ThePresence
Elite Member
- Nov 19, 2001
- 27,727
- 16
- 81
Chaotic42
Lifer
- Jun 15, 2001
- 34,545
- 1,707
- 126
Nope, not really.
I don't really like where I live, and I don't have an girlfriend or wife. My job, while very fun, is far below my capacity. Where do I want to be?
-Married
-Kids
-Somewhere warm (preferably New Orleans/Biloxi/Mobile area)
-PHD in quantum and/or theoretical physics.
And, what the heck
-Corvette
I am thankful for what I do have though. Food, shelter, and a few good friends.
I don't really like where I live, and I don't have an girlfriend or wife. My job, while very fun, is far below my capacity. Where do I want to be?
-Married
-Kids
-Somewhere warm (preferably New Orleans/Biloxi/Mobile area)
-PHD in quantum and/or theoretical physics.
And, what the heck
-Corvette
I am thankful for what I do have though. Food, shelter, and a few good friends.
To answer the original poster, no, not really. But my policy is the one above, and I'm slowly searching for it. Still have years to go.
yowolabi wrote a good chapter in this novel. dang. I wish I knew some of yall.
Sometimes I feel fulfilled. when I'm smoking a cig. I went and helped out at an orphanage in Mexico recently and it actually felt really good to be there doing something for someone else.
Pete
Sometimes I feel fulfilled. when I'm smoking a cig. I went and helped out at an orphanage in Mexico recently and it actually felt really good to be there doing something for someone else.
Pete
i am content right at this moment. not fullfilled just yet. if i was, i would not want to be alive anymore. i think the idea of living life is to find the ultimate fulfillment. I am happy with my life, my job is okay, my lovelife is wonderful. Sure, there are always things that could be better, but everyday i am working towards them to make them a reality!
Its a basic fact of human psychology that we cannot be fufilled for any extended period of time. Perpetual fufillment leads to complacency, and it is something that evolution has just stamped out over billions of years. Complacent organisms do not survive. It kinda sucks, but the grass is always greener on the other side for a reason. To get us to go check out the other side.
Your basic fact, it seems to me, reduces us to mere puppets of our neurological structures, our transmitters and receptors deadened with time because of chemical reactions. Can this be so? Partly. See, if you say we are only animals, that being human can be reduced to a science, then fulfillment doesn't even matter, it has no point or existence; the word is meaningless. Why? Because, it's all deterministic due to your certainty of fact in the astoundingly accurate field of human psychology. Complacent organisms do survive because complacency, unlike the idealizations of the likes of Nietzsche and later the communist-socialist debacles of the early part of the twentieth century, does not have to deny the reality of competition, success. No, it supplements it, adding to it and understanding that human nature is not to be constrained by ideas alone and that the threat of reverting to the purely biological, to basic fulfillment of hedonistic and selfish drives exists. What about the spiritual? What about the ideological, the created and creative? What about the poetic? What about the soul, if one can forgive such a jumbled term in our psychological facticity. Yes, I am fulfilled. Got no particular reason to be. I think my life, comparatively, is harder than the one many have. I am more tired now because of choices made in the past. And? And there is a God. And there is a Beloved. And the impossible happens. And the lover and the Beloved are One. Not hard to be fulfilled. Just have to love; that requires being human. Not many want to do that. Cheers !
I mean that not in a concrete, 100% rigid way. But to complete deny that biological and evolutionary influences have any effect on our psyche is nonsense as well. But yes, if you ask me, I believe life is fairly meaningless. I guess this really bothers some people, but not me. I just exist, I think therefore I am, and while I ponder the reasons to my own existence more than anyone else I know, at the end of the day, I come to the same conclusion. Our minds can only go so far, and to expect the human brain to fully understand why, or to even understand if there is a reason at all, is just asking too much. Anyone who tells you they know the meaning to life and why we are here is full of it.
Either way, I dont need to use god as a crutch. You know, there are probably very good explanations behind the soul, the poetic, the creative, and all of the above, but we arent going to find it, and even if it was explained to us, we probably couldnt even understand. Maybe in the future. But not this century. It would be like explaining astrophysics to a rabbit.
There is definitely something bigger than humans out there, but nothing can ever make me believe in the "guy in the sky". Sure I have a spiritual side, but it has nothing to do with worship. My spiritual beliefs are mostly my own, although I've found that certain eastern "religions" reflect a lot of my beliefs. At the end of the day, theres definitely something more to being human than just living, but we are animals, evolved from other animals, and that influences us more than anything else. Our animal abilites and instinct is what everything else is built upon.
