My Meaning: Life has none

One of the most most promiscuous, one of the most unshakeable, one of the most understandable, and yet in its own way one of the most perncious, notions, currently doing the rounds in both intellectual and everyday discourse, is that life must have "meaning" in order to have value. But the two shouldn't be confused. For this reason: life has no meaning. For life is not a sentence. Commonly people mean, when they ascribe meaning to their lives, that they have a reason for getting up in the morning. But this a functional and not a natural concept, defined in relation to a contingently-rooted purpose. Some will press the notion further, insisting a meaningful life must be determined from the outside - by a benificent creator, for example. Others say that the meaning of life is to be happy. All of these fall short of salvaging life's "meaning", since they fail to change the fact that "meaning" is here being used in a very circumscribed way - such that it is collapsable into "value", or "function" or "purpose", all of which reside in the human subject as opposed to some divine, meaning supervening object.

isn't this true only for the uninstinctless homo sapien?
if you look at other species, it seems that they are here to fullfill their nature which in it's turn balances the ecosystem. their existence has an aim in this world. how about we humans, what do we do in this world beside exploiting the boundries of our intellect and and the ressources of nature. whats our use speacialy if there is no meaning to this life ?

Ah, pupa ria distinction arise . . . for other life forms (animals, insects, etc) for them life has no meaning (as we think of it). For them life exist (they exist) and they perform those functions necessary to sustain it. They live life.
But wittgensteins, if your life has no meaning then is it not your choices that made it as such?
The Nature of the beast to perform those functions of life; the nature of the being is to perform those functions that give new meaning to life?

i know that we are distinct cturtle, thank you for elaborating though, but what i mean is who are we as species to judge on the behalf of all other speacies about their meaning. are we some glitch of creation? i turned the question up and down inside my head about the instinct of humans and the only thing that was consistent was our instinct to mentalise, to give meaning and sometimes a surplus of meaning, in a way we fetichise the world...the moon becomes the symbol of what not etc etc, we give too much meaning. i rather live the life of an ant and shut the noise in my head up. why do we give so much meaning? does it make life possible? does it give us some illusionary control over things?
isn't more utilitary to ask ourselves "whats my use in the world?" instead of "whats the meaning of life?" cause the latter is like an empty canvas on which you can fantasize ceaslessly.

Just a kick start for the brain http://www.captaincynic.com/thread/80383/1/did-darwin-dethrone-god.htm#8
5657 At times discussions can give a fresh perspective which tend to make threads interactive but with some threads the right of those mediating the thread (created, sensore thread content) won't allow this to apply so comments given are deleted because of some offensive manner but sometimes this occurs because of control issues => their point or stance is shown to be an invalid concept or position. This is a misfortune we bear (bare) in the name of freedom.

I think it's very possible that life may be beyond any conception - and to beg the question "Is life meaningful?", while it may be a step toward greater awareness, will only be an attempt to reduce it to some compartmentalized notion to make it easier for the intellect to digest.

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i turned the question up and down inside my head about the instinct of humans and the only thing that was consistent was our instinct to mentalise, to give meaning and sometimes a surplus of meaning, in a way we fetichise the world...the moon becomes the symbol of what not etc etc, we give too much meaning. i rather live the life of an ant and shut the noise in my head up. why do we give so much meaning? does it make life possible? does it give us some illusionary control over things?

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I am now almost fully convinced that humans have just as much instinct as any animal but through fucked up lifestyles have stripped themselves of this invaluable quality. Isn't it interesting that while our lives are so boring and mundane and linear, our dreams are just the opposite, in seemingly perfect proportion, filled with magic, adventure, strong emotion, myth and all in vivid detail. It's almost like they're compensating for something...

How many times have you had a dream where someone you "know" in waking life visits you in the dream world and are not at all how you know them to be? It's not an unreasonable change either, not any more unreasonable than, say, taking a magnifying glass to some object or texture and looking at it that way - it still makes sense.

Are we instinctless or have we learned to be instinctless?

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Isn't it interesting that while our lives are so boring and mundane and linear, our dreams are just the opposite, in seemingly perfect proportion, filled with magic, adventure, strong emotion, myth and all in vivid detail. It's almost like they're compensating for something...

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so true. i keep telling myself that i'm living life inside my head, all the extatic emotions, aperceptions are created by ideas we get about a certain issue that we are sensitive about.

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How many times have you had a dream where someone you "know" in waking life visits you in the dream world and are not at all how you know them to be?

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we sleep half of our lives, i don't kow the exact calculations, but why do we consider our waking state as valid reality and our dreamworks as a hallucination. a hallucination that is closer to the real than our mundane small talks and behaviors.

interesting comment to think about. My upper division economics prof probably the smartest person I have ever met blurted something out in lecture. He was drawing some indifference curves with budget lines and he made a mistake. He just blurted out, "that life is about trying" in that he was trying his best on the difficult graphs to draw by hand.

Makes sense to me. Try this, try that and now your life has grown in that you have done something. Perhaps just trying as many things as possible is the meaning of life.

I do believe there is no "meaning" to life but why would that stop you from doing things. Yes we live, we die, turn to dust and it probably won't matter but why stop increasing your pleasure. Do I really need a better reason then it is fun, it is enjoyable and it is pleasurable. I think not.

The meaning of life really complicates things by suggesting there is more than what we see, that what is happening is a significant phenomenon. Perhaps life is nothing more than bacteria on a rock moving through space.

"Perhaps life is nothing more than bacteria on a rock moving through space."

i like that. a parasite on a walking giant!

Well yeah it makes more sense to suggest that we are insignificant than significant. How can someone even argue that we are significant? We take up such a small amount of space. We have traveled to the moon but look at how much further it goes. We rely on the sun for life. We rely on the land and resources.

To argue we are significant is really mankind's ego??? More preciously the First world's ego???

Humans are only significant to those who believe it so, they are called blind or ignorant people.

You must be blind not to see whats right infront of your face, the proof is everywhere, we ARE a parasite, for every tree we cut down is just like when a virus shuts down another cell in your body. Every bug we step on, every animal we kill, every plant we murder is just like a virus shutting down cells in the human body.

To not see what is right infront of you either you are blind, or very ignorant. And frankly going by humans I'm going with Ignorance.

In a few years the human race will cut down every tree, kill every animal, slaughter everything then turn around and ask
"Who did this? It was not me, I'm a mere human I could not do all of this! It MUST have been someone else because I'm perfect" and then the all of the human race will die out.

Unless we can change our ways, unless we can look others in the eye and say every now and again "Oh I'm sorry, I did that, I'll clean that right up!" then the human race will for ever be a parisite killing it's hoast (Earth) along with itself.

Really its just what you think it is, no one can really help you.