Why?(NOT for the depressed or faint of heart!)

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 03:44PM #1

WARNING!! THIS THREAD TOUCHES ON TOPICS THAT PEOPLE STRUGGLING FROM DEPRESSION MAY BE BEST OFF NOT SEEING OR THINKING ABOUT.

I've been thinking for quite some time on how to formulate this thread. So please bear with me. As an atheist I don't really believe in there being an objective meaning to life. I know this belief has nothing to do with atheism, but I'd imagine most posters here probably feel the same way. (Maybe not, only one way to find out.

) That said even though on the grand scale of things I see my life as pointless and meaningless. I'm not depressed, or for that matter, anywhere near it. In fact for some bizarre reason I'm probably more satisfied now than I ever was when I was religious.

So my question is basically this : Is there an ultimate meaning to life? If not, why do we actually proceed in living it? I'm fairly certain that the majority of folks who feel the same way I do, will always do whatever they can to help others, understand nature etc. Is this a simple case of because if we didn't, we wouldn't be discussing it? Or is it something more complex than that.

My own thought is we have evolved mechanisms that provide us with a kind of illusion telling us our lives are something worth grappling onto. These mechanisms provide us with senses of reward and satisfaction for deeds which on the whole are ultimately pointless, but we do them anyway.
Well, I did say this thread topic wouldn't be bright and shiny.

amacachi · 16-08-2010 03:45PM

Well for humans without life there is nothing, so it's this or nothing. That's all the meaning I need really.

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 03:48PM

amacachi wrote: »

Well for humans without life there is nothing, so it's this or nothing. That's all the meaning I need really.

Christ! That was a fast response, I had barely posted it and just clicked "User Cp" when you posted that.

I quite like that perspective, it gives us some sense of meaning.

Thanks.

Ickle Magoo · 16-08-2010 03:52PM

I don't think there is any ultimate meaning to life in a "part of the great plan" kind of way but there's a heck of a lot of fun and fascinating learning that can be had and they are all preferable to killing myself, so life it is.

I don't see it as depressing either. I have, if I'm lucky, 75 odd years of loving, being loved, raising a family, learning, travelling, making friends and having adventures - my life has ultimate meaning because it's important to me and it's the only one I'm likely to get so I appreciate it and want to live it to the full - not because some third party has deemed it so.

Dades · 16-08-2010 03:58PM

Stepping back and looking at the overall picture, I also believe life to be effectively purposeless and meaningless. That is, we have no purpose assigned to us by a higher being, or we are not part of some giant multi-billion year experiment.

I won't deny that sometimes the thought depresses me, but it doesn't change the reality - I don't claim to get more out of life knowing that we only have one.

I believe however that you can give yourself purpose, and that's all you need. That, and keeping your mind and body busy is the secret to keeping reality in it's box. Tire yourself out so that when you're old - you're ready to go! Or have kids. Then you don't have time to think about your mortality.

eightyfish · 16-08-2010 03:59PM

Malty_T wrote: »

If not, why do we actually proceed in living it?

For me... Because every single person that came before you in your direct family line - every singe relation you ever had be they human and pre-human, every living being in your family tree right back to primordial pools hundreds of millions of years ago survived and lived long and successfully enough to have children and pass on their genes. Without exception. And that resulted in you. Pretty impressive when you think about it.

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 04:03PM

eightyfish wrote: »

For me... Because every single person that came before you in your direct family line - every singe relation you ever had be they human and pre-human, every living being in your family tree right back to primordial pools hundreds of millions of years ago survived and lived long and successfully enough to have children and pass on their genes. Without exception. And that resulted in you. Pretty impressive when you think about it.

You've been reading Bill Bryson haven't you?:D

Edit : Actually time for the full quote as it's a beaut.

Bill Bryson : A Brief History of Nearly Everything wrote:

To get from "protoplasmal primordial atomic globule" (as the Gilbert and Sullivan song put it) to sentient upright modern human has required you to mutate new traits over and over in a precisely timely manner for an exceedingly long while. So at various periods over the last 3.8 billion years you have abhorred oxygen and then doted on it, grown fins and limbs and jaunty sails, laid eggs, flicked the air with a forked tongue, been sleek, been furry, lived underground, lived in trees, been as big as a deer and as small as a mouse, and a million things more. The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walrus-like on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.
Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely- make that miraculously -fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly - in you.