I guess you could say I'm fufilled. I'm always happy. I dont expect much. My goals don't involve earning PhDs or millions of dollars before I'm 30. I just want to live, enjoy good food, relax, travel the world, and at the end of it all, be able to look back upon my life and not have wasted my one and only life searching for something that will not be found.
mean that not in a concrete, 100% rigid way. But to complete deny that biological and evolutionary influences have any effect on our psyche is nonsense as well. But yes, if you ask me, I believe life is fairly meaningless. I guess this really bothers some people, but not me. I just exist, I think therefore I am, and while I ponder the reasons to my own existence more than anyone else I know, at the end of the day, I come to the same conclusion. Our minds can only go so far, and to expect the human brain to fully understand why, or to even understand if there is a reason at all, is just asking too much. Anyone who tells you they know the meaning to life and why we are here is full of it.
Either way, I dont need to use god as a crutch. You know, there are probably very good explanations behind the soul, the poetic, the creative, and all of the above, but we arent going to find it, and even if it was explained to us, we probably couldnt even understand. Maybe in the future. But not this century. It would be like explaining astrophysics to a rabbit.
Yeah, but are the explanations offered now inadequate? Who decided that one? I like your integrative biopsychosocial combination and agree to some extent on the meaninglessness of life. And yet... there is such a wonder, such an amazement to the world around me. Look, even at the depressive rain in this Seattle area, this stuff that causes suicide. Look at how it falls. It's incredible ! It has meaning, in itself, just as life has meaning in itself not because there is some fancy explanation but because we start out with the recognition that what we do matters, even if we do nothing. This has meaning not incidentally, but originally, as a consequence of the existence of life. I don't say this should cause necessarily some use of God, or any other thing for that matter, a a crutch, nor do I say that this meaning and realization can be confined to words. No, it's quite ineffable and all around us. But if we assume it's not there, we automatically close off the possibility of its existence. Even to be agnostic here is a cop out because one moves and shifts on the continuum of recognition and self-definition with each ction and inaction taken.
There is definitely something bigger than humans out there, but nothing can ever make me believe in the "guy in the sky".
What does it mean to believe?
Sure I have a spiritual side, but it has nothing to do with worship. My spiritual beliefs are mostly my own, although I've found that certain eastern "religions" reflect a lot of my beliefs.
Spirituality can have little to do with beliefs and much to do with meaning. Worship is a natural extension of the spirit, as breathing is of the body. To say we do not worship and have a spirit makes me question the nature of this possessed spirit that has little communion.
At the end of the day, theres definitely something more to being human than just living, but we are animals, evolved from other animals, and that influences us more than anything else. Our animal abilites and instinct is what everything else is built upon.
But you kinda negate yourself. It's not the building block, but it exists as a part of everything else, influencing and influenced, limiting and freeing.
I guess you could say I'm fufilled. I'm always happy. I dont expect much. My goals don't involve earning PhDs or millions of dollars before I'm 30. I just want to live, enjoy good food, relax, travel the world, and at the end of it all, be able to look back upon my life and not have wasted my one and only life searching for something that will not be found.
How do you know if you do not seek? Is that what it comes down to?
I like your thoughts, but think there is still more to it, and the idea as well as experience of meaning isn't so easily obtained and grasped as a propositional statement.
To quote Frankl "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life." I think he's saying that it is life itself that provides the meaning, and we should strive to acheive the apotheosis, the height, of that meaning. By using our free will to proactively and conscientiously choose our actions we can fulfill the meaning of life.
Very often people give up their free will. They choose to be defined by their circumstances. They become products of their environment. In other words, they become animals, in the sense that animals do not have free will. However, because we do have free will we are able to transcend our environment and no longer be defined by it. However, our actions are still limited to that environment, therefore we cannot find meaning outside that environment.
All this makes me wonder, is love a product of concious free will? Is the purely passive person able to love?
Love, in completeness cannot lack action; love cannot be some grand passion coming about from a lack of action and from carelessness. Rather, it comes in the everyday practice and effort with awareness and mindfullness stemming from love itself. Yet one cannot be lazy, expecting wonders and 'luck' to happen. The small things, the good actions, the help and smiles, they add up to grander things like the embrace fo a friend, or the company of intelligent people, or the silence of sitting still and listening. You are right on our limitations and the restrictions posed to apotheosis, and I like what Frankl said about finding meaning, about creating meaning because it makes the lowliest job equal to some positionally and comparatively superior one while what matters for the person is where the meat lies. But at the same time, there is this danger...this real danger of thinking that those physical limits are what constrain us because we humans have imaginations, stories, images, memories, the capacity and talent to create art, to engage in the society of others. If those are seen as merely constraints resulting from our biological undepinnings, from our physical limitations, then the sacredness and sanctity; the myth and wonder becomes lost since we are constantly thrown in the meaninglessness of our determinism and forget what it means to see the world through a child's eyes. Those small worlds and states have meaning and value and themselves, and they come to us, for our choosing and definition. We can choose if we accept them in-themselves, in their good, bad and in-between or follow some proscribed pattern of society or our own philosophical warrants and justifications.
So I think you're on to something, and I like Frankl. I also think there's more to it, and we need to turn it over on its belly to tickle it and see how well it really withstands examination.
Like the thoughts here. Hi Bop
Cheers !
Either way, I dont need to use god as a crutch. You know, there are probably very good explanations behind the soul, the poetic, the creative, and all of the above, but we arent going to find it, and even if it was explained to us, we probably couldnt even understand. Maybe in the future. But not this century. It would be like explaining astrophysics to a rabbit.
Yeah, but are the explanations offered now inadequate? Who decided that one? I like your integrative biopsychosocial combination and agree to some extent on the meaninglessness of life. And yet... there is such a wonder, such an amazement to the world around me. Look, even at the depressive rain in this Seattle area, this stuff that causes suicide. Look at how it falls. It's incredible ! It has meaning, in itself, just as life has meaning in itself not because there is some fancy explanation but because we start out with the recognition that what we do matters, even if we do nothing. This has meaning not incidentally, but originally, as a consequence of the existence of life. I don't say this should cause necessarily some use of God, or any other thing for that matter, a a crutch, nor do I say that this meaning and realization can be confined to words. No, it's quite ineffable and all around us. But if we assume it's not there, we automatically close off the possibility of its existence. Even to be agnostic here is a cop out because one moves and shifts on the continuum of recognition and self-definition with each ction and inaction taken.
There is definitely something bigger than humans out there, but nothing can ever make me believe in the "guy in the sky".
What does it mean to believe?
Sure I have a spiritual side, but it has nothing to do with worship. My spiritual beliefs are mostly my own, although I've found that certain eastern "religions" reflect a lot of my beliefs.
Spirituality can have little to do with beliefs and much to do with meaning. Worship is a natural extension of the spirit, as breathing is of the body. To say we do not worship and have a spirit makes me question the nature of this possessed spirit that has little communion.
At the end of the day, theres definitely something more to being human than just living, but we are animals, evolved from other animals, and that influences us more than anything else. Our animal abilites and instinct is what everything else is built upon.
But you kinda negate yourself. It's not the building block, but it exists as a part of everything else, influencing and influenced, limiting and freeing.
I guess you could say I'm fufilled. I'm always happy. I dont expect much. My goals don't involve earning PhDs or millions of dollars before I'm 30. I just want to live, enjoy good food, relax, travel the world, and at the end of it all, be able to look back upon my life and not have wasted my one and only life searching for something that will not be found.
How do you know if you do not seek? Is that what it comes down to?
I like your thoughts, but think there is still more to it, and the idea as well as experience of meaning isn't so easily obtained and grasped as a propositional statement.
To quote Frankl "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life." I think he's saying that it is life itself that provides the meaning, and we should strive to acheive the apotheosis, the height, of that meaning. By using our free will to proactively and conscientiously choose our actions we can fulfill the meaning of life.
Very often people give up their free will. They choose to be defined by their circumstances. They become products of their environment. In other words, they become animals, in the sense that animals do not have free will. However, because we do have free will we are able to transcend our environment and no longer be defined by it. However, our actions are still limited to that environment, therefore we cannot find meaning outside that environment.
All this makes me wonder, is love a product of concious free will? Is the purely passive person able to love?
Love, in completeness cannot lack action; love cannot be some grand passion coming about from a lack of action and from carelessness. Rather, it comes in the everyday practice and effort with awareness and mindfullness stemming from love itself. Yet one cannot be lazy, expecting wonders and 'luck' to happen. The small things, the good actions, the help and smiles, they add up to grander things like the embrace fo a friend, or the company of intelligent people, or the silence of sitting still and listening. You are right on our limitations and the restrictions posed to apotheosis, and I like what Frankl said about finding meaning, about creating meaning because it makes the lowliest job equal to some positionally and comparatively superior one while what matters for the person is where the meat lies. But at the same time, there is this danger...this real danger of thinking that those physical limits are what constrain us because we humans have imaginations, stories, images, memories, the capacity and talent to create art, to engage in the society of others. If those are seen as merely constraints resulting from our biological undepinnings, from our physical limitations, then the sacredness and sanctity; the myth and wonder becomes lost since we are constantly thrown in the meaninglessness of our determinism and forget what it means to see the world through a child's eyes. Those small worlds and states have meaning and value and themselves, and they come to us, for our choosing and definition. We can choose if we accept them in-themselves, in their good, bad and in-between or follow some proscribed pattern of society or our own philosophical warrants and justifications.
