Meaning in life

no sarcasm at all. i think that's a pretty...healthy thing to focus on.

reminds me of a quote one of my friends said about his birthday:
"celebrating my life by doing things that will likely shorten it"

that's kinda the opposite of what you do. loathe life while lengthening it haha. now you might smell a stitch of sarcasm

 

I think there are some good answers, unless good has to mean all conclusive :mickey:

 

Sorry everyone----I posted in the wrong thread... (Stupid computer! Of course it wasn't me!)

 

Wrong thread, bub.

 

I can't tell you because your life is not mine.
I know why I'm here and what I'm suppose to do, my family and people gave that to me.

 

Ooooops---sorry everyone...

 

Hang Your Head In Shame, I Never Make Mistakes Of That Calibre....



Cheers Glen.

 

I'm with Jo. I think everyone's purpose is different. Mine used to be growing and understanding myself. I'm still doing that, but it just doesn't hold the thrill it used to without the others in my life. Now, I feel it very important to help others. I have had to learn and am still learning when to help and how much. Too much help is no help at all. And sometimes no help at all is the biggest help. If you are looking for meaning then rip paper into a bunch of pieces. On each piece write a different meaning. Put them all in a jar or hat or whatever. Close your eyes and pull one out. Make that your meaning and in no time at all your true meaning will come about. I don't know if that will really work, but it would be fun to try.....Or you could just go to the gym. Whatever does it for you.\:2thumbsup:

 

No it was my computer---really----it wasn't me. No I'm infallible. Life is full of meaning and I am therefore perfect. My infallibility is proof of life's meaningfulness.

On the other hand my computer is the epitome of failure and mistakes---that evil universal force of man-made decadence. Yes---that's it--that is why my life is a never-ending struggle for perfection---a struggle against the man-made dysfunctional forces of failure and incompetence.

I am not incompetent. No I am perfect. (I will just set this revolver down next to this full bottle of Jim Beam.) I have always been perfect, and I mean this in all truthfulness---I don't blame others--even inanimate objects like computers---as a means of covering up my own incompetency. No, I never...

Perhaps my friend, Jim Beam, will enlighten me on this dilemma of mistakes, failure and incompetency in a meaning-filled universe, even while I myself am driven to perfection...

Yes, I never make mistakes... (More Jim Beam should clear this up)

No---I am perfect---just look at the perfect straight edges of the revolver as it lines up with the perfectly straight walls around me---perfectly white and devoid of all color---but the purity of white. I placed that revolver so perfectly, against the ambience of that round bottle of Jim Beam, and I removed all signs of color from these walls. Yes---it was the decadent fallible computer that did this...

Wait---this whiskey is not white---it is an abomination in this perfect room I have created---filled with the meaning of the universe... I must drink it quickly...

But wait, I brought it in here... Jim Beam is my friend... I must finish it quickly.

I am infallible... or... no... it was the computer, not me... And this loaded revolver, as perfectly as it sits here, perfectly aligned with the pure white walls of this room I have sequestered myself into from the outside world... It is a cold dead bluish grey... no... it too is an aberration---an abomination (the whiskey is almost gone---just a few more sips, and I can smash this abomination of a bottle against the wall)...

...a cold dead bluish grey... (a crash of glass as I throw the bottle against the wall...) This revolver too is an abomination in this perfectly white room---where I have prohibited even family from entering so that my world would finally be the perfection that this universe full of meaning demands. Why did I bring this loaded revolver into here. OH! And the glass broken against the wall!! Oh the perfect ambiance of this room has been violated---broken glass, a bluish-grey almost black revolver... No!! No!!! It was me!!!!

Glenglen was right!!! I am not infallible! I make mistakes---it wasn't my computer---it was me!! I made the mistake of posting in the wrong thread!! Oh my God---there is no meaning in this universe!!! All of life is meaningless...!!!!

Oh Glenglen I have become unworthy of facing any of you---oh I have failed everyone. In my drunken stupor it is all most clear now----was it Camus that said suicide is the only true choice we have????

Oh what an odd coincidence that this revolver is loaded and in my hands on the very day, in the very room, when I realize that I am a complete failure of a human being, in a cold dead universe void of any meaning... Yes, life is futile.

I will write a quick note to my wife and children: Dear family, I have posted in the wrong thread on Hipforums. My life is an utter failure. Forgive me.

There... (picks up revolver)

 

And To Think I Thought I Was A Raving Lunatic,

Compared To You I Am A Respected Member Of The Local Church Choir...



Cheers Glen.

 

LOL!!

Then surely you are not reading enough Kafka. I prescribe 4 hours of Kafka per day, GLENGLEN, to be taken before bedtime.

 

I thought Kafka was the weird parasite drink all the cool hippies were drinkin.

 

On a more serious note:

There is a new thread started in the philosophy section about the meaning of nihilism. Life as meaningless is the conclusion of nihilism. Here is my response on that thread:

Nihilism comes from nihil meaning nothing. Probably the best definition you have is a combination of the first one and the last one. Nihilism is a lack of values so ultimately they are all crap.

Sure you can have varying degrees of nihilism, but I guess if you want to be 'partly pregnant.'

It is the gradually rising tide of nihilism that gives rise to the existential crisis--but only for those that are either sick enough, or brave enough, to face it. For everyone else, they simply mask over the question with consumerism, and a never ending search for happiness. For the unfortunate ones, this leads to drug and alcohol abuse, depression, suicide, and so forth.
For society as a whole, nihilism leads to crime and decadence. Consider for example the values that still exist in some small rural towns, where doors are still kept unlocked and neighbors are almost like family. Compare that with the cold heartless nihilism that has already encroached interpersonal relations in the big cities, where doors are kept locked and even a friendly knock on the door is responded initially with trepidation--carefully checking through a peep hole to see who it is.

Nihilism is also the inevitable result of the Post-Modern crisis. It is the reason for the Post-Modern search for meaning, and the rediscovery of ancient traditions and ways---but then they too are filtered through the cold rationalistic objectivism of the Modern Age, and these old traditions become cliches and farces of the original traditions, often times sterilized of the very meaning that Modern Man sought to find in the first place.

For Modern man, religion, spirituality, even philosophy, has largely become little more than a joke. In Jesus name we will stone the gays, and by the grace of Jesus, women, when raped will have their bodies shut down so that they shall not conceive (and if they did conceive then obviously they wanted it and it wasn't really rape... Thank God in heaven). And Buddhist enlightenment can be purchased for a mere couple of thousand dollars in the cultural center of Post-Modern Eastern Religion, Boulder, Colorado.

The tentacles of Nihilism run so deep in our culture that some of you have accepted meaninglessness as a cold dead inescapable reality. But do you sincerely accept it in such a stoic fashion, or are you simply wearing it as a mask to slip across that deeper more sinister question, possibly now repressed into your own subconscious--the real question of "WHY?"

Yes, we have truly declined into Nietzsche's Age of Nihilism. God is dead, money is king, consume voraciously lest you fall victim to the depression that afflicts those useless cogs that are spat out of the machine.

There was that brief rise of the ubermensch--Nietzsche's Superman---the flower children, or hippies of the 60's that breathed new life into the Dionysian dynamic and saved America from an early demise. But today the Apollonian forces are hard at work, and objectivism rapidly subdues the subjective individual, and where is that ubermensch now? Our youth are too busy, lost in an abstract simile of reality, playing their playstations and X-Boxes.

(...but I am still an optimist...)

 

I then followed that post with this one:

When existentialists, like Hiedegger, speak of the dread of facing nothingness, they are speaking of the nihilism that we face when we fall victim to that deepest, most serious question, of "WHY?"

Some of us face it outright and it becomes an adventure, but many others fall victim to it---as it rises up unasked from their subconscious to consume their soul. Here is one of the best descriptions I have seen on these forums of an existential crisis:

There is nihilism for you---when it rises up from inside---without invitation.

 

" It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "

 

I just found the meaning of life, turns out it was in my pants the whole time..

Back in 5 mins

 

Hmm, I've found purposes in my life. And I know what makes me happy...more or less.
Only problem is, the bigger the purpose or the bigger than things that make you happy, then the harder it is to enjoy the smaller things.

And life is about mixing the big things with the little things, IMO.

PS Pressed, you always strike me as a writer. You just look like one. And have a passion for conspiracy type stuff. I know there's other sides to you too like your interest in fitness and stuff.

 

You'll find the little things in PR's pants

 

Hmm. Handy to know... :-/