Appreciating Life

[Microcosm]

Maybe this will broaden the outlook of life for some people. Who knows. Anyways, is life pointless(Life on Earth, anyways)? Unless you are religious and believe that your soul is an immortal being, you can probably come to the conclusion that we will all be gone someday. Whether it is billions of years from now when our own Sun kills us all off, or we end up killing ourselves off as the result of some crazy World War III deal, it will happen eventually. That being said, are our lives worthless? Are we pointless? Are we just intellectual beings observing a universe that will destroy us all? Probably. Still, is it possible that all we are is just a series of complex chemical reactions floating on a rock in the middle of space that just so happened to have the perfect circumstances for us to live and thrive on it? There are so many factors that come into effect that I really don't know what to believe any more. What do you guys think about all this? Should we take time in appreciating our lives and enjoying ourselves to a world that is going to end? A world in which all the discoveries that our human race could some day be obliterated into nothing?

Bonus thoughts: Galactic human expansion
Humans are already prepping for our journey to work towards inhabiting Mars. I think it is definitely a possibility. Also, who says that in 200 years we can't go further than Mars? Maybe we will develop a way to efficiently transport masses of humans across the universe. The only problem is that this is an outlandish thing to say. We as humans are the kings of nature on this planet, but nature outside of our atmosphere? All we've got right now is the Moon, and the Moon doesn't have much use to us other than being a key part in keeping time and such. What I'm saying is that it would be quite difficult to really live on the Moon. I suppose you could maybe pull it off, but who knows. That's just my rant on our expansion.

TLDR, I know. Thoughts?

[Gamma Male]

Life has no objective meaning or purpose, because meaning and purpose imply intent and there was no intent behind the coming into existence of humans(probably), and there's not really any reason we need to exist. Now, that isn't to say that life is pointless or that there's no meaning behind life, because the key word here is objective. Your life can still have meaning, it's just up to you to come up with it and decide what you want your life to be about yourself. I've always thought this, but it's just recently come to my attention that this position is called existential nilhism. Not to be confused with moral nilhism or epistemological nilhism, which are two separate philosophies that I do not subscribe to.

Now, some people find this position "depressing", but I completely disagree. I think the fact that we each get to decide the meaning of our own lives is infinitely more satisfying than everyone having some preset or already decided purpose, like robots on an assembly line.

But then again, if it's true that we don't have any free will, which I don't believe we do, then you could argue that even if we do decide our own meanings, it's not really us deciding them, because all of our decisions and thoughts are determined by previous states of the universe, and so we really DO have predetermined meanings to our life, because we decide those meanings, and the universe "decides" how we'll decide our meanings. :lol:

Thanks for making a thread on philosophy. I wish more people here were interested in it. Politics debates get really boring after a while, especially when almost everyone here agrees on everything. -_-

And hey, if anyone here is interested in epistemology or ethics or metaphysics, feel free to ask me questions and stuff. I'm always up for explaining why we have no free will(hard determinism), or why it's immoral to eat animals(veganism), or why we can't really know that the sun exists(sopolism). :)

[Lovelife090994]

Life has purpose. The issue is that we have to find it and while we find life's meaning and live and interact we have given it purpose. The purpose of life to be thankful for everyday you can breathe since not all share that luxury. Life on Earth or elsewhere, the purpose is simply able to breathe another day.

Life has no objective meaning or purpose, because meaning and purpose imply intent and there was no intent behind the coming into existence of humans(probably), and there's not really any reason we need to exist. Now, that isn't to say that life is pointless or that there's no meaning behind life, because the key word here is objective. Your life can still have meaning, it's just up to you to come up with it and decide what you want your life to be about yourself. I've always thought this, but it's just recently come to my attention that this position is called existential nilhism. Not to be confused with moral nilhism or epistemological nilhism, which are two separate philosophies that I do not subscribe to.

Now, some people find this position "depressing", but I completely disagree. I think the fact that we each get to decide the meaning of our own lives is infinitely more satisfying than everyone having some preset or already decided purpose, like robots on an assembly line.

