The First Topic: The meaning of life

Everyone looks at it differently the meaning of life is more or less what you make it out to be.

sayWut wrote:Everyone looks at it differently the meaning of life is more or less what you make it out to be.

I was about to say that....sayWut be so wise

The meaning of life is to live.

Belsfir wrote:The meaning of life is to live.

but what is "to live"? What defines such activity?

To enjoy your life. Reproduction is only a small part of our lives. It takes... what, 14 years or so to be able to reproduce? It's only our society's rules that we wait longer to reproduce. Seems unnecessarily excessive to give us lives that at their lowest, lasted 50 years or so.

To live and let live.

Blazer wrote:

Belsfir wrote:The meaning of life is to live.

but what is "to live"? What defines such activity?

To live is to exist as yourself.
If you are dead, you don't exist as yourself anymore. Everything other than death, you are alive.

This is like trying to fit a key in a keyhole that does not have a shape. Therefore, the key must have no shape as well. That said, the answer to the question of the meaning of life is shapeless.

Because of the nature of this topic, human intellect cannot understand its meaning, therefore we conceive it as shapeless. With our very limited sense perception, we cannot fully grasp its concept. So we see the truth as the best we can see it, and it would appear that this truth is shapeless. Therefore, the meaning of life is to simply live, since the answer is just as shapeless as the question.

Belsfir wrote:

Blazer wrote:

Belsfir wrote:The meaning of life is to live.

but what is "to live"? What defines such activity?

To live is to exist as yourself. Indeed.
If you are dead, you don't exist as yourself anymore. Everything other than death, you are alive. Who says you don't live beyond death?

This is like trying to fit a key in a keyhole that does not have a shape. Therefore, the key must have no shape as well. That said, the answer to the question of the meaning of life is shapeless.
Just because the keyhole has no shape, does not mean that there is a key with no shape. You hold and key and interpret it as you will. This belief gives the key it's shape and will allow you to carve a keyhole that you believe. You can not say that it is shapeless or at least always shapeless. Perhaps you lose sight of the key at times, but you can still regain what you have lost. All you must do is wait until you find the keyhole you desire or create one yourself.

Because of the nature of this topic, human intellect cannot understand its meaning, therefore we conceive it as shapeless. With our very limited sense perception, we cannot fully grasp its concept. So we see the truth as the best we can see it, and it would appear that this truth is shapeless. Therefore, the meaning of life is to simply live, since the answer is just as shapeless as the question.

If the human intellect can not understand something, you must first understand that you cannot understand it. Henceforth you have created something with what you can conceive. So it may be shapeless, but your living gives it shape. Your choices give shape and create what you cannot perceive. You could draw the conclusion that life or the meaning of life may be shapeless, but that does not mean that one must accept that or simply live through life. One can mold the shapeless into a shape and create a life for themselves. You hold the key to life within the very palms of your mind. Do not be lead astray.


Edit: I like this fellow named Belsfir ;D

I think the meaning of life is allow choices to be made. Our existence is made of our and others choices. It all comes down to who chooses what.

Blazer wrote:

Belsfir wrote:

Blazer wrote:

Belsfir wrote:The meaning of life is to live.

but what is "to live"? What defines such activity?

To live is to exist as yourself. Indeed.
If you are dead, you don't exist as yourself anymore. Everything other than death, you are alive. Who says you don't live beyond death?

This is like trying to fit a key in a keyhole that does not have a shape. Therefore, the key must have no shape as well. That said, the answer to the question of the meaning of life is shapeless.
Just because the keyhole has no shape, does not mean that there is a key with no shape. You hold and key and interpret it as you will. This belief gives the key it's shape and will allow you to carve a keyhole that you believe. You can not say that it is shapeless or at least always shapeless. Perhaps you lose sight of the key at times, but you can still regain what you have lost. All you must do is wait until you find the keyhole you desire or create one yourself.

Because of the nature of this topic, human intellect cannot understand its meaning, therefore we conceive it as shapeless. With our very limited sense perception, we cannot fully grasp its concept. So we see the truth as the best we can see it, and it would appear that this truth is shapeless. Therefore, the meaning of life is to simply live, since the answer is just as shapeless as the question.

If the human intellect can not understand something, you must first understand that you cannot understand it. Henceforth you have created something with what you can conceive. So it may be shapeless, but your living gives it shape. Your choices give shape and create what you cannot perceive. You could draw the conclusion that life or the meaning of life may be shapeless, but that does not mean that one must accept that or simply live through life. One can mold the shapeless into a shape and create a life for themselves. You hold the key to life within the very palms of your mind. Do not be lead astray.


Edit: I like this fellow named Belsfir ;D

I used the term shapeless in the likeness of inconceivable (at least to us) and variable. Also, it is true that a meaning of life can be formed on the individual level, but finding a universal meaning to life is completely shapeless.

More on shapelessness, I am more than certain that there is more to the universe than we can conceive, other dimensions for instance. So the meaning of life could be one of those things. Science is based off of what we conceive with our senses, for instance we record taste, smell, touch, and sight of something when giving an accurate report. What we cannot see, feel, taste, or smell we have found ways to perceive them by using technology to translate it so that we can see, feel, taste, or smell it. Radio waves for instance are something that we cannot normally perceive, but we can perceive it with out devices, which translate it into sound. This means there can and most likely be that there are things out there that we have not perceived with our senses or our devices. Or possibly can perceive...

Think of translating written text to speech, you read off the words and translate it into vocal sounds. The two relate and have a connection there, but somethings you cannot translate. Such as translating matter into speech, its simply impossible, the two are incompatible. It could be that some of these things out there are incompatible in translation with our senses, making them forever unknown to us because of natural limitations.

