Why life is absurd
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
Why life is absurd
1–10 of 148 posts
Re: Why life is absurd
#2the assumption the author makes is that longevity will only bring us more time and that pretty much everything about the human condition will remain the same.
It is tedious to be human. The amount of time dedicated to maintaining one's body even when young and healthy can feel tiresome.
Longevity is not about extending our misery but about finding a way out of these limited meat bags.
Perhaps there is a meaning and the universe is not absurd, maybe our minds are simply too stupid to figure it out. Maybe if we extended our brains, increased our intelligence...
Only time will tell. That's why we need more of it. That's why it's worth putting up with the daily bullshit called living until it reaches the breaking point.
Re: Why life is absurd
#3Absurdity is a relative state. When philosophy starts trying to bullshit with semantics, I completely loose interest. That's this article.
Re: Why life is absurd
#4the assumption the author makes is that longevity will only bring us more time and that pretty much everything about the human condition will remain the same. It is tedious to be human. The amount of time dedicated to maintaining one's body even when young and healthy can feel tiresome. Longevity is not about extending our misery but about finding a way out of these limited meat bags. Perhaps there is a meaning and t…
What makes life so interesting and great in my opinion, are the limitations --and the boundaries of those limitations that people push further and further-- of these meat bags we carry eveywhere with us.
Re: Why life is absurd
#5As someone who believes in Islam this is an extremely thought provoking piece and I love it. It makes you think and question existence. It makes you wonder about what we're doing here and how life would be different if we existing at a different point in time and space. Just such interesting topics for conversation. Life and the universe.
Re: Why life is absurd
#6I couldn't agree more that our humanity places truly absurd limits on our existence. You get, if you're lucky 30-40 years of solid productivity after 20-30 years of training. Maybe enough time to create one or two solid accomplishments before your capacity for thought, and soon enough your capacity for life is extinguished.
Also consider the economic argument. On the one hand, the level of investment experts make in becoming so is squandered by death. And yet, this also levels the playing field for newborns, since you don't have to compete against the guy with 8,000 years of experience.
I think human intelligence hits an asymptote due to mortality. There's only so deep an individual can go, and a limit on how much you can replace depth with breadth.
We enter and exit this world as babes. 100 years is in many ways a pathetic excuse for an existence. Obviously extending that would have to focus on quality not quantity, and has supremely disruptive economic effects (on par with strong AI) but I do not doubt there are great leaps we will take toward this end over the next 500 years.
One nice side-effect of a millennial-scale existence would hopefully be a more macro and less cyclical approach to "current affairs".
Re: Why life is absurd
#7Absurdity is a relative state. When philosophy starts trying to bullshit with semantics, I completely loose interest. That's this article.
Yes, but the author explicitly explores the semantics she pushes in regard to other limitations: our size relative to the universe, our inability to fly, etc. With everything taken into account, it is indeed odd that the thing that seems uniquely absurd is our longevity. Why aren't we perturbed by our lack of gills or our inability to walk to the moon? The point of the article is to explore this absurdity. You knew the game before you clicked the link ('absurd' is right there, in the title). So you can hardly be surprised that you were dealt a relativistic sludge.
Re: Why life is absurd
#8I couldn't agree more that our humanity places truly absurd limits on our existence. You get, if you're lucky 30-40 years of solid productivity after 20-30 years of training. Maybe enough time to create one or two solid accomplishments before your capacity for thought, and soon enough your capacity for life is extinguished. Also consider the economic argument. On the one hand, the level of investment experts make in…
> levels the playing field for newborns
We see the effects of longer, more productive lives already in youth unemployment and property prices. It may not be until the post-boomer generation that we adjust to this. Perhaps there is a historical period where a generation has lived far longer than the few preceding it, from which we can get an idea how society managed?
Re: Why life is absurd
#9I couldn't agree more that our humanity places truly absurd limits on our existence. You get, if you're lucky 30-40 years of solid productivity after 20-30 years of training. Maybe enough time to create one or two solid accomplishments before your capacity for thought, and soon enough your capacity for life is extinguished. Also consider the economic argument. On the one hand, the level of investment experts make in…
The thoughts and actions you have are largely a product of your culture, your position in space-time.
Maybe think in classes instead of individual cases. 100 years is nothing. Wheels within wheels. And larger wheels are turning.
Re: Why life is absurd
#10Absurdity is a relative state. When philosophy starts trying to bullshit with semantics, I completely loose interest. That's this article.
Yes, but the author explicitly explores the semantics she pushes in regard to other limitations: our size relative to the universe, our inability to fly, etc. With everything taken into account, it is indeed odd that the thing that seems uniquely absurd is our longevity. Why aren't we perturbed by our lack of gills or our inability to walk to the moon? The point of the article is to explore this absurdity. You knew t…
Well, to be fair, I thought it might have a little thought provoking content. But no.... just sludge.