P.S If you haven't yet read it, then you really ought to.

storm2811 · 16-08-2010 04:04PM

I think our main purpose in life is just to reproduce.
For those who are religious though,would they think the same thing?
Or would they believe they're here to spread God's word or what?

I think we all have a personal meaning/purpose in life,for example,if I were to take my life it would ruin other peoples lives.

eightyfish · 16-08-2010 04:04PM

Malty_T wrote: »

You've been reading Bill Bryson haven't you?:D

No listening to The Streets actually :rolleyes:, specifically Everything Is Borrowed.

I suppose realising the lineage thing gives my life meaning without there being a meaning to life, if you know what I mean.

GLaDOS · 16-08-2010 04:05PM

I definitely believe there is no meaning in life, set out for everyone. There is no difference between us, bacteria, dogs, cacti etc in terms of the fact we're all alive (which differs from various religions point of view that humans are superior). When you break it all down, it's all just a complex mechanism to pass on genes.

I don't find this depressing however, on the contrary I find it liberating. You don't have to do anything but you can do any of the millions of different things that can help make life on earth better for others. Your life isn't assigned a meaning, but you can give it one.

robindch · 16-08-2010 04:15PM

Malty_T wrote: »

That said even though on the grand scale of things I see my life as pointless and meaningless. I'm not depressed, or for that matter, anywhere near it.

eightyfish · 16-08-2010 04:21PM

Malty_T wrote: »

Actually time for the full quote as it's a beaut.

I'll do the same. This is the song I'm talking about. Might not be your type of thing but I really like it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFLdIGNUKuw

CiaranMT · 16-08-2010 04:24PM

Malty_T wrote: »

You've been reading Bill Bryson haven't you?:D

Just read that book myself recently, it's top-notch.

But yeah as for the original Q, just to live life and enjoy it.

Oh and reproduce. Sexily :pac:

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 04:32PM

If anything this thread is convincing me that atheists should be used instead of religious ministers in Hollywood films for reassuring the person about the jump off the ledge. Perhaps that's why many of those scenes fail to be funny?:)

eightyfish wrote: »

I'll do the same. This is the song I'm talking about. Might not be your type of thing but I really like it

Well, now technically sir you aren't doing the same thing - I edited my original post.:p

JimiTime · 16-08-2010 04:36PM

Good philosophy guys. Just wondering how this translates into losing your child to cancer or somesuch?

liah · 16-08-2010 04:36PM

There is meaning to life, very much so. The difference is between myself and a religious person is how we define it.

While a Christian may define the "meaning of life" as to live according to God and the Bible, my personal definition is really very different. In my view, the "meaning of life" is to try to get as much out of it as you can before it's gone.

My "meaning of life" is to understand the intricacies of myself and those of others. My "meaning of life" is appreciating and trying to understand different cultures, people, places, feelings, thoughts. My lack of faith has definitely led me to have a far greater understanding for myself and why I "tick," it's forced me to try to understand and interpret people and their motivations, it's allowed me to recognize the beauty in all things and derive pleasure from things most people wouldn't even notice. It's a liberation, a freedom, a kind of slowly-acquired wisdom and a never-faltering compassion for humanity-- that, to me, is the meaning of life.

I'm not trying to say religious people don't feel the same way I do, but I don't quite think it's the same thing. The meaning of my life is to live and wholly experience every moment of it, without guilt, without trying to appeal to pre-destiny, without trying to strive for an afterlife that has never been proven to exist. How can you do that with a god over your shoulder all the time? How can you do that with a pre-defined rule set in the back of your mind? Truly?

I guess maybe I operate on a very instinctual level, a lot of my values and meanings in life are quite tribal-- "living for the full vicious experience." And I think a lot of that is lost when it comes to religion trying to define the meaning of life, because it just doesn't hammer in that this one is just as important as the next (if you believe in the next, anyway).

16-08-2010 04:37PM

This thing is, sure our bodies have evolved to reward us for existing and reproducing, but the feelings of reward are still the same.

Lacking a universal purpose and having a sense of our insignificant place in the universe doesn't mean that we have to ignore the things that make us happy.

