What is the reason for life or living?

Offalycool

The fact that we can choose what is worthwhile in our lives, what our reason for living is, requires us to be free.

ManofMunster

sash5 wrote: »

Yes, there is a reason for us to be here. There is a reason that we live and survive among the other 2 billion people.

SH*T!!!! What happened the other 4.7 billion?!! I really need to get off this site and follow the news a bit more closely!

though back on topic, i don't think there is a universal reason for living. there certainly isn't a universal reason for my life (it doesn't stop me from enjoying the experience to the full). the poster who suggested we were the only species arrogant enough to assume our lives had a meaning may be onto something. our brains have evolved enough to design this laptop, but not so much that we can collectively recognise we're just smart animals who can talk (and type).

no meaning. just 70-80 years of fun (hopefully). then we die.

mayblue

personally i think that life has whatever meaning you want to give it...

have you ever seen City Slickers? i find Jack Palance answer quite enlightening :P

mark renton

Joe1919 wrote: »

But you are right in saying that 'poverty can make us unhappy' but thats not the same as saying that 'money will make us happy'. (This is called the fallacy of 'Denying the antecedent') http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent

On a lighter note, There is an old saying that "Money wont make you happy but its better to be rich and miserable than poor and miserable."

http://books.google.ie/books?id=ZWTDQ6H6gsUC&dq=A+logical+approach+to+discreet+math&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=9kOZSf2FG9Wa_gaw1bGNCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA7,M1


Chapter 1

cas91

Op life is what you make of it, It's just like an opinion on a song or book, its personal choice. No one can explain it to you in a few words or proverbs/

godspal

Life by itself is a pointless endeavour. Living and life are not mutually inclusive terms. A man may live in a prison, he may spend his day eating, sleeping and reading, he may wander down hollow corridors, and into filled rooms, but he is not living. He is not given the choice to migrate, to drink, to do drugs, and ultimately the most sacred choice in living, the choice to die. His life is no more then existence.

Now people will argue that in capitalist society the choice of not working is not given to us... Not true, the choice is there, however the reprocutions are dire; you do work, you do not eat, you do not have shelter, you do not socialize, but you have the choice to be homeless and starving, which is living.

Let me use an example:
Roman Polanski's The Pianist is a perfect example of the difference between life and living.
Adrian Brody's never lived through out that entire film, he only existed to eat, sleep and breath. The men and women that died in Warsaw ghetto may not have been alive, and they may not have lived for most of the film, however by dying through fighting they gave themselves the choice of dying the way they wanted.

Life is hard, get use to it! Living is amazing, embrace! And die with dignity, do not clamber onto every last breath, every ticking second, for these are pointless moments that you will never remember and those around you would prefer to forget.

Grapey

CerebralCortex wrote: »

What is the reason for life or living? This question is bugging me but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to find the answer I keep ending up with 'why?' .:( There has to be a reason for us being here. Can anybody please enlighten me?

I have come to one simple conclusion. well its not really that simple anyway. the way i see things in life is to always wonder why, what for, when..and what can i do to make it better. Those are basically the principles of how i live. now when i get to a complicated problem or whatever it is ...i ALWAYS end up asking myself exactly the same question. But now to be honest as im writing this i guess the only real meaning of life is to be here. thats it. while your here you do what you can to help other people, or to enjoy yourself or to even help yourself. which ever way you choose to live it creates a certain type of balence. and i guess thats the reason your hear. To grow, and to establish who you are and what your not. The best way i deal with life is to give other people a reason to live, stop looking for something that your not going to find and accept the fact your here to learn and help.

Joycey

Neuro wrote: »

"I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism. It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.

This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful. The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other."

- On The Suffering Of The World (1851), Arthur Schopenhauer

You can read the whole text here.

Haha excellent. I have to read Schopenhauer

deereidy

Reasons are made up by people. You don't need one. You're just here because stable molecules became more complex and eventually evolved into different organisms. I don't see why people need a reason, nothing else on this planet does.

nyarlothothep

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women

togster

Up untill recently i asked that question alot. What's the purpose? Why does everything feel so hollow after attainment. I believe that we all have a purpose. In a sense i believe we have a destiny or at the very least we shape our own. I have realised though that if you live life in the present moment you will not miss the pointers or signs. To be free of all judgment and clinging frees up huge amounts of intelligence (i'm talking about intelligence in the form of wisdom) or seeing the "bigger" picyure in a given moment rather than our pre-defined reactions/fears (no idea where most of these come from).

I think our primary "purpose" is to realise the real truth within ourselves, the truth underneath mental perception and to "see" things as they really are. To realise one's own true nature and to persist in maintaining it in every day life and in relations with other human beings. To have compassion, and to share your love with that of everything around you.

We talk of evolution. Perhaps evolution is the species ultimate goal. Evolution never came about because of thinking about it. Perhaps our individual and collective aim is evolution? Murdering and all the other horrible things that we inflict on each other and the planet can hardly be called evolution can it? Or did we loose or way somewhere?

