Allow Me To Be Perfectly Frank...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Another question.
Could you live a fulfilled life if it had no specific purpose?

I already do.

Everything in nature has a specific end.

Yours, obviously, is not to die.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Unless it is to a roving band of Republican Marxists who eat brains to help bottle up their lust for fine vodkas, which is against their religion to consume alcohol.

[East Coast Hustle]

Maher is a fucking tool.

but I agree with him that all religion is bad.

Incorrect:  http://subgenius.com

spiritual amway sales organization != religion

[Honey]

People often talk about "purpose" and "meaning." They talk about needing a purpose, or that life would be meaningless without God or whatever spiritual entity they are concerned with. I don't get it. If there ever was a "fall from grace," it was the loss of our ability to have the nerve to face life with some sense of personal dignity and authority over ourselves.  ...

Walk upright and be a human being, damn it all. Have enough self-respect and courage to face life and say "Whatever I do in life, I do under my own will and by my own authority."

I liked your original posting Cainad, especially the above parts.  Thanks & respect.   

& sometimes, things (& people too) are simply ineffable.  Fr'instance Roger is ineffable (to me) on several different levels of meaning.  I like.   

Like that cliché about good Art.  Can't define it but I know what I like.
   
& I like this response by Burns

vivaldi's four seasons (or some music in general) makes a good example, for me at least.  there is an expression of a feeling set to the tune of music.  in the same way it seems people are an expression of life set to tune of experience. 

there are strings of imagination. there is percussive sensation. and here we are conducting the orchestra. 

you can't answer existential questions because the asker and the question are the same.  it's like trying to see the back of your eyes with your own eyes.  it's like we say we 'see sights'.  isn't that simply 'seeing?'  it seems we cling so hard to our separateness that even in our language we feel the need to differentiate self and other.

instead of figuring out what the meaning of vivaldi's 'summer' is, just grab a violin and play along.  or, if the song doesn't suit your tastes, quit the orchestra...but for the love of life, please, stop yapping during the performance. 

I like the references to music, changes in nature, perceptions & ineffable Joy.

Like the caesura in a piece of music?  That synchronized absence of sound, when experienced, defines or describes (to me anyhow) just as much as the music does.  & it's not that easy to do or to explain how.  The musicians have to be 'tight' on the same page, whatever, in order to bring it off.  When it's live music, it's magical almost or maybe is.

& there are so many instances in nature where everything ceases for a time & then begins again.  Off the top o' my head I think of the changes the seasons bring?  or the seed buried in the dark, warm (or cold) earth for a time.  I think sometimes you have to be the seed. Finding yourself alone in a warm dark place. You might not like it at first but then you begin to love it, safe warm, no distractions, peace.  Then, something changes, something inside of you but not you needs to burst out. You sense something above & reach towards it. You really gotta stretch tho & sometimes it hurts. You keep stretching tho, you yearn to be, or to be something else, or to reach out to something that is not you but is like you. Sensing it's not as safe & cuddly & warm as where you are but ... Time. Then, a flash & you burst out through the surface. You reach out again but     it     is     different.  & the light hurts your eyes but you keep reaching toward.  Growth, blossom, wonder.  Free.  Others too.

& the time is necessary, as is both the lightness & the darkness.  Or like a butterfly? who spends a time in a cocoon before becoming. All alone in a dark place, confined, waiting, waiting until 1 day (chrysalis?) ... & then ... ahhh wings! & flight!  Because it waited (maybe sadly?) in the darkness. Maybe we are like that.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Maher is a fucking tool.

but I agree with him that all religion is bad.

Incorrect:  http://subgenius.com

spiritual amway sales organization != religion

Bosh.  It is the BEST of the One True Religions.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Like that cliché about good Art.  Can't define it but I know what I like.
 

That was actually Potter Stewart's quote about pornography. 

Six of one, half a dozen of another, I suppose.

[Honey]

Like that cliché about good Art.  Can't define it but I know what I like. 

That was actually Potter Stewart's quote about pornography. 

Six of one, half a dozen of another, I suppose. 

Ahh touché mon petite choufleur!   

(& how does he do that?   I mean navigating between the effable & the ineffable?  Hhhmmm, wondering if it has something to do with that Rain God thing?)

[Eater of Clowns]

Like that cliché about good Art.  Can't define it but I know what I like.
 

That was actually Potter Stewart's quote about pornography. 

Six of one, half a dozen of another, I suppose.

I wish this were his exact quote on pornography.