We know now that happiness is just caused by hormones and impulses in our brain but that doesn't make the sensations any less real.

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 04:39PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Good philosophy guys. Just wondering how this translates into losing your child to cancer or somesuch?

Sorry I don't understand your point or question?

ShooterSF · 16-08-2010 04:42PM

Enjoy every up, remember every down is between two ups and the end would not come close to matching the next up in terms of fun.

16-08-2010 04:44PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Good philosophy guys. Just wondering how this translates into losing your child to cancer or somesuch?

Finding meaning in one's life and loss of a loved one seem to be unrelated areas to me. Would I be right in saying you're referring to believing there is no afterlife?

If so, I don't think that's really the point of the thread, but my take on that is that there would be more comfort in believing my son got as much enjoyment out of life as he could while he was here, than believing in an afterlife for which there is no evidence.

JimiTime · 16-08-2010 04:48PM

Malty_T wrote: »

Sorry I don't understand your point or question?

Its not a point, its a question. The philosophy of there being no purpose, but that you would give yourself purpose, presuming this purpose to be positive I.E: not, 'My pupose will be to wipe out the Jews' type of thing, sounds healthy. However, how do you deal with losing a child to disease or murder etc in this philosophy? Just wondering, the philosophy deals with what you have control over. How do you extend it to the things which are part of you, but that you can't control, or make decisions on?

Don't credit me with going anywhere with this btw, I'm just wondering.

thirtythirty · 16-08-2010 04:51PM

I am immensely proud of what man has achieved.
I literally marvel at our engineering and technological advances, and have the utmost respect for the great thinkers who strive to understand ourselves as a species.
Anything we have imagined, we have achieved, and this fact has brought us to a realisation that collectively we can create / build / reason / or understand anything with time. Not to mention we know how to party, and are awesome at fighting (i.e. an element of survival of the fitest).

I want the human race to survive forever.

So to me, the reason for life is to be a part of that, and contribute in anyway possible, while enjoying the ride

16-08-2010 04:53PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Its not a point, its a question. The philosophy of there being no purpose, but that you would give yourself purpose, presuming this purpose to be positive I.E: not, 'My pupose will be to wipe out the Jews' type of thing, sounds healthy. However, how do you deal with losing a child to disease or murder etc in this philosophy? Just wondering, the philosophy deals with what you have control over. How do you extend it to the things which are part of you, but that you can't control, or make decisions on?

Don't credit me with going anywhere with this btw, I'm just wondering.

I think the idea is that positive things tend to make us happy. That's the way the reward pathways in our brain works. We've also gotten to the point where we can consciously think about what we do and think about long-term reward rather than short-term reward.

We're intelligent enough to see that if everybody treats each other well, then everybody is much happier, ourselves included. Obviously it doesn't always work that way; some people will try to go for personal gain at the expense of others, but if we decide to do this instead of trying to be positive, we'd never reach the goal of everybody treating each other well.

That deals with why nobody should think along the lines of "my purpose will be to kill all jews". (Godwin's Rule, btw).

I still don't know what you mean by the rest of it.

Waking-Dreams · 16-08-2010 04:56PM

I don't see why this has to be a gloomy topic. The opening chapter of Richard Dawkins' Unweaving The Rainbow always leaves me in awe, a brilliantly put perspective on life and death. We make meaning out of our lives because our brains evolved that way.

I like this piece here by Alain de Botton; around 1:25 into it he mentions the basic facts of what existence is but it's a very good speech.

http://vimeo.com/10601416

liah · 16-08-2010 04:57PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Its not a point, its a question. The philosophy of there being no purpose, but that you would give yourself purpose, presuming this purpose to be positive I.E: not, 'My pupose will be to wipe out the Jews' type of thing, sounds healthy. However, how do you deal with losing a child to disease or murder etc in this philosophy? Just wondering, the philosophy deals with what you have control over. How do you extend it to the things which are part of you, but that you can't control, or make decisions on?

Don't credit me with going anywhere with this btw, I'm just wondering.

What a strange question. It's never even crossed my mind, but I guess it makes sense since a Christian would attribute these happenings to the will of God so of course they'd be confused about what happens when God doesn't exist to a person.

It does still seem quite unrelated to the discussion at hand, but I'll bite.

