has when we might say that 'it means something to me.'

    This seems to capture something about the kind of meaning about which we intend to inquire. The question of the meaning of life is captured, to some extent at least, by the question "what do I care about in my life?" This is not sufficient, however. Consider the philatelist. If we imagine that somebody spends their entire life doing what they care most about, we can nevertheless meaningfully insist that their life has been without meaning. Which is to say, we must mean something more than subjective meaning by the "meaning" in the question of the meaning of life. Just caring about something doesn't make it meaningful in a complete sense. A favorite example here is the life of the sociopath. They may find great meaning in their life of, for example, being a serial killer. Anybody else would describe the events of this persons life as consisting in 'senseless deaths.' But, then again, how could any death be meaningful? My death, no matter what it's circumstances, cannot possibly have any subjective meaning for me, for I'll be dead at the time, so if I have a desire for a meaningful death, as some do, I must have some other idea of a 'broader sense' of meaning than that of mere subjective meaning.

    What is this 'broader sense' in which we can distinguish the serial killer from the saint, or the senseless death from the meaningful one? If we compare one person's quest for social justice to another's quest to collect stamps from the 1920's, we might see how, from their respective viewpoints, the one might be as meaningful as the other, while still saying that, in a broader sense, the former leads to a meaningful life rather more easily and obviously than the latter. This 'broader sense' might be referred to as 'objective meaning.' This is also, it seems to me, the only way somebody can be said to have a meaningful death  to have, so to speak, 'died for a reason,' as did Martin Luther King Jr. In this certain sense, one's life can have meaning to one's people, to one's country, or even to the world in general.

    But isn't this just saying that my life can have a subjective meaning to other people besides myself? After all, what meaning could my life have if everybody dies? Imagine that every living thing on the planet is dead, and that, if there once were other sentient beings in the universe, that they have all died as well. The universe is nothing but rocks floating about in space, hitting one another occasionally. Can we meaningfully say that any of our lives has been 'meaningful,' at this point? Clearly not, as the only difference which our life might have made at this point has to do with the location and velocity of various materials. So, whatever we might mean by 'meaning,' it can't have anything to do with truly objective facts.

    So, to review, subjective meaning doesn't fit our common usage due to the fact that subjective meaning is arbitrary, and, whatever we mean by meaning, it isn't arbitrary. Alternately, objective meaning doesn't fit common usage because we can only find meaning in the world outside of ourselves insofar as that world includes conscious beings, and we cannot simply assume that the world will always continue to include such things. But, conversely, subjective meaning seems to fit common usage in that what we mean by meaning has to do with 'making a difference' to others  i.e., your actions can't have any meaning unless they make a difference to something that somebody cares about. This can be seen as contrasted to the 'rocks in space' scenario above. Also, conversely, objective meaning has something right in that it matters whether I 'make a difference' in your life in a positive or negative way.

    So, what seems to fit common usage best is to say that what we mean by 'meaning' in a non-disingenuous question as to the meaning of a life must have to do with making a difference in a positive way to those who surround and survive us. 'Making a difference in a positive way' must be further defined  I think it is fair to say that this would mean something like 'aiding those who deserve aid and inhibiting the actions of those who act to the detriment of those undeserving of detrimental action.' Which leads us to say that the meaning of life is that meaning which others find in our ethical action.

    This solution, of course, assumes that all sentient beings will die. If you prefer to hypothesize that this is not the case, then you must ask why, whether, and under what circumstances an immortal being might care about your actions. I like the Stoic line on this: (1) there is a perfect being, (2) care arises through desire, which is a lack, therefore (3) any perfect being, by definition, cannot care about anything. I do not expect this argument to be at all convincing, but I think it does very effectively bring into focus how little concrete information can be gleaned from such a hypothesis.

    ['Subjective' and 'objective meaning' are taken quite directly from Richard Taylor's discussion on this topic in his Good and Evil: A New Direction. The general argument is my own. Other interesting discussions on this topic include the final chapters in Peter Singer's Practical Ethics and Thomas Nagel's What Does it all Mean?]

  • Driftless Roots
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I shouldn't have tried to read all that at work. Too many distractions. Danged job.

    MrBreeze: Especially the squirrels!

    No, wait. I mis-spoke. I meant "to save on beans." They're thirty-nine cents down at Joe's Quik-Shop.

    On third thought, I stand by my original response.

  • arthurm
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Shady, are you by any chance a mad cat lady? As for Sue's post I will read it again a few more times to see if i can figure out what it means.

  • Driftless Roots
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    "Shady, are you by any chance a mad cat lady"

    None of the three actually. At least I don't think so. Hope not. =:0

  • kwmackdog
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    an old friend once told me the meaning of life is " *hit and stringbeans" but i prefer this:
    "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." -- Crowfoot, Blackfoot Indian.
    i've been away from the chat too long!

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    SEX

  • cbrf4irider
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Laura! Have you been drinking tonight?

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    No, I haven't been drinking, but the soon-to-be-ex finally moved out 3 months ago.

    Well, if procreation is the reason for being (I haven't read Sue's missive for his thoughts), than one must have sex in order to procreate. So the most basic answer is, sex. In this case there is no doubt whether the chicken or egg came first.

  • Sunflowerpoet
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The meaning of life lies where you are able to use your brain and not just your flesh! The meaning of life ceases to exist when you are dead or brain dead. LOL!!

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Are you falling for Mr. B's purity lectures?

  • mrbreeze
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    falling?

    I don't think one falls...

    One ascends for my purity lectures...

    OK, shall we review what we've learned so far?

    cheap beans + water + dead squirrels + kids + glue + sex + buffalo breath = 42 ???? how very odd...

    ...there must be more to the equation

  • garlicgrower
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I think the late Doug Adams addressed this in "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" You'll have to read all five books!
    - or as my late bass-playing, hard drinking friend believed:
    "He who dies with the most toys, wins." (R.I.P.,Dave)
    Or in our cases - most orchids? wins?
    Merry merry...
    Maryanne in Western Mass (the state in which Governor Romney has just announced that he would not be running for re-election. [good riddance] and just a hot tip on the qt. - if this guy runs for president, don't vote for him.)

  • clintdawley
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yeah. Romney is a freak.

    I plan on moving to Mass. with the other half in the next 5 years. We're looking at Salem :)

  • clairewags
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    What? From Texas to Mass.? Do they let you leave Texas?

  • Driftless Roots
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Texas got the Bushes, New England gets Clint. It's like a prisoner exchange or something like that.

  • cbrf4irider
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ahahah! Yeah, I thought TX was one big sand trap? If you moved to Texas from some other state, and a Texan finds out, you better say, "Got here as fast as I could!"

  • arthurm
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    This thread started off about the meaning of life and now you are talking about politicians.
    The meaning of life is a vegemite sandwich and keeping the Dragon Woman happy. Had to clean all the orchid society junk off the dining room table because tomorrow is the big day. Yes. We install the Christmas Tree (plantation grown , radiata pine) Yes, a Christmas tree, doesn't matter that it is hot, hot and mid summer, have to have that tree.
    The dining room is a misnomer, because we might eat in there about half a dozen times a year.

  • clairewags
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    That's why its called the dining room and not the eating room.

  • varmint
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi Arthur,
    I've never tried vegemite. What does it taste like? (Remember - you started talking about food this time)
    -Mimi

  • garlicgrower
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sorry I somehow directed this thread to politics. Let's get back to life. Getting what you want out of it and accepting what ain't coming your way. Clint wants to come to Massachusetts (hey Salem is beautiful, but expensive.) and Romney wants to move up the ladder. Will Clint get what he wants? Will Romney? How will we accept or deal with the hand we are dealt?
    Merry
    merry
    Maryanne

  • komi
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    vegemite is food?

  • clintdawley
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    God. I'd rather eat a fresh cow patty than vegimite. Nasty. Nasty stuff.

    Arthur, we resever the right to switch subjects as many times as we want to on a thread in the "dark side".

    Of course, the biggest reason I want to move is so that I'll get the same rights with my partner as every other married couple does. Besides that, I fell in love with Boston after visiting a few years back. I still get a hankering for Patty McGarrity's seafood :)

    On Nov. 8th, Texas passed the One Man-One Woman Amendment to the Constitution. I can't help but draw parallels to the Jim Crow laws.

    I find it quite garish that ANYONE would cut down a living thing to display in their living room for a couple of weeks. After that pine dries out you'll have a great big tinder box to deal with.

  • komi
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    hey clint, is the texas one as lovely as virginia's doma? (I actually live in the ex-DC part of VA.) It makes my guts roil, especially as it is described as "the will of the people of Virginia".

    ugh. I already have stress-related pain. thanks for brining up the topic.