[Iron Sulfide]

{reduced to simple propositions}:

i think humans, as tool makers and pattern finders, have an innate tendency to find "meaning" and "purpose."

a tool has a use. it is used to make things or manipulate them somehow. the things made or manipulated, in turn, serve some function. we see a pattern in this, and ask, "if tools serve a purpose, and we use tools, are we to serve some purpose?"

following that perceived pattern backwards, we can only imagine the sequence that precedes us, and create ideas like god, etc.

the question could be rephrased: am i a tool? who uses this tool? what is this tool used for?

not that that line of questioning is any more useful.


as for the real meaning of life:

gratuitous images of penises.

/monthy python

Interesting analogy... so if we create a tool then the tool has a purpose. I guess the next question is "are we a tool?" AND NO I DON"T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!


Maybe, we are a tool though. Recently somewhere on this board we discussed being a 'tool' of DNA/life etc. So maybe in that sense there is a purpose, to continue to spread DNA?

This.

Tools are created for a purpose.  Tools have meaning in their lives.  Tools know what they are supposed to do.
A hammer bangs things, a pencil writes things, a trumpet squawks things.

It was once believed that humans were unique in their use of tools.  Now we know that there are many other animals who can do that.  Monkeys, apes, birds... they're gaining on us.  If you don't want to be obsolete by 2012, you'd better start accelerating, and do it now.

What's that, you say?  You'd like to have purpose and meaning?  You want to be a tool?

Really?

Damn.

Fuck this species, I'm betting on the corvids.

i don't think either of you understood my position correctly. i should have been more succinct.

Rat: i don't think my line of argumentation is correct, just that that line of argumentation in the primitive human mind led to people proposing things such as god, etc. (of course, there are a lot of other factors- unexplainable phenomena of the time, etc..) As for the DNA/tool thing, Link please? i've had thoughts along those lines for some time. i've tried explaining it to others before, but i just come off sounding like a retarded mystic in the midst of some hallucination, apparently. (my short hand analogy is :

cells are to bodies as organisms are to DNA

i dunno why that sounds mystical, though.)

GA: i actually don't know what you're talking about in that response. tools don't necessarily "know" something. (computers would be arguable, but there are none that are self aware yet.)

and yes, there a a lot fo examples of pattern finding and tool use in throughout the animal kingdom. but none do it quite as extensively as we do.

[Triple Zero]

i am quite convinced that meaning can exist without the help of an observer or intelligence.

the structure/form of things can cause meaning.

not for everything though. if you have a chesterfield couch floating in the middle of space without any human to be found for parsecs around it's still mostly a meaningless bunch of atoms, not a couch.

but for other things, and in particular complex things like humans, they can create meaning by virtue of their own structure. i mean, that's what we do right? even when we don't want a meaning of life, we always will find *some* meaning in life (that may be the answer to the OP, btw) and we do this from our own structure, our shape, our form, without outside interference.
unless you wanna count "other people" as outside interference and you're gonna argue that it's other people that give the one person meaning. in that case, reconsider the previous paragraph in the light of "all monkeys/life on this earth", and once more see an example of a bunch of atoms doing really complicated stuff, doing it in a particular way that creates meaning. without any observer (if you don't believe in a ceilingcat-god-in-the-sky religion, that is).

[Reginald Ret]

I always understood the H2G2 Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything to have as real answer continued existence, Deep Thought gave the only answer that guaranteed its own continued existence.

hence: the meaning of life is to stay alive.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

[P3nT4gR4m]

I used to wonder why but I came to the conclusion that, even if a higher purpose did exist, it was, ultimately meaningless.

What does bake my noodle, however, is how.

Biology and science and shit seems to cover my immediate circumstance but the question remains - how the fuck did this all get here?

I don't beat myself up over it, tho, how seems to be a much less evocative question than why.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I used to wonder why but I came to the conclusion that, even if a higher purpose did exist, it was, ultimately meaningless.

What does bake my noodle, however, is how.

Biology and science and shit seems to cover my immediate circumstance but the question remains - how the fuck did this all get here?

I don't beat myself up over it, tho, how seems to be a much less evocative question than why.

TITCM

[nurbldoff]

I think the problem with most "fundamental" questions is that they are just too abstract. A question isn't necessarily meaningful just because it can be asked. Could you recognize "the meaning of life" if you found it, and if you couldn't, how can you look for it? Why spend your time and effort on it when you could direct it towards problems that you actually have reason to think you can solve? I've noticed that I usually find stuff faster if I stop looking anyway...

I quit asking the Question a long time ago and although I'm not 100% sure I'm happier for it, I sure have more time for actually doing stuff.

OTOH, I'm sure a lot of deeply religious people could actually use some more introspection.