Obviously I can't speak as a parent, but I have lost those dear to me in uncontrollable situations, and I just.. dealt with it. It's life. It happens to everybody in one way or another, and I supposed that was how I consoled myself. I recognized that it happened, grieved my loss, and continued with life the best I could without them in it. I'm not even entirely sure how to explain that?

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 05:01PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Its not a point, its a question. The philosophy of there being no purpose, but that you would give yourself purpose, presuming this purpose to be positive I.E: not, 'My pupose will be to wipe out the Jews' type of thing, sounds healthy. However, how do you deal with losing a child to disease or murder etc in this philosophy? Just wondering, the philosophy deals with what you have control over. How do you extend it to the things which are part of you, but that you can't control, or make decisions on?

Don't credit me with going anywhere with this btw, I'm just wondering.

Part of my philosophy in life is that you can only control the car you are driving; not the thousands of others. All you can do is do your honest best to minimise the risks to yourself and others while driving. The same can said for any facet of life. As long as I do my best to help someone then no matter how much guilt and grief I initially feel when the harmful event occurs my conscience knows that I did all I could to prevent it. Some things are just out of my control and I willingly accept that.

SugarHigh · 16-08-2010 05:05PM

liah wrote: »

In my view, the "meaning of life" is to try to get as much out of it as you can before it's gone.

Why, what's the purpose of doing that?

What does everyone doing that over and over again achieve. I understand why you'd live your life like that but I don't see how that gives it a purpose or any reason for life to exist.

I go along with te thinking of there being no reason for life but it's still better than nothing.

SugarHigh · 16-08-2010 05:10PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Its not a point, its a question. The philosophy of there being no purpose, but that you would give yourself purpose, presuming this purpose to be positive I.E: not, 'My pupose will be to wipe out the Jews' type of thing, sounds healthy. However, how do you deal with losing a child to disease or murder etc in this philosophy? Just wondering, the philosophy deals with what you have control over. How do you extend it to the things which are part of you, but that you can't control, or make decisions on?

Don't credit me with going anywhere with this btw, I'm just wondering.

Are you following the line of thought that kids give you purpose?

I've never really understood the procreation is the meaning of life way of thinking. If there is a cog wheel hanging from the ceiling for absolutely no reason and is completely pointless but the string holding it up has a purpose(to hold the cog up), the strings only purpose is to support something that has no purpose so doesn't that make the string just as pointless as the cog.

I don't know how well I got that across.

ShooterSF · 16-08-2010 05:11PM

Getting into that dark area of grief I actually find it easier now than when I was religious (ish, I was never more than a cultural catholic as a kid). You grieve like anyone but you do it without the twisted emotions of religion. There is no "why" was such a young life taken because we realise we're no more special than that baby fly I squated this morning and life ends, some of us are just more lucky than others on the amount of time we get.
Also there is no heaven/hell scenario to think through, this one hits home hard as I lost relatives as a teen to suicide and was sure they were in hell.
All in all you feel sad but realise you have to get on with your life...

CerebralCortex · 16-08-2010 05:12PM

CiaranMT wrote: »

...Oh and reproduce. Sexily :pac:

It's funny how strong the insistence that reproduction is the purpose of living when in reality it's just as ultimately meaningless as most any other pursuit. Unfortunately the consequences of such a pursuit regardless of how it makes the pursuer feel are quite serious and all too often taken too lightly. I expect an awful lot of flak for that assertion, but it reinforces the funniness of peoples desire to protect the "greatness" of reproduction for me at least.

Turtwig · 16-08-2010 05:14PM

SugarHigh wrote: »

Are you following the line of thought that kids give you purpose?

I've never really understood the procreation is the meaning of life way of thinking. If there is a cog wheel hanging from the ceiling for absolutely no reason and is completely pointless but the string holding it up has a purpose(to hold the cog up), the strings only purpose is to support something that has no purpose so doesn't that make the string just as pointless as the cog.

I don't know how well I got that across.

Well if your intention was to remind me of Professor Layton it worked. If your intention was to make me grasp your analogy about parents only having a meaning to life if they have kids being bizarre, then you also succeeded there.:)

*Grabs a DS.*

Why?(NOT for the depressed or faint of heart!)

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