| RavenBlog |
|
| Comments on Monday 4 August 2003: |
| Revisiting an old train of thought: tell me your philosophy of life in five words or less. Obviously this isn't a very serious question, and I don't expect your entire philosophy of everything to be accurately conveyed in five words. I want the best compression you can do; make it encompass as much as you can within the constraints. Hyphenations count as extra words. No missing out spaces and saying it's one word. My answer to this question is "Putting Things Under Things". What's YOURS? [02:49] |
| Tom |
| Yes. |
| Digi |
| Purpose is an abstract member. |
| C. Copperpot |
| Complacent Revolutions. |
| Kat |
| wow |
| Nameless |
| You have to lose - Play anyway |
| Kanada Ten |
| Live every day; or die. |
| Laura |
| It is all an illusion. |
| Freak |
| fuck the world - be you. |
| Greystreak |
| Be kind. Have fun. Think. |
| C. Copperpot |
| Viva los Chupacabras! Arr matey! |
| Sophie |
| Be nice. |
| Nameless |
| Short of dying, you will learn and survive. |
| Alchemist's Ghost |
| Reality hates me. |
| Tom |
| Nameless people can't count. |
| Nameless |
| Never take the blue pill. |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| Jerk off three times daily. |
| jeanette |
| Fight hard for what you want. (Yes, yes, it's 6 words--but that's as close as I could get!) |
| Tom |
| Fight hard for bananas. |
| Pig |
| Let the randomness fly. |
| Jay |
| Talk like Sean Connery or Pretend like I'm real. |
| Santoken |
| Pass me another beer dammit! |
| IndustrialScribe |
| Hey, is this thing working? |
| Greystreak |
| No religions. Lots of Beer. |
| redTEETH |
| not original but still my philosophy: "guiltless state of self awareness" |
| Solistus |
| I Know Everything- Worship Me |
| MadEroll |
| Love. Create magic. Improve. Survive. |
| Wendy |
| Go Fuck Yourself Buddy. |
| Tibman |
| "To have purpose is everything" A purpose manifests motivation, dedication, and tenacity. Ever wonder how a person could be so evil? It gives them purpose. Why do we lay down at night and dream ourselves heroes and leaders? Some are afraid they have no purpose. That this painful world world is only temporary. So they spend their lives preparing for an afterlife of prophesied splendor and a perfect existence. Every soul in this world screams for a reason to exist. |
| Digi |
| Tibman: Well that was a little more than five words, now my interlaced monitor doesn't mess with my eyes so badly when I scroll this page at high speed. As for purpose – fneh. Man created the concept - it's not one of the base attributes to things, and thus, if one thinks in terms of 'why' and 'what for' one will never truly understand the universe, or any of the 'what's it all about?' questions. Things only really have things if they have them before we look at them. Does the sun have a purpose? Well sure it does, it makes our crops grow, it keeps us warm etc. That’s its purpose. It’s yellow, is that it’s purpose? Or is it just something it is. The sun's not *for* anything, it just is. Purpose is an attribute that's created in our minds, after the fact, and so it is abstract. The sun has a colour whether we look at it or not, but it doesn't have a purpose until we invent one. We will find our answer when stop looking for them, and start looking at them. None of this is true if God is a being, with intentions, and goals. If it is, it created things with a function in mind, thus they have a purpose. Maybe God doesn’t exist. Maybe God is the culmination of everything that is real. Every piece of matter, or energy – every piece of stuff. Space-time, or whatever. A computer is an entity. It is a random configuration of purposeless transistors that together make a working object. If this is true, nothing has a purpose it all just is. If something’s only purpose is to be a piece of a box with nothing outside it, then it has no purpose, the box has no purpose, there are no scales outside the box by which to measure it - it just is. We share the attributes of the things we make, and make some of our own. Would give a little more credence towards God’s omnipotence, wouldn’t it? Of course, don’t tell anyone, or who’ll go to church when they could just worship they’re ashtrays and still be praising God? Damn. That was more than five words. |
| Solistus |
| The question of purpose really depends on where you draw the line. Nothing 'matters' on a cosmic scale- religion tries to keep people from having to face this reality by attaching some "purpose" to our lives, but the only thing that is not totally mechanical, the only thing that (we believe) has thoughts and goals, is life. Without life, nothing that happens is relevant, because there is no sentient being left to observe. As QT tells us, observation creates reality; reality does not exist without someone to make it real. Extending this logic brings us to the conclusion that the purpose of everything must be tied to life. Let's pass over the lesser forms of life that are essentially mechanical beins using biological components. Bacteria and the like act solely on instinct, and are incapable of sentient observation. We are left with a small collection of animals, including (but not limited to) humans. However, all life dies, and we have no way of knowing what occurs after death, since anyone who has experienced it is necessarily unable to describe it to others. All physical connections to the 'real' world we live in are severed at death, the body eventually destroyed, so it is fairly safe to say that any existence that may occur after death is unrelated to this world except (pssibly) in one's own memory and other mental changes. -more- |
| Solistus |
| -cont- However, we have no way of knowing whether or not the changes made to one's mind, such as forming memories and learning, affect anything, or whether such an effect would be positive or negative. Our total ignorance means that the only thing we can definitely ascribe importance to is the physical world. Without being able to reasonably connect any concept in the physical world to any 'more important' afterlife, we can only assign purpose to the effects our actions have on this world. Since the only value of this world is its relation to sentient forms of life, but we don't know if or how this matters, we can do nothing but live for this life, the only concrete, understandable part of our existence. This leads to the conclusion that we may as well enjoy this life, since we have no way of knowing how to impact any other state of being, or if such a state exists. It may not be a bad idea to learn as much as possible while we're at it, and common sense dictates that cooperating with society improves the average condition of life, so the practical result of these surmisings is thus: Enjoy life, and let others enjoy their's. In the interest of meeting the 5 word maximum, I will rephrase it: Live happily. Make others happy. And the religious groups always say that atheism leads to immoral, selfish behavior.... how pessimistic of them to say that man can only be good if threatened with eternal damnation (and even that doesn't stop many of them). |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| Could you repeat the question? |
| Jack |
| Hi! Changing, trying, going home. |
| RajTheGuru |
| brush your teeth |
| Rajtheguru |
| brush your teeth, floss well |
| Rajtheguru |
| mine should have been "minumum effort, maximum results" |
| Gabe |
| Two unoriginal favorites: "I am that I am." and "I have a big stick" (said softly) Change is the only constant. |
| Aaron |
| Striving for things I like |
| T4emplar513 |
| Eat. Sleep. Sex. Taxes. Death. |