141–150 of 223 posts
The first one is gaining just enough money that I can ponder the meaning of life. The second one is pondering the meaning of life.
I’m mostly just interested in the first one. That peace of mind is peace, and that’s good enough value from the treasure trove of value from the meaning of life for me. “Money isn’t everything but not having it is” - Kanye
> I've spent my whole life trying to find my purpose I've always been puzzled at how so many people expect to find "purpose". Nobody has "purpose". You weren't placed on Earth for a reason. You only exist due to the luck of your parents getting laid. And quite frankly, 99.9% of the population will be unremarkable, even if you restrict that 99.9% to first-world countries. I don't expect to have an impact on the world…
If we keep ourselves within the physical domain, experimentally there is the documentation of a beginning to physical causes that we can observe, and an ordering to such causality which demonstrates its continuum in movement to this present position where I am overwhelmingly purposeful, because I am able to reason my ends which are to give people greater limits of happiness - which begins with making efforts at providing security to families so they can form their own purposeful lives.
Unless you are to claim that reasoning, such as mathematically, is a mistake? But how can that be true?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m mostly just interested in the first one. That peace of mind is peace, and that’s good enough value from the treasure trove of value from the meaning of life for me. “Money isn’t everything but not having it is” - Kanye
> “Money isn’t everything but not having it is” - Kanye The thing is returns start diminshing faster than people realize. Once you get yourself housed, fed and clothed its much more of a hamster wheel than people are often willing to admit to themselves, at the expense of their own happiness.
I wrote this back when I was 18, in response to the question “what kind of life do you want to live?” but I always come back to it. Something about it still resonates with me. “What kind of life do you want to live?” “A life full of color. I couldnt bear to have a boring life: I want my days to be full of joy and pain and laughter and success and failure and broken hearts and love. To be honest I don’t care where I e…
How has that worked out for you?
That being said, I'm getting to the age where I think I'm ready to settle down a bit: this philosophy I think is most useful if you're young or lost and also don't have much responsibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such an insipid argument. If we entertain the idea of a Creator and try to make logical sense of the world I think we'd find pretty quickly that it isn't as simple as "make suffering impossible". What does that mean? What are the constraints? A few solutions in no particular order: Don't create the world in the first place, attractive only to nihilists. Make cruelty on the part of humans impossible, easy to do withou…
I'll entertain your idea that god can't / shouldn't stop humans being cruel because of free will blah blah. Ok, god was powerful enough to create the world, why did they feel the need to also create mosquitos? or cancer? Why do they use their power to make a Hollywood actor win an oscar (oh they didn't? That's not what the actor claims. Who knows their god better?) but not use it to stop a young child being hit by a…
The first one is gaining just enough money that I can ponder the meaning of life. The second one is pondering the meaning of life.
I’m mostly just interested in the first one. That peace of mind is peace, and that’s good enough value from the treasure trove of value from the meaning of life for me. “Money isn’t everything but not having it is” - Kanye
Here's a question that goes out to everybody: what happens if what you love can't bring you money? Either because it's not lucrative in the capitalist world, or because you won't be able to get good enough at it (e.g. you fell in love with the violin at age 45)...
I recommend consulting the poets, and in particular, John Prine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what did you two end up doing? I'm 52, and work is in a neat little compartment. It's not great, but it's not soul sucking, and has good PTO and a pension and financially everything's grand and on-track...but work and my career is no longer where I draw value. I could easily see finishing my career here, and I could also see having another job before retirement. (And, I could see retiring ASAFP if I could get the…
In my case, I am working on a project with a small NPO (Nonprofit 501c3). I'm the lone developer of a fairly ambitious iOS/iPadOS app that mixes a simple social graph with a geographic database. It's coming along great. Been at it for about a year and a half (over two years, if you count the backend I wrote -over ten, if you count the geographic DB, which I also wrote).
Building useful software for an ngo that works in poor African countries and wouldn’t be able to afford an engineering team is what I want to do, not binge watch Netflix from my sofa.
NGO I mentioned: https://mindleaps.org
> I've spent my whole life trying to find my purpose I've always been puzzled at how so many people expect to find "purpose". Nobody has "purpose". You weren't placed on Earth for a reason. You only exist due to the luck of your parents getting laid. And quite frankly, 99.9% of the population will be unremarkable, even if you restrict that 99.9% to first-world countries. I don't expect to have an impact on the world…
I believe life and work have purpose. I think we should work hard and enjoy what we have. Not compare ourselves to others as you say.
I don't think death is the end. I think my work is to help look after this rock and contribute to society.
I think I need some framework beyond my own head to make sense of life, work and death.
As a younger man I would have said I have faith in Jesus and what's the harm if I am wrong?
I don't think like this anymore. I have journeyed with the teachings of Jesus for 30 years and look forward to meeting the man himself.