    Boston, otoh, is lovely and always has been, regardless of the laws. Hoping to move back there someday too.

  • clairewags
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    That's right Clint. You have the right to as miserable as the rest of us married folks. :) (Just kidding DH)

  • clintdawley
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Claire, we celebrated 10 years together on November 23rd.

    Komi,

    If you are interested, click here:

    http://austin.about.com/od/governmentcityservices/f/txmarriageamend.htm

    On a side note: I think the women of Revere, Massachusetts have bigger hair than the Texas women.

  • clairewags
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    10 years- thats awesome! Congratulations- did you guy do something special?

    What is the argument against same sex marriage again? Woa. I googled it and got this guy.

    http://www.family.org/cforum/extras/a0032427.cfm

    Jeeze. What a nut job. I bet he holds office somewhere.

  • Driftless Roots
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ten years? *snort* Ha! Newlyweds!

  • arthurm
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Love it. The balance of power in the Senate here is held by the family first party.
    The Christmas tree is installed and DW is not happy because a helper arrived and two MM (mere males) decided the some of the bottom branches had to be cut off so that the tree would sit in the water bucket.

    But i'm sure with a bit of tinsel here and bit of tinsel there it will look a million dollars.

    I'm in big trouble over on the light side and keeping quiet, but radiata pine and orchids are the same.....Just Plants.

    Got to keep the wheels on the economy moving, $29.99 for the tree and they must treat the trees with something because they are really bushy.

    Mimi. Do take any notice of anyone here. 10,000,000 Australians can't be wrong. Vegemite is delicious. Well it has to be better than a cow pat.

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vegemite

    GAG ME

  • varmint
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We have a really expensive gourmet/health food store where I live. I noticed the other day that they were selling the tiniest bottles of vegemite for some outrageous extortion level amount of money. Too much money to satisfy my curiousity if I remember correctly (and probably way too much money for an expatriate or visiting Aussie to want to bother with no matter how desperate).

    One day I hope to make it out to the south pacific and hopefully visit Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Unless Arthur describes the flavor of vegemite, I'll just have to wait...lol!!

    -Mimi

  • tuezday1
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The McDonald's in Australia hand out packages of Vegemite, packaged just like jelly.

  • turkeytaker
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It could be worse. It could be Tartex.

  • cbarry
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Vegemite and Tartex...I've learned so much on this thread!

  • komi
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    when it comes down to it, that's what life is all about.

    (at least cow pat is natural, a fuel, and fertilizer)

  • arthurm
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Never heard of Tartex, Just as well they invented google. No, i will not be rushing off to buy some.

    Mimi, i have to be truthful, do not waste your money, you will find Vegemite to be truly awful. I know it is sort of a national sport to get tourists to try it and have fits of laughter looking at the expression on their faces....but it is Christmas after all.

    Orchid Society Christmas party this evening. I have allocated all the Christmas orchids and fingers crossed, every one will be happy with the plant that Santa gives. Catered meal but no grog because it is being held in a church hall.

    Komi, vegemite is natural, leftovers from making beer plus loads of salt. Kraft is laughing.

    .

  • bada
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    me, too, Carolyn...learned probably too much...:P

    congrats to you, Clint...and you Shady...me and the SO are getting up there, also...just like you grand-daddies...hehe...

    arthur, radiata pine? how economical...

    here, gas down to 2.21 USD* per gallon (thank god) / in Ireland, 1.07 EUR* per liter. (yikes.)

    1 US gal= 3.78 liter/ 1 liter= .264 US gal.
    *USD is weaker than EUR

    ...not very meaningful.

    bada

  • mrbreeze
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Fungus and bread, should never, be wed
    that combination, is something I dread.

    I used to think the meaning of life was covered parking. Now, years later, I still do...but maybe there are also other aspects...but vegemite and Tartex??? Who knew...
    MB

  • cbrf4irider
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I hear the mold that grows on rye bread is some trippy stuff ;)

  • mrbreeze
    Original Author
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yep, Ergot fungus, original source of LSD and the cause of St. Vitus's Dance...back in the day.

    Tune in, turn on, drop out! Mayhap the meaning of life must be sought within...

    "Timothy Leary is dead...no, no no no, he's outside...looking...in" -Moody Blues
    MB

  • cbrf4irider
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    If you don't go within, you go without.