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I think there is meaning to Life

Talksick said:
Read about Terrance McKenna's Time Wave Zero theory and say that again. Everything is too perfect to be coincidence.
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I don't need to read it if it tries to support your statement that everything is too perfect to be coincidence. For one thing, everything isn't perfect. It just is. Perfect is a qualitative judgement that we add. Would you say that cancer is perfect? Most people wouldn't. And if you want to call everything perfect, why can't it be that way through natural events? Natural events mean that things will unfold following universal laws of physics. So, why would they not be perfect if they are doing what they are supposed to do?
 
The greatest gift you have as a self-aware being is 'choice'.

You can give and take meaning from anything, paradoxically.. life is meaningful and meaningless simultaneously; it's simply up-to you to define in what way. For me i find this to be the greatest challenge of all.. you are solely responsible for defining your purpose in life, this can be a tough path to walk for not everyone is so willing to accept such a magnitude of responsibility.
 
thesoundofmotion said:
Again, my belief is that everything that is happening is what is supposed to be happening.
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This is true, but the things that are supposed to be happening do not happen because of any divine purpose or something of the sort.

Everything happens because of cause-and-effect. We have no control over our destiny. We may think we do by the way we plan future events, but we were all meant to think up those plans, which in turn leads to those events. Or if we change our minds, well, we were meant to change our minds.

Our experiences and our thought process directly affect each other. From the day we were born, outside influences and genetics have caused us to think the way we do, and the way we think leads us to the decisions we make.

Johnny was "supposed" to get that traffic ticket last weekend, because it "did" happen. Whether or not Sarah will go to the concert next Friday is already predetermined; she was meant to buy her ticket but then at the last minute change her mind.

Basically, life is one long chain of cause-and-effect. Sorry if this was a little confusing, let me know and I'll try to elaborate more.
 
malakaix said:
The greatest gift you have as a self-aware being is 'choice'.

You can give and take meaning from anything, paradoxically.. life is meaningful and meaningless simultaneously; it's simply up-to you to define in what way. For me i find this to be the greatest challenge of all.. you are solely responsible for defining your purpose in life, this can be a tough path to walk for not everyone is so willing to accept such a magnitude of responsibility.
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I think that's how it works. I dont take either the spiritualist or the scientist viewpoint [all is God or no God. there is no either/or]. There's too many factors and ways of looking at things to talk about the meaning of life in such concrete terms...

I think it's a balance of influencing the world, and the world influencing you. The first is much harder, and for the few who master it is given true power. Floating around in the sea of life like a simple cause-and-effect bio-bot is basically impossible; at some point you confront your own vision/desires and realise that you are in control much of the time. I've never met a hardcore atheist/scientist who can really argue around this truth [that there is free will despite the fact that we're all "hardwire" this and that way and whatnot; and other "complex" , "scientific", "modern" ideas, a lot of which have ancient and superstitious analogs]; nor a militant religious type either [ but they're a lot less into debate, so I dont really deal with them anyway]

Back to the OP's writing, I agree that the meaning of life is love. THat's how I see it. the goal of each waking moment is to feel "good", "love" whatever you want to call it.
 
1ll0gic said:
Everything happens because of cause-and-effect. We have no control over our destiny. Basically, life is one long chain of cause-and-effect. Sorry if this was a little confusing, let me know and I'll try to elaborate more.
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precisely this.
 
^ I totally don't agree with that viewpoint because it ignores human free will, and all the dynamics of the world which are often clumsy, and result in completely unforeseen happenings. i just dont see the purely scientistic viewpoint as explaining really anything more than the superficial physical layers of reality. am i hating on cause-and-effect and atheist-scientist philosophy? Absolutely! :D
 
Things that normally make us feel good are things essential for survival of our genes..

Sex, food, exercise, forming relationships, etc..
 
ControlDenied said:
^ I totally don't agree with that viewpoint because it ignores human free will, and all the dynamics of the world which are often clumsy, and result in completely unforeseen happenings. i just dont see the purely scientistic viewpoint as explaining really anything more than the superficial physical layers of reality. am i hating on cause-and-effect and atheist-scientist philosophy? Absolutely! :D
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Do we truely have free will? Or are we purely acting on the split second before this one? Acting in a way that was determined by our chemisty / biology and past experiences, which in turn, were determined by other peoples chemistry / biology and past experiences..
 
