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The logical person inside of me wants to say that there is no meaning to life. But of course, that is not how I feel.
by nightski 13y ago
The logical person inside of me wants to say that there is no meaning to life. But of course, that is not how I feel.
- md224 13y agoWell, of course, that's the trick: to acknowledge a lack of objective meaning while seeking out your own subjective meaning, something that transcends the banal logic of the everyday. That's the tough part (or at least, it can be for many, myself included).
- GhotiFish 13y agowell. I could make a decent argument that reproduction is a serviceable meaning to life if you like.
- philwelch 13y agoLife is a sandbox game. You can choose your own goals, but from time to time it suggests goals to you. You get rewards for completing them, but you don't have to, it's just a way of making things easier if you have trouble deciding what to do.
- the_cat_kittles 13y agomeaning is created, and its worth creating
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sdegutis 13y agoThe Christian in me wants to say "hey guys, I know what you mean, I've felt the same way, and I found a reasonable answer." But my experience reminds me that kind of conversation is futile.
- pekk 13y agoEveryone has an opinion, and every opinion is equally easy (equivalently, equally hard) to demonstrate by an appeal to a private revelation. You're right, there's not even any point talking about it unless you have some way to back it up that beats "try it and see." Everyone can say that about arbitrarily different claims.
- Luc 13y agoI won't couch it in a paralepsis like you did: It's futile because you're wrong.
- aaronem 13y agoThe Christian in you is a good and honorable person; the Hacker News commenter in you knows that such behavior is never rewarded here unless it happens to line up with the HN zeitgeist, which has little patience with any sort of received wisdom that doesn't agree with its own. I find this really quite marvelous. Who could imagine such a batch of soi-disant freethinkers, who all seem to feel the same need to carefully curate and circumscribe the thoughts they're willing to think?
- rooster8 13y agoPerhaps it won't be as marvelous to you when you consider that some of these freethinkers have spent years open-mindedly trying to integrate these systems into their lives. Years listening to testimonials, trying to find something to grasp onto. Yet still failed to find enough interest, passion, or problem that it solved in their lives. I don't have to re-install Windows 8 on my laptop once a week to re-confirm the opinions I formed the previous week. To do so would be an irrational waste of time. Your audience is similarly rationally choosing not to re-evaluate until they see a new perspective on the religion or a way of addressing a fundamental flaw that keeps them from embracing religion. And when they argue with you, have you considered that perhaps they're trying to push through a personal hangup they have that keeps them from embracing it themselves? That they are not trying to put you down, but instead to understand? For some of us, we've already searched long and hard to no avail.
- benched 13y agoOne thing about knowledge, and being a tiny little human, is that if you don't know about the whole framework behind existence, then not only do you not know if there is such a thing or what it is, but you also don't know whether anybody knows. And don't you even think about reaching for that Razor.
- wpietri 13y agoThe way I resolve it: meaning is something we construct. So yes, there's no Meaning of Life written in the stars, no absolute truth there. But you can make as much meaning as you need. Personally, I like that better. If somebody tried to tell me the One True Meaning of Life, the first thing I'd do is argue with 'em. This way I get to argue with myself.
- ZenoArrow 13y agoThat's the way I see it too. Life is what you make it.
- 1stop 13y agoI think you misinterpret the question. It's not "What is the meaning of my/your life?" - it's "What is the meaning of life?" or put another way: "Why does life exist? and why should/does it continue?"
- saraid216 13y agoThat doesn't necessarily change the answer.
- kaoD 13y agoI think that's not the question. Things don't have a meaning by themselves. What does hydrogen mean?
- wpietri 13y agoYes, exactly. To me, meaning is a thing where we try to reconstruct the intentions of other conscious entities. "What does her sentence mean?" is a legitimate use of that. The equivalent, "What does she mean by that sentence?" is clearer. It can be useful (or at least fun) to apply our machinery for creating and extracting meaning for other purposes. But misapplying a tool puts you closer to the limits where the tool gives problematic results. When I use a butter knife as a screwdriver or a pry bar, I shouldn't be so surprised when I scratch or break something. If I ask, "What do planets mean?" and end up with astrology, that's a sign I've pushed the tool too far.
- _random_ 13y agoThe meaning of life is to never die. I hope we will reach this within next few generations. Dead have no choices.
- aaronem 13y ago> The meaning of life is to never die. This seems like a difficult philosophy to live with. You will someday die; does your life thus have no meaning? Everyone ever born will eventually die; does human life as a whole thus have no meaning?
- _random_ 13y agoI hope to be a part of generation that will have an option not to die. The current implementation of human body dies eventually and it happens to every mind on this planet, yes this is sad. But things are improving.
- kaoD 13y agoI guess it's just to live as long as possible rather than never dying.