You maintain your little world doing your pendulum swing.. Upkeep is really important here. You survive- go to work, consume, maintain your space.. In modern settings this is your property and living situation.. You look for entertainment.. this can be things to alleviate boredom including loneliness.. You look for a friend group, a mate, hobbies, etc. With a mate you may try to form a family unit so that you have an anchor- a unit to go back to.. A family is almost a manifestation of boredom multiplied.. If you have a unit of people, you will be that much more occupied.. Your world will be filled with concerns of other people at-the-ready for you to have to deal with.. Anything to avoid existence itself.. that churning will that moves your forward to the next task, ensuring you keep following activities related to cultural upkeep (survival, maintaining property, etc.), and making sure you find ways to entertain. — schopenhauer1

What your describing sounds like a nightmare someone cooked up about a bunch of carbon based lifeforms who are too stupid to see the truth of their own situation and to cowardly to do anything about.

I think monks or ascetics who meditate would be an exception here as they focus on existential despair, emptiness and loneliness all day, although you don't seem to think so as the paragraph in your thread suggested. You claimed the lofty goal of nonexistence or a transcendental existence through ascetic practices is only a coping mechanism for the situation but never truly resolves it.

All this 'purpose' business: what sense can we make of finding a desire for purpose in us? There's a beginning. — mcdoodle

We don't need to find a desire for purpose, I think most people have desire for a purpose and if they don't then they are too stupid too or depressed. The issue is that people are saying their purpose in life are neutral objects... or thereabouts anyway. How irrational it is to say my purpose in life is my stuffed cat that died 10 years ago! Likewise, how irrational to say that your purpose in life is your wife, who shares the same resemblance of a stuffed cat only yet she provides you with more emotional responses, intellectual stimulation and opportunities for situational decision making. I don't care how much you love your dead cat mate, that just doesn't cut if for a purpose in life!

Bitter Crank I would like you to address this plz when u have the time.

I was trying to show you that if there was no suffering then there still wouldn't be a purpose. You are saying a worthy purpose is to "heal the world" but what will it be once the world is healed? To keep healing it more? And then what? Just to keep healing and healing and healing as long as humans exist?

That just doesn't seem logical. We are animals at base level. All animals share this in common.

"What is a man. If his chief good and market of his time. Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more." -Hamlet

I am not talking about the meaning of life here but a purpose that sustains one from avoiding inevitable death. — intrapersona

I thought everyone knew.



It does only last once, time. Sustained by the need to relinquish. The requirement that life should have meaning to me, personally, seems unreasonably self-centered. It's not for me.

What is the point of an adventure if it has no point?

In other words, who wants to go to the north pole just to walk around aimlessly on an ice sheet? You go travelling on holiday to experience the different cultures, take in new sights,smells etc. all of which contribute tothe purpose of travelling.

Philosophizing about life's purpose on a bigger scale than that doesn't map down to those same categories unfortunately, and is more akin to walking around the north pole aimlessly.

Effectively your argument is "live life to experience it" but that really doesn't make sense. It is like saying cary 1000 buckets of water just because you can bro! It isn't self-validating and can not be. — intrapersona

That is not at all what I meant or said. I never used the word adventure. I said that life is interesting. The North Pole isn't. That's why I'm not there.


Being alive is more interesting than being dead. — Harry Hindu

What the hell does that even mean?

How could you even guage or calculate with approximation if it would be more appealing if you have no idea what it is like to be dead?

That is like asking which pocket you want to choose from, in the right... would you like this plastic banana that is electrified at 250v? or in the left... would you like this something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig.

Yeah harry hindu, being alive is more interesting that being a something a rather with a superduper wizz bang thingamajig... makes total sense :-} — intrapersona

Death is no different from what I experienced before being alive - nothing. Death is simply non-existence after you existed. You didn't exist before you came into being, and that "experience" of not existing would be the same as after you existed. That is boring compared to existence. There is a much better chance that death isn't what you claim it to be - a superduper wizz bang thingamajig (and you are asking what the hell I mean?! Go figure.) I could see you excitedly running through that door labeled "Death" and then drop screaming into a void.

then you drop dead on the floor, bahaha — intrapersona

There's absolutely no need for that. (btw mods, what is the point in banning bigotry if other kinds of meanness are left up?)