I like to think of life like a poker game. The cards you are delt are determined, no matter how much you wish you could change them you can't. But how you play that hand, and where that hand can take you, is ultimately up to you.
 
^ yeh thats how i see it. most things you cant change, but you do control a lot. i dont agree w/ the genetics-fatalism attitude

"the meaning of life is whatever makes you satisfied with death "

that might be the closest ive heard anyone getting to the truth of this topic
 
rickolasnice said:
Do we truely have free will? Or are we purely acting on the split second before this one? Acting in a way that was determined by our chemisty / biology and past experiences, which in turn, were determined by other peoples chemistry / biology and past experiences..
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I agree with this. We may live in a 3D world, but life essentially travels in 1D. We don't have a choice for our future. We may think we do by planning, but our thought-process is merely a factor in this on-going chain of cause-and-effect. We don't live in a dual reality, only one, so only one thing can happen at a time.

For example, whether you want to become a doctor or not is already predetermined. From this very second, your thoughts and actions as well outside influences dictate what is going to happen the next second, and the next, and so forth. If you worked hard in medical school and decided you don't want to be a doctor anymore, well, that was meant to happen.

You may say that "Well, I decided to drop out of med school, but this other student decided to continue, so that goes to show I control my destiny." But you don't control your destiny because your genetics and your experiences predetermined your path already, while the other student's genetics and experiences predetermined his path.

You were meant to discover bluelight and become a member, and there was nothing you could've done about it.
 
1ll0gic said:
But you don't control your destiny because your genetics and your experiences predetermined your path already, while the other student's genetics and experiences predetermined his path.

You were meant to discover bluelight and become a member, and there was nothing you could've done about it.
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Ok situation: Say the admins running bluelight hate people who use gmail for example and decide one day to block all gmail accounts from registering on bluelight (or say turn of registering all together).

Then one day I stumble across bluelight, and because of my experiences and genetics I think "I would like to become a bluelighter!" so I go to register, fill out the form only to be rejected because I have a gmail account. Then I give up, get high and eat icecream and pie to ease my sorrows.

How does my neural wiring from my genetics or my experiences have anything to do with the fact that I didn't become a bluelighter? It just came down to luck and the admins decision of who should join (or that nobody should join).
 
Oxycondone said:
Ok situation: Say the admins running bluelight hate people who use gmail for example and decide one day to block all gmail accounts from registering on bluelight (or say turn of registering all together).

Then one day I stumble across bluelight, and because of my experiences and genetics I think "I would like to become a bluelighter!" so I go to register, fill out the form only to be rejected because I have a gmail account. Then I give up, get high and eat icecream and pie to ease my sorrows.

How does my neural wiring from my genetics or my experiences have anything to do with the fact that I didn't become a bluelighter? It just came down to luck and the admins decision of who should join (or that nobody should join).
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Your life is one straight path. Somewhere along this path you stumbled upon bluelight (hypothetically). Same goes for the admin; somewhere along his/her path of life, he/she decided to ban gmail accounts (again hypothetically).

The reason you two came about these decisions is an effect of a previous cause. Something led you to make the decisions that you guys made. That previous cause was an effect of a previous cause before that. This long chain of cause-and-effect leads back to the day you were born (and even to the beginning of time but we'll leave that one alone for now).

Genetics play a part in how you react to the world, so genetics dictated your first reaction the world. When you start to grow up, more and more experiences combined with your genetics dictate how you're going to react to the subsequent experiences to follow. Just imagine that what you think and what you do is a result of everything that happened in the past.

There is no such thing as luck or chance. You and the admin's life of causes-and-effects both led you to this experience in which you two share common ground (again hypothetically).
 
I remember hearing this hypothetical when I was studying Neuro systems. The lecturer noted that if a persons brain was mapped by a computer the computer would be able to tell what someone would buy when they walked into a bakery, ect.

I like to think it's not true just because I don't want it to be true. I doubt in our life time we'll ever know if it is true or not.
 
^ Same with the universe. If we could completely and accurately map the universe onto a computer, we could theoretically look into the past and the future.
 
^ Amazing hey. The brain doesn't look too far off though. They reckon they'll have the computer power to do it by 2020 just need to work on how they are going to scan it and be ethical about it. Really interesting read on some of the implications and situations that could arise due to brain scanning on wiki.
 
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