So I think you're on to something, and I like Frankl. I also think there's more to it, and we need to turn it over on its belly to tickle it and see how well it really withstands examination.
Like the thoughts here. Hi Bop
Cheers !
The explanations offered now are inadequate in the sense that they bring more questions than answers. The rabbit may not be able to understand physics, but perhaps he can ponder the question of why the apple falls from the tree. I think we have as much chance of understanding these questions as the rabbit has to understand newtonian physics. Of course if I had a dollar for every time someone said in the past "We know all that there is to know", I'd be filthy rich. What we do has an effect on everything else, but I just dont believe that there is some force or spirit judging or even taking notice of our actions. Its really hard to explain because words are so limiting, but I see life kind of as another expression of the same forces around us, in the same sense that energy and matter, and space and time are just different forms of the same thing. Most people hold the actions of life to be more important the "actions" of inanimate objects. But I cannot attach some sort of "meaning" to my life. My life has as much meaning as a river flowing. And I just dont understand why thinking that your life has no "meaning" bothers people. It may not be very motivational, but there is nothing wrong with just existing for the purpose of existing.
I mean our instincts as a building block in the sense that it is something present at birth, and most everything else has to be learned. People dont just innately slowly learn the world as they grow. Most things have to be learned, but even at the birth a baby has precise, ingrained reflexes. Some of these reflexes simply faze out after a point to be replaced by more rational functioning. Perhaps the same holds true for some mental instincts, and we can learn to be above them. I doubt that we will ever be fully free of it.
The thing is, I have seeked. I'm pretty young, only 22, and I know I've got a whole life of learning ahead of me. But I've found comfort in simple things. I don't need a BMW or a big house to be happy. I dont doubt that I could easily acquire them if I strove to, my will to succeed does not lie externally.
Free will certainly exists. We are not just machines making decisions based on a calculation of nature vs. nuture, instinct vs. learned experience. There is something more to it, something that everyone knows but can't explain. If life was just machinery, how could our "souls" exist? And in the case that we are just biological, mushy organic machines, does that imply that mechanical machines are just as "alive" as we are? The answer will lie in the difference between man and machine.
I mean our instincts as a building block in the sense that it is something present at birth, and most everything else has to be learned. People dont just innately slowly learn the world as they grow. Most things have to be learned, but even at the birth a baby has precise, ingrained reflexes. Some of these reflexes simply faze out after a point to be replaced by more rational functioning. Perhaps the same holds true for some mental instincts, and we can learn to be above them. I doubt that we will ever be fully free of it.
The thing is, I have seeked. I'm pretty young, only 22, and I know I've got a whole life of learning ahead of me. But I've found comfort in simple things. I don't need a BMW or a big house to be happy. I dont doubt that I could easily acquire them if I strove to, my will to succeed does not lie externally.
Free will certainly exists. We are not just machines making decisions based on a calculation of nature vs. nuture, instinct vs. learned experience. There is something more to it, something that everyone knows but can't explain. If life was just machinery, how could our "souls" exist? And in the case that we are just biological, mushy organic machines, does that imply that mechanical machines are just as "alive" as we are? The answer will lie in the difference between man and machine.
However, we always have a choice in the way we act. Its in that choice that we can find the meaning to life. It follows that the meaning of life doesn't lie in how rich, successful or happy we are but in how we react to our circumstances or situation.
Bop, the more I ponder on it, the more I agree with you. And I also agree with luvly that if I move on to new things, I might find something that takes me closer to having a meaning in life.
Bop, the more I ponder on it, the more I agree with you. And I also agree with luvly that if I move on to new things, I might find something that takes me closer to having a meaning in life.
Originally posted by: Juniper
With what you have? Your situation? Are you living the ideal life?
I am confused. I have a job, a boyfriend, yet I am looking for something else. Can't put my finger on it. I'm really unhappy.
No, for God's sake I don't ever want to feel fulfilled, b/c it'll be time to die for me then
. I think it's cool to always want something and strive to achieve some goals. For example, I live a totally crappy life. Sometimes I think I could write a rather thick book just to try to explain WTH my life is so bad, and why things are as they are. Just imagine... I live a lonely life, no friends, no girlfriends, but I don't think I'm worse than others, at least it's not evident. I don't know why my life is so spoilt. But I'm going to find out.Being unhappy is a normal and the only state of a mortal human. If you're rich and healthy you gonna start thinking when is it going to end and why so soon, if you're poor you're sad b/c you're poor. We are only humans, after all.
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