You live for self-esteem? I can't imagined a more egotistic reason for a will to live — intrapersona

How is it wrong? It doesn't mean I'm going to persue that goal to the detriment of others (nor is that necessarily the case with other goals for other people such as happiness or eudaimonia).

exclaiming to everyone "you see how good I am? — intrapersona

self-esteem = feeling good about oneself, not necessarily = other people feeling good about one

I live for love.

Why does virtue make to be or not to be not worth considering?

Why does wonder/wisdom make to be or not to be not worth considering?

Because they are so interesting, pleasurable? Interest or pleasure is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming Interest or pleasure is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience Interest or pleasure" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe".

Does contentment come at no cost though? Truely? The farmer has to work hard to pay his bills so that he can be content. Monks have to work for it by meditating all day. The experience of contentedness is a rare sight too, all around the world minus a few primitive tribes. — intrapersona

Harmony neither acts nor reasons, and contentment is the harmony of the lowest possible energy state of the complete system, when we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing. Instead of seeking happiness or pleasure or viewing work as drudgery, we merely accept them as we accept everything else in life including the evidence of our own senses and sensibilities. Which is why to be or not to be is not worth considering and why Socrates said death may be the greatest of all blessings. When we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing each moment can be a blessing.

This thread supports my belief that each of us should develop a fetish. Then we would have something to live for.

I live for mostly hedonistic reasons. Do you want a list, or...?

It's irrational to dismiss that just because it is temporary. That it is temporary is inconsequential. For me, at least.

I don't live because I'm afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to right now.

One lives and dies regardless of whether there is something to live for. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for a good life.

One lives and dies regardless of whether there is something to live for. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for a good life. — jkop

No, but it's a start. How can you possibly live a good life if you have nothing to live for?

I am failing to see how these are a source for the purpose in ones life. — intrapersona

They can be a source of meaning, or better, they are the meaning. The purpose is to learn to see more and more in them, appreciate them more and work with them in a better, less self-oriented way. If you take the dead view of analysis, they will appear as nothing to you on account of a bogus absolutist fantasy; because you will be demanding more than what is given, which is to say more than you are ready to receive.

It is simply a hopeless artificial situation to be putting yourself in of looking at life from the perspective of this deadening analysis; it is just not capable of leading to anything but nihilism and despair. There is nothing imperative or absolutely true in such a lifeless picture; it is something we do to ourselves, and not something inevitably done to us by life.

For example, some people find their pet worth living or dying for. But living for a pet is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good life. You could live and love your pet (or whatever) and find it just as significant, and your life just as meaningful, without the melodramatic act of ascribing all your life's worth on it.

I understood what you meant, so it was not necessary to provide an example. Although, we were just discussing something to live for; not something to die for.

I stand by my point that, although having something to live for does not necessarily lead to a good life, it does seem necessary for the possibility of one. If you disagree, then please explain how that would be possible.

And I don't agree with your description of this as melodramatic. Perhaps in your example it is, but it's hardly melodramatic in my case, given that I include rather ordinary activities which give me pleasure in my answer to the question of what I live for.

What I live for encompasses innumerable things and activities, and is about contentedness, joy, and motivation, amongst other things. If these things were absent or unobtainable, then yes, I might conclude that I had nothing to live for. That's not melodramatic, it's reasonable.

Your problem is asking the question in the first place. Like the person who equates life only with happiness, you view living as a question of living "for a purpose." Lots of things happen in your life, but you only come away saying: "Is that it? I can't live just those small moments and be satisfied. I need some truth of purpose to reduce my entire life to. What's the purpose that will satisfy me?" What you seem to want (a purpose) is the very thing you deny is so (human life is just many different finite states).

This is the nihilism of purpose. An understanding which rejects the meaning of living a finite life for the notion some purpose must enter in from the outside and make things matter. With respect to living, it's self-defeating. It turns fulfilment and worth into an impossibility for your own life. Only the reductive fiction (purpose) can be worth anything. Life is just a nothingness to be ignored or miserably wallow in.

Asking the question "What purpose to life for?" is perhaps the worst question when it comes to understanding the meaning of living. One lives. There is never a nothingness to escape from. Meaning is replete.

There is nothing imperative or absolutely true in such a lifeless picture; it is something we do to ourselves, and not something inevitably done to us by life. — John

I disagree. We were born into existence, and it does contain harms and it contains a structure which we did not create. We all cope, that's just a truism, but that does not mean "and then it was good."

What your describing sounds like a nightmare someone cooked up about a bunch of carbon based lifeforms who are too stupid to see the truth of their own situation and to cowardly to do anything about.

I think monks or ascetics who meditate would be an exception here as they focus on existential despair, emptiness and loneliness all day, although you don't seem to think so as the paragraph in your thread suggested. You claimed the lofty goal of nonexistence or a transcendental existence through ascetic practices is only a coping mechanism for the situation but never truly resolves it. — intrapersona

This is correct, nothing does resolve the situation. You are stuck here until you're not. You will run into harm, you will create your own harm, you will find survival within your culture, you will experience boredom unless you create some sort of entertainment situation.

Don't confuse your genetic predisposition for survival IN your thoughts for your personal preferences over what you find fashionable. — intrapersona

I don't think I understand that comment. "A genetic predisposition for survival in your thoughts" is confusing to me. And then I don't get how "your personal preferences over what you find fashionable" fits into the context of either my or your comment.

I'm not discussing whether something to live for seems necessary for a good life but whether it is necessary, sufficient, both, or neither. I say neither, because ascribing life's worth on something else is neither sufficient nor necessary to make it better. In fact it could make it worse, as in cases of destructive cults, where the idea of having something to live for is exploited and sometimes taken to its extreme.

The requirement that life should have meaning to me, personally, seems unreasonably self-centered. It's not for me. — unenlightened

You quoted me on what I said "I am not talking about the meaning of life here but a purpose that sustains one from avoiding inevitable death" then you talk about meaning. facepalm

Moreover, you don't have evidence that it only last once. It is only a self-centred inference because of your stubborn belief patterns. It might or might not be, YOU DON'T KNOW.

Say I was to correct your sentence for you though:

"The requirement that life should have purpose to me, personally, seems unreasonably self-centered. It's not for me."

What is self centred about that?

Death is no different from what I experienced before being alive - nothing. Death is simply non-existence after you existed. You didn't exist before you came into being, and that "experience" of not existing would be the same as after you existed — Harry Hindu

Are you sure of that? How do you know you weren't an mystical energy being who at the time of transference had all of it's memories temporarily disabled.

My point is that you can't know that for certain. I am so sick of foolish people inferring concrete absolutes about states they know NOTHING of, your as bad as a christian ffs. You don't KNOW what it was like before death, therefor don't say it was nothing... all you can say about it is that you don't know and you don't remember, but it could be something and it could be nothing.

There is a much better chance that death isn't what you claim it to be - a superduper wizz bang thingamajig (and you are asking what the hell I mean?! Go figure.) I could see you excitedly running through that door labeled "Death" and then drop screaming into a void. — Harry Hindu

I never claimed death was anything more than nothing. The term superduper wizz bang thingamajig is just to show you the absurdity of the component you seem to think is in my right pocket when you have absolutely NO idea what it is, yet you are going around yelling "I know everyone, I know... me! not you! but me! I know that there is nothing at death! SO there!"

I live for love. — Heister Eggcart

Then obviously you didn't read my OP

How is it wrong? It doesn't mean I'm going to persue that goal to the detriment of others (nor is that necessarily the case with other goals for other people such as happiness or eudaimonia). — Ovaloid

It is vain, and illusory. It has nothing to do with the detriment of others, so you don't need to point that out. Likewise, how do you even prove that you had the free will to even claim ownership over what you accomplished? The libet experiment doesn't act in your favor there.

self-esteem = feeling good about oneself, not necessarily = other people feeling good about one — Ovaloid

Fair point, it still doesn't stop the fact that it is misguided and vein. But just think about if you had no one else to compare yourself to, and it was only you in existence? Of which standards would you set yourself up against? How would you know if you did well and could therefore be proud of yourself? It seems you NEED others to feel good about yourself, just not directly need them to see how good you are as you say, although it is my contention that the common ego secretely wishes for this anyhow no matter how much it tells itself that it only cares about it's own appraisal.

There's absolutely no need for that. (btw mods, what is the point in banning bigotry if other kinds of meanness are left up?) — Ovaloid

It wasn't intended to be mean, it was intended to show you the vanity of your beliefs. As in by dropping dead on the floor right at the height of all your self-indulgent flattery. e.g. i'm so proud of my self, i'm so talented, mirror mirror on the wall bla bla bla

Harmony neither acts nor reasons, and contentment is the harmony of the lowest possible energy state of the complete system, when we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing. Instead of seeking happiness or pleasure or viewing work as drudgery, we merely accept them as we accept everything else in life including the evidence of our own senses and sensibilities. Which is why to be or not to be is not worth considering and why Socrates said death may be the greatest of all blessings. When we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing each moment can be a blessing. — wuliheron

Ok, I see what you are saying. I meditate so I can see directly that when thought stops contentment arises and that is the lowest possible energy state of the complete system (the brain). But probably the lowest energy state is sleep or death. and harmony acts but doesn't reason, if it didn't how could harmony exist? Harmony needs action in order for it to exist. Where is the harmony in a completely still nothing?

I don't see how you got "to be or not to be is not worth considering" from "Socrates said death may be the greatest of all blessings." How does all of this making to be or not to be is not worth considering? Because I would be so content that it wouldn't matter? AKA:

This thread supports my belief that each of us should develop a fetish. Then we would have something to live for. — Real Gone Cat

Lol, What happens when the fetish goes stale?

It really doesn't though if you read my OP, fetish is like right pinky toe.

I live for mostly hedonistic reasons. Do you want a list, or...?

It's irrational to dismiss that just because it is temporary. That it is temporary is inconsequential. For me, at least.

I don't live because I'm afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to right now. — Sapientia

I said nothing about the fact that because it is temporary it is inconsequential (AKA why live if it's not forever)

I was claiming (if you even read my OP at all) that:

"There are some fleeting moments of joy and beauty that I can capture but it is foolish to live FOR those moments exclusively because they are transitory and fleeting, nor do they actually give any more purpose to one's life, it just makes life more "exciting". They are merely moments in which one is so elated with pleasure that they do not think of how empty and absurd their situation as a human is. If one were to live for pleasure alone it would leave one waiting in anticipation all the time and actually make life worse!

Happiness is an extension of the human experience much like my right pinky toe is too. Claiming happiness is a purpose for life is absurd. You might here a great many people claim "The very sole purpose of my existence is to experience happiness" but this makes as much sense as to say "the very sole purpose of my existence is to experience my right pinky toe"."

And your not wanting to die right now is the same as saying you don't want to die. Because in the future it is very likely that you will not want to die then either. Like the procrastinator who keeps putting of cleaning his room by saying "I will clean my room, just not now". It is a psychological coping mechanism, be aware of it!

One lives and dies regardless of whether there is something to live for. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for a good life. — jkop

Great post! It reflects what I was saying in my OP about how all animals live in the same way.

The very nature of a "good life" entails a purpose. If you don't think it does... THEN LIST WHY NOT!

No, but it's a start. How can you possibly live a good life if you have nothing to live for? — Sapientia

I concur (Y)