All life has meaning and value, read my post. Life is not something that is to be wasted or viewed as worthless. Even while depressed I know life has a purpose. It's just hard to fulfill sometimes.
But then again, if it's true that we don't have any free will, which I don't believe we do, then you could argue that even if we do decide our own meanings, it's not really us deciding them, because all of our decisions and thoughts are determined by previous states of the universe, and so we really DO have predetermined meanings to our life, because we decide those meanings, and the universe "decides" how we'll decide our meanings. :lol:

Thanks for making a thread on philosophy. I wish more people here were interested in it. Politics debates get really boring after a while, especially when almost everyone here agrees on everything. -_-

And hey, if anyone here is interested in epistemology or ethics or metaphysics, feel free to ask me questions and stuff. I'm always up for explaining why we have no free will(hard determinism), or why it's immoral to eat animals(veganism), or why we can't really know that the sun exists(sopolism). :)

All life has purpose, value, meaning, and structure. I doesn't matter what order you are, you still have life where others may have none. Diet and lifestyle are irrelevant in this. The purpose of life is something we humans try to find, but it truth is simple; just to live and breath everyday is a gift. Not everyone was blessed or lucky enough to live another day. And eating whatever shouldn't hurt that because then you have to have a talk with Mother Nature.

[Gamma Male]

Life has purpose. The issue is that we have to find it and while we find life's meaning and live and interact we have given it purpose. The purpose of life to be thankful for everyday you can breathe since not all share that luxury. Life on Earth or elsewhere, the purpose is simply able to breathe another day.



All life has purpose, value, meaning, and structure. I doesn't matter what order you are, you still have life where others may have none. Diet and lifestyle are irrelevant in this. The purpose of life is something we humans try to find, but it truth is simple; just to live and breath everyday is a gift. Not everyone was blessed or lucky enough to live another day. And eating whatever shouldn't hurt that because then you have to have a talk with Mother Nature.

I agree that life has purpose and meaning, but only when we give ot purpose and meaning. What I meant it that there's no inherent, automatic, objective meaning. The only "meaning" life has is that which we give it.


And this thread is about existentialism and metaphysics, not veganism. So I'll just respond to the pm you gave me if you wanna discuss it.

[Vlerchan]

Politics debates get really boring after a while, especially when almost everyone here agrees on everything. -_-
Not all that related but: this.

I'm starting to consider posing as a conservative in order to get some debate going.

oor why it's immoral to eat animals(veganism).
I'm also good for discussing morality c:

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On topic: What Gamma Male said.

[Elvalight]

I'm Christian, so I believe in life after death, but putting that aside I think life has as much meaning as you give it. I'm thinking of writing a psychological story someday with a character who lives in a world with an actual meaning, but has none herself.
Life is what you make it. You decide who you love and hate, who you'll be and what you live for. Life on another planet is thrilling, yet sad to think we'll probably die before anything changes. But that's fine. Simply looking around one can tell the world is changing. And whether we live to see something like that, you can bet we'll live through things that shape our society and minds.

[Miserabilia]

A point in that sense is something made up by humans in the first place; since it's not objective anyway, the only point to life is the point the living thing decides it is which is what's so beautiful about it.

As for intergalactic human expansion, there are theoretical vehicles to go faster than the speed of light, which could get humans to the nearest earth like planets; it is however, mostly pointless to move to an unfriendly planet like mars, it would probably just waste our time money material and energy.
I mean, it would be neat, but it woldn't achieve us anything.

And a vehicle faster than light would require tremendous energy (it's normaly impossible but some theorize bending spacetime or something, I don't really remember), but we're still not near to building it.

With the fastest space vehicle we can actualy build right now in practice, it would still take thousands of years to reach the nearest habitable earth like planet.

There is one pretty cool thing though; we can't freeze humans without killing them (it's pretty much impossible),
but we can however, freeze embryos.

Think about it; interstellar travel would take so long that the humans aboard would die before reaching the planet.
Maybe they could have children, but it would take many generations and humans, especialy young ones in strange situations have a tendency to mess things up.

Frozen embryos could be shot off into space, in a capsule, with robot technology that will sense when they are on the right planet, drop them there, and then let the embryos develop.
When they are babies, the real problem arises; they have to be raised.

So untill we can make robots that are intelligent enough to properly raise children, there really aren't any options yet.

Sorry long story, just typing away :lol: