"extravert" - lol!
Living a Meaningful Life
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#321) Imagine yourself on dying bed - what would you regret/be proud of in your past life? Strive to go that way. 2) Bring good to humanity, and don't do evil. If nothing else, if raising kids, be a good parent and role model - don't bring more unbalanced, fucked up, childhood-issue-riddled people into this world. Too many of those around already.
It is foolish to optimize your entire life just to feel a certain way in the last 5 minutes.
From brief exposure to various death-bed regrets, I get the impression that people generally regret what they didn't do. I.e. if one had a family-focused life, they'll regret not doing anything useful. If they worked hard to help their community or the world, they'll regret not spending enough time on relationships or not starting a family. Etc.
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#33This article silently assumes that a "meaningful life" means: - making good choices of the projects you work on - making those projects succeed, or at least ensure pushing them forward So it reduces this broad topic "meaningful life" to the aspects of personal time management, project management and motivation management. In short, the article appears to be very work-centric (but including paid work as well as volunt…
Not so surprising, since most people enjoy the satisfaction of having their plans work out, achieving goals and so on - and consumerism, the dominant 'philosophy' of western liberalism, is all about the accumulation of satisfying experiences. Of course, this doesn't sound all that great when it's reduced to its bare bones. That's why extremist ideologues often find great political success by promoting a stark message…
I think there is a lot of truth in your comment. But I also noticed that are drawing connections between things and presenting them as evident and exclusive, apparently without thinking about other effects. For example you say
> danger is highly correlated with sexual arousal for evolutionary reasons - hence the epidemic of rape during wartime
I doubt the premise. But more than that, doubt that the epidemic of rape is really dominantly caused by fear-induced sexual arousal. The much more likely explanation is that in war, traumatized men with weapons who haven't had sex in a long time meet women that hold no power against them. On top of that, rape often goes unpunished or is expected.
All of these are better explanations than yours.
This is just an example for the issue I have with your way of reasoning.
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's reassuring since it doesn't appear to be an argument for eugenics at all.
It is. If I read the great-grandparent correctly, violence is only needed as an outlet because the majority of humans don't have a particular combination of attributes; therefore, one solution to that brand of inevitable violence, is to artificially select for precisely those attributes.
What is wrong with you?
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#35Given a certain background of assumptions about meaningfulness, the article offers up some sufficiently plausible tactics. The assumptions though lean heavily on values unique to this particular civilisation. With its value-free description of merely individual pet 'projects', I suspect (but can't of course know) that it would be incomprehensible to the vast majority of humans that have ever lived.
Given how rapidly our planet's ecosystems are collapsing under that same civilisation's depredations, this might be an unwise hostage to fortune.
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is foolish to optimize your entire life just to feel a certain way in the last 5 minutes.
From brief exposure to various death-bed regrets, I get the impression that people generally regret what they didn't do. I.e. if one had a family-focused life, they'll regret not doing anything useful. If they worked hard to help their community or the world, they'll regret not spending enough time on relationships or not starting a family. Etc.
Sounds a lot like the "everyone hates their hair". Like, people with blonde wants to be red, curly to straight, and so forth.
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#37If anyone's interested, there's a great book called Designing Your Life [1] which delves more deeply into the basic concept from this piece (identify what's most important to you and measure your progress toward those goals). It's based on a Stanford course of a similar name, and is an excellent read.
1. https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyf...
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's reassuring since it doesn't appear to be an argument for eugenics at all.
It is. If I read the great-grandparent correctly, violence is only needed as an outlet because the majority of humans don't have a particular combination of attributes; therefore, one solution to that brand of inevitable violence, is to artificially select for precisely those attributes.
You seem to forget that the act of selecting is an act of violence by itself.
Re: Living a Meaningful Life
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine yourself on dying bed Do people really do retrospectives of their lives on their death beds? Seems like a really odd thing to do during final hours of life. I am sure everyone no matter how meaningful their lives are, is going to have regrets. I just hope I am mentally well enough during my final days to enjoy it, not do an inventory of regrets vs accomplishments.
And physically well enough to exact revenge on those that wronged me. Edit: That came out much darker than I meant it to.
Holding on to resentment until your last days seems unlikely to be correlated much with what most people would think of as a 'good' life.