Where do you find meaning in life?

learn to sell snake oil

This is a hipster-finding thread. Amazing.

What's a hipster?

A metallic organism from the planet Cybertron.

  On 1/22/2010 at 8:22 PM, ZiggomaticV17 said:

The meaning of life lol, is about experiencing death.

 

Its hard to live in a world where so much shit has gone wrong and is going wrong with people holding people back with people killing people with people believing and relying on fairy tails to save them. Its really hard to want to change the world when the majority of the people just keep pretending that reality is fine or someone else will do it and just end up living happy lifes under a made up reality that if the walls in my house are clean every wall on earth is clean. I don't like thinking this way but I don't want to lie to my self either. To be honest, I would have rather not been born into this shity excuse of an existence we call life. Music is the only thing thats made my stay here tolerable.

I guess the funny thing is, that the most of "average" people are just normal, peaceful and more or less

healthy individuals who just want to coexist with everyone and try to live as happily as they can.

the ones at the top of the power/influence pyramid are actually completly and irreversibly insane.

everyday they are dealing with artificial concepts and try to graps things which exceed limits of their understanding. the way in which they affect(or "belive" to affect) culture is much more dangerous than the way normal people share ideas, thoughts, music etc..

and they are under a lot of stress too, just as those at the bottom.

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

  On 1/25/2010 at 12:45 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

 

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

this is one of the most convincing arguments I've ever heard for religion.

(Except in this case, why is so much of life so damn boring? Is this a lack of the deity's imagination or our own?)

hail eris

  On 1/25/2010 at 12:45 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

 

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

that's roughly it, the word god is quite a loaded one though. I'll post about this later. There seems to be a few people here teetering right on the edge of this, i like it!

  On 1/25/2010 at 12:45 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

 

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

+1

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:39 PM, Masonic Boom said:

you're all right. I'm going to quit my job and my stupid "rationalist" lifestyle and run off to Elephant & Castle to join the Tibetan monks, maybe they'll let me live in their basement in exchange for my painting paisley and swhirlies all over their walls since their shrine is all done out like that. Hurrah! meaning problem solved.

just don't keep all that inner peace away for yourself and run away forever.... bring some of it back and share it with the rest of us

(solution for all will be the only true peace)

  On 1/25/2010 at 1:01 PM, Masonic Boom said:

  On 1/25/2010 at 12:45 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

 

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

 

this is one of the most convincing arguments I've ever heard for religion.

 

(Except in this case, why is so much of life so damn boring? Is this a lack of the deity's imagination or our own?)

boring is only a concept for those who can not see the immeasurable size of the whole experience in and outside of

this dimensional universe. when we truly awaken, there is no possibility of ever being bored.

  On 1/25/2010 at 1:01 PM, Masonic Boom said:

  On 1/25/2010 at 12:45 PM, Hoodie said:

  On 1/23/2010 at 11:05 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I always thought, and this is my humble opinion, I wouldn't force it upon anyone else, is that the meaning of life is to live. To experience it. That is the simplest answer, but to me it is also the most true.

 

You find meaning in simply existing. That is why a lot of people dont understand me when I say violence, evil, and destruction is just as beautiful as something...well, beautiful. It is all part of some sort of strange universe that we somehow came to exist in. (When I say this i mean it on a purely aesthetic level btw, im not suggesting I go around saying YEAH MURDER IS BEAUTIFUL)

 

hah, i like this idea the most. it reminds me of that thing chaosmachine (i think) posted a while back, about how we are all god looking to entertain itself with different experiences.

 

this is one of the most convincing arguments I've ever heard for religion.

 

(Except in this case, why is so much of life so damn boring? Is this a lack of the deity's imagination or our own?)

that'd probably be due to a desire to experience everything, even boring lives.

Even boring lives are just a concepts in minds. There is no entity 'at the top' with thoughts in time - thoughts just happen in minds and that's the only place there will ever be conceptual thought or the idea of a boring or exciting life. There's no good word for this but there's just oneness. Everything happens in oneness and actually is that. There's something here right now that is you and it isn't your body. That body and the monitor you are looking at is literally happening within you. It's only actually a thought that stops this being totally obvious, it's the belief that you are a separate person. This isn't a conceptual, philisophical thing by the way, this is actual, and the enlightenment you sometimes hear about is actually the illusion of the seperate self falling away leaving everything/oneness. So when there is no-one there's just oneness.

You guys are really starting to sound like the teacher at the Buddhist centre and that's bending my brain a bit too much right now.

Buddhism talks about this i think but it's weird because it teaches a spiritual path that 'you' have to travel in order to get to a seperate thing called oneness. It seems like it's another religion that has been distorted as time has gone on. You only have to listen to how much confusion there is when people talk about this subject publicly to see how easily the message can get fucked up. People want the spiritual path and get pissed off when someone tells them that they are what they are looking for.

  On 1/26/2010 at 3:56 AM, Rambo said:

Buddhism talks about this i think but it's weird because it teaches a spiritual path that 'you' have to travel in order to get to a seperate thing called oneness. It seems like it's another religion that has been distorted as time has gone on. You only have to listen to how much confusion there is when people talk about this subject publicly to see how easily the message can get fucked up. People want the spiritual path and get pissed off when someone tells them that they are what they are looking for.

Buddhism is a great way of thinking, I wouldn't even call it a religion necessarily, more of a way of life, and the teachings of buddha help guide and keep you on that path.

Absolutely anything that helps people with self-realization whether christian, Buddhist, or atheist is absolutely the best thing for a person's psyche.

Eastern philosophy is so relaxed because the simplicity is intense...its like all at once realizing that the simple truths of life are amazingly complex and you could delve into what they "mean" for all eternity, and then you remind yourself that it's just a proverb, thousands of years old,....and for some reason that completely blows my mind every single time.

Anyone here dig on Heraclitus?(i hope i spelled it right)

him and Parmenides are sorta like the Western-equivalent of Lao Tzu, Buddha, etc....all that stuff is amazing.

I'm going to bump this thread to keep it in my line of sight, and have some tea, and think about all this. Because there are some very interesting (to me) ideas getting thrown around.

But I'm running on empty right now on account of sleep deprivation caused by ttrying out these practices.

It's like someone (Feynman?) who said "If you think you've understood quantum physics and it doesn't make you feel dizzy, then you haven't really understood it properly." I don't think I've understood it properly.

I beleive in Occam's razor, the simpler something is, the more likely it is to be true. But at the same time, the opposite of a simple truth is merely false, the opposite of a great truth is also true. Too many people believe in a lot of really rubbish (to me) and meaningless and downright harmful things because it is *easy*. Simple is not the same thing as easy, not at all. Sometimes the simplest things are hardest to understand or wrap your mind around because they are so simple.

I hope someone will mention eastern concept of "attachment". Meaning of life or so called "enlightment" is about

to occur when a zen pupil finally leaves all of his attachments behind. His mind becomes "free" and he

obtains objective reason.

unrelated thought

for studies in the social sciences to work, the people being studied must be ignorant of those fields of knowledge. someone who knows about psychology is able to consciously defy it, you see. so the social sciences require there to be two separate strata in society - the small learned group, and the uneducated mob. otherwise the sciences would be unable to advance. the social sciences - especially psychology and sociology - play a part in the establishment of a gulf between clever people and the plebs. and the very existence of those fields of knowledge implies that the vast majority of humanity are idiots who can't make their own decisions.

lol

  On 1/26/2010 at 3:15 PM, ezkerraldean said:

unrelated thought

for studies in the social sciences to work, the people being studied must be ignorant of those fields of knowledge. someone who knows about psychology is able to consciously defy it, you see. so the social sciences require there to be two separate strata in society - the small learned group, and the uneducated mob. otherwise the sciences would be unable to advance. the social sciences - especially psychology and sociology - play a part in the establishment of a gulf between clever people and the plebs. and the very existence of those fields of knowledge implies that the vast majority of humanity are idiots who can't make their own decisions.

 

 

lol

No, I don't follow you at all. You seem to be applying that whole Entanglement theory from Quantum physics to things which are not neccessarily related.

In fact, even within Social Sciences, there are two schools of thought - one which says that one must NOT participate but merely observe (unobserved) in order to study humans. And the other that says if you follow that methodology you will never see anything but your OWN interpretations, and therefore if you REALLY want to understand human behavious, you have to participate fully in whatever it is you are studying.

Although I'm as big a lover of Science as the next geek, I do kinda follow Mary Midgely in the idea that one should not ... universalise it.

"The trouble is that thought and culture are not the sort of thing that can have distinct units. They do not have a granular structure for the same reason that ocean currents do not have one - namely because they are not stuffs but patterns."

  On 1/26/2010 at 3:15 PM, ezkerraldean said:

unrelated thought

for studies in the social sciences to work, the people being studied must be ignorant of those fields of knowledge. someone who knows about psychology is able to consciously defy it, you see. so the social sciences require there to be two separate strata in society - the small learned group, and the uneducated mob. otherwise the sciences would be unable to advance. the social sciences - especially psychology and sociology - play a part in the establishment of a gulf between clever people and the plebs. and the very existence of those fields of knowledge implies that the vast majority of humanity are idiots who can't make their own decisions.

 

 

lol

ever read asimov's foundation series?

  On 1/26/2010 at 11:36 AM, naos said:

I hope someone will mention eastern concept of "attachment". Meaning of life or so called "enlightment" is about

to occur when a zen pupil finally leaves all of his attachments behind. His mind becomes "free" and he

obtains objective reason.

there's no objective reason. Enlightenment isn't about getting anything, it's about losing an illusion. But when you talk about a zen pupil leaving all their attachments behind, imo there's a nugget of truth in there - what do you think a persons greatest attachment might be?

  On 1/26/2010 at 4:23 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Buddhism is a great way of thinking, I wouldn't even call it a religion necessarily, more of a way of life, and the teachings of buddha help guide and keep you on that path.

 

I wouldn't choose one but if i had to choose a religion at gun point it would be Buddhism without doubt.