In conclusion, because of these natural limitations, there will always be concepts that we can never understand completely, such as the meaning of life (universally). We could only imagine within our limited minds what they could possibly mean

L3GION wrote:

More like unreal, lol

This is my perception of the unknown

life is b happy

wut u never heard of that

Belsfir wrote:

L3GION wrote:

More like unreal, lol

This is my perception of the unknown

I need to read that wall of text when I get home Unreal as in like an Unreal Tournament? ;D

Creation, in the most abstract meaning of it you can think of, wether we create this post, or, create a house, or create another life, we are creating all the time, hell, we create CO2 just by existing.

You could boil this down to merely influceing the world around us, but if you look at mankind as a whole you will see that throughout all this time from the stoneage up we have done nothing but create.

then some say, what about destruction, well, for 1, your creating a disaster, and/or creating harm. regardless of what you do, you are influencing somenoe through creation.

i think that is why people feel as though "god" is the ultimate creator, and that we were shaped in his image, or whatever they say in those old books. its that we ourselves are creators, but we have to wonder who created us, much like a robot may wonder who his parents are.

Ok, well. There are many theories on the meaning of life, with complex equations, souls searching and whatnot. But the true answer, one not derived from inside one's own self, but gathered from the outside world around one. Some say that people will never be able to fully comprehend this question.
When you ask, what is the meaning of life, you are, in reality, asking a much larger question. Almost everything in this grand universe can be used to determine it. Why do we express everything with the term, "it's lifetime", even when that one thing isn't exactly breathing and feeling. It is because "life" is not truly complex, but rather infinitely simple.
The answer has already been found to your question, and now i shall tell you. The answer ... is 42.

The question really isn't that complicated. It just seems like it is because it doesn't make any sense, and by that I mean literally: the question isn't coherent. It makes an underlying assumption that there even is an objective universal meaning and therefore makes a categorical error and isn't being correctly phrased. It's similar to asking, "What does the color blue smell like?" This assumes blue is supposed to have a smell in the first place. While it's true that there are many blue things that have smells, the color by itself does not have any inherent scent.

As I briefly touched on in my previous post, concepts like "meaning" and "purpose" are things that are inherently subjective; IE products of the mind. In the absence of any sentient minds to give meaning to things then there is no meaning. Taking this into consideration, there can be no universal meaning to anything, or at least it's incredibly difficult to achieve since it would require every mind in the universe to reach a consensus on it. Even if we assumed hypothetically that some god created us and therefore gets to decide the meaning of life, that still doesn't make it universal, as it would still ultimately amount to nothing more than just his opinion and I can easily disagree with it and choose my own meaning for life, in the same way that just because you were born from your parents doesn't mean you are beholden to any purpose they try to impose for your life.

Again, it is a subjective question, not objective, and therefore the entire phrasing of the question is flawed.

MiniSiets wrote:IE products of the mind.

The logic (although no necessarily the conclusion) of your argument is flawed, although I'm more concerned about Internet Explorer GETTING INTO My MIND?!!

Colme wrote:The logic (although no necessarily the conclusion) of your argument is flawed

Care to expand upon this then? I value your input.

although I'm more concerned about Internet Explorer GETTING INTO My MIND?!!

Of course. How else do you expect Microsoft to sell their browser? It's not like they can compete legitimately or anything.

If we discuss this and make is exclusively humans; life can both hold meaning and none, meaning that life holds is transitional and 'optional'. If you simply pluck one human from the stream of time, removing all impact they had during their existence. People with find other things to possibly fill their life with meaning or they may not at all. Replacements could be found in animals, organisms or objects, these replacements would offer very different experience, but they’d still hold meaning.
Simply by removing all impact the person removed had and could potentially have, made that person’s life meaningless to all third parties involved, though it could still hold meaning to them.
Life is only as meaningful as people find its experiences, any impact with another person with give them their own experiences and they will attach their own meaning to them.
The meaning that life holds is transitional and 'optional'. Life is said to be given meaning through our experiences with animals, (this includes humans) various other organisms (insects, plants, etc.) and objects. These experiences are what we give and find meaning in.
Therefore life only holds as much meaning and value as the person experiencing it gives.

There's no meaning. It's just what you put into it. It starts as a blank slate and it's up to you to fill it up with all your experience much like how an author writes on a blank page or a painter paints on a canvas. You got one shot at it so make it count.

There is an ever so slight difference between "meaning" and "purpose", but between both the implication that one can fail, but I am skeptical of this for various reasons. As a geneticist argued life's purpose in a very minimal and evolutionary/biological interpretation is to survive individually and collectively as a species. Personally I don't think there is enough evidence to show that any world view in this regards is adequate or demonstrable, even those that claim purpose/meaning is arbitrary or illusionary... although I admit that biological definition does seem to have some attributes that near adequate and demonstrable to me. But because I tend to skepticism perhaps this won't be surprising but I suspect there is a plurality of meaning and purpose to life...

For the record, I am not among anyone that claims meaning is arbitrary and illusionary; I just understand that it is necessarily subjective. People seem to have a hard time grasping the difference between objective and subjective sometimes, and just because something *is* subjective doesn't make it equivalent to being nonexistent or useless.

I agree that the biological interpretation is insufficient because it's still ultimately trying to draw (objective) purpose that just isn't there. Life reproduces because it is programmed in its DNA to do so as a result of natural selection; that doesn't imply that there is any meaning or purpose behind it, because again we're assuming a viewpoint where life is preferable to non-life, which is a matter of perspective. One could equally argue that because life always necessarily results in death and eventually extinction (99% of all lifeforms that have existed on Earth have gone extinct after all), its purpose is to die.