I don't know tbh.

nyarlothothep

togster wrote: »

Up untill recently i asked that question alot. What's the purpose? Why does everything feel so hollow after attainment. I believe that we all have a purpose. In a sense i believe we have a destiny or at the very least we shape our own. I have realised though that if you live life in the present moment you will not miss the pointers or signs. To be free of all judgment and clinging frees up huge amounts of intelligence (i'm talking about intelligence in the form of wisdom) or seeing the "bigger" picyure in a given moment rather than our pre-defined reactions/fears (no idea where most of these come from).

I think our primary "purpose" is to realise the real truth within ourselves, the truth underneath mental perception and to "see" things as they really are. To realise one's own true nature and to persist in maintaining it in every day life and in relations with other human beings. To have compassion, and to share your love with that of everything around you.

We talk of evolution. Perhaps evolution is the species ultimate goal. Evolution never came about because of thinking about it. Perhaps our individual and collective aim is evolution? Murdering and all the other horrible things that we inflict on each other and the planet can hardly be called evolution can it? Or did we loose or way somewhere?

I don't know tbh.

I like to think of the murderers/dumbasses who start wars/nasty people as being evolutionarily outdated in the context of future aeons.

Joycey

togster wrote: »

Perhaps evolution is the species ultimate goal. Evolution never came about because of thinking about it. Perhaps our individual and collective aim is evolution?

One of the reasons Darwin's writings were so devastating to Western(Christian) thought was because the whole notion that humans are here for a reason, or that there is some purpose to our existence was undermined. Humans are not seen as any more progressed or priviledged in any way in Darwin's theory, we have simply evolved in a way which has allowed us to occupy a larger and larger niche at the expense of other lifeforms which we shouldnt even be competing with.

Chi chi

I've got a feeling that people talking about how good it is to live than to die tend to be a little bit more suicidal than usual.

Also, a famous writer I know who published several books on the meanings of life finally commited suicide.

blogga

CerebralCortex wrote: »

What is the reason for life or living? This question is bugging me but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to find the answer I keep ending up with 'why?' .:( There has to be a reason for us being here. Can anybody please enlighten me?

Certainly. You have prejudged the issue so you are "bugging" yourself.
Your second last sentence is actually the beginning of your troubles "there has to be a reason for us being here." From there you proceed to track down the elusive reason that you have already decided must be there. Might I suggest that, instead, you live life and if a satisfactory "reason" emerges from the experience that that will suffice?

Playboy

The reason for life or living is best found in the living of it rather than thinking about it.

Nevyn

But what sort of life is an unexamined life?
Tbh it that to be a case of finding a working balance between living and reflefting on life and the choice we make otherwise we don't learn.

blogga

Thaedydal wrote: »

But what sort of life is an unexamined life?
Tbh it that to be a case of finding a working balance between living and reflefting on life and the choice we make otherwise we don't learn.

But to examine a life it must first be lived in order to have something to examine: it is the reflection on the living that matters, not , as the OP sought, a reason for living. It may well be the result of examining a life is that you reach a conclusion that there is no preordained reason. Maybe the trick is to find a reason for your own living.

JohnGalt

Life

To assume anything of it is nothing other than baseless speculation. It may appear to have a certain quality, but from our very limited perspective we can not assert these things with anything approaching certainty. We may be utterly insignificant, we may be the very key to the universe itself. However, ironically, not knowing does inform our position somewhat. If one were in a race with no identifiable finish line, opposition, or means to attain victory, does any action have merit above that of any other? This has a certain parallel with life. There is no clear reason, there may well be one somewhere, but it has not yet become apparent and there is no reason to think that it will in the future. All is valid.

ilovenerds

I am actually rather sick of all this existential stuff.. I used to think about it alot but then I realised I was just trying to be deep when in reality I couldn't have been further from that. The real question is: what am I going to do now that I am here?

http://xkcd.com/220/

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simplistic

This guy is one of the greatest philosophers of our time.

Offalycool

simplistic wrote: »

This guy is one of the greatest philosophers of our time.

I don't know, I listened to a bit of the first video. I think he may be a little bit full of it.

ntlbell

Offalycool wrote: »

I don't know, I listened to a bit of the first video. I think he may be a little bit full of it.

I wouldn't say he's full of it, but it's all very obvious, nothing ground breaking.

Lana80

Tough question(trying to up my posts to join father ted club-sad)
Reason for life and living-
to learn,love,etc etc

mark renton

Lana80 wrote: »

Tough question(trying to up my posts to join father ted club-sad)
Reason for life and living-
to learn,love,etc etc

whats the etc,etc ?

Turtwig

Probably not the deep philosophical answer you were looking for...

To die and enjoy the experience along the way!

sells

maybe the reason is to find the reason.......thats the reason...get it. theres no reason for what you make for youreself.

Mother says

Pretty straight forward. Reasoning is something that living entities do. Before there were living entities there was no reason. Therefore no reason for life. Sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear.

spoutwell

What is the reason for living? Ask the grass

Joe1919

spoutwell wrote: »

What is the reason for living? Ask the grass

Or perhaps even 'leaves of grass'.

http://www.poetropical.co.uk/hyperpoem/leaves.htm