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The Meaning of Life

sivers.org

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Re: The Meaning of Life

#3

Post by sp332 »

cliveowen wrote: post #2

It's just a subjective take on the age-old question that doesn't add anything to what you already know from philosophy classes.

True, unless you didn't take philosophy classes, or if you just memorized what a bunch of other people said without really thinking about applying it to your own life.

Re: The Meaning of Life

#4

Post by spking »

For the vast majority of people, constantly thinking about the meaning of life and dwelling on the fact that you're going to die seems like a recipe for anxiety. Trying to adopt a set of contradictory rules to follow would likely only compound that anxiety. To summarize the formula laid out by the author:

1. Remember, you're going to die!

2. Plan for the future, but not too much or you'll have multiple divorces and no friends.

3. Think about the present, but not too much or you'll end up poor and unhappy.

4. Think about the past to remember how far you've come.

5. Only do work where you are in "the flow", so you can be happy when you're dying (remember, you're going to die!)

I'm not saying these activities are pointless or bad in isolation, I just think it's unrealistic and generally not practical to have all that rattling around in your head while you make decisions about how to spend your time. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride. Be nice to others, find interesting things to work on and have some fun. If you spend all your time worried about whether your current activity and state of mind is somehow optimized for achieving the meaning of life, you have a good chance of being overwhelmed and paralyzed by it.

Re: The Meaning of Life

#5

Post by marcus_holmes »

Nice to be reminded of this. I'm researching Stoic philosophy, and a core question is "what is your life about?". Nice to be reminded that any meaning in my life is what I choose to place on it, not what it intrinsically has.

Similar: the value of something is what someone will pay for it. Intrinsic value is a mirage.

Re: The Meaning of Life

#7

Post by hawkharris »

I went to a debate about the existence of God a few months ago. Dan Barker, an atheist who has contributed to the Daily Show, had the winning quote:

"There is no meaning of life -- and that's a great thing: it means that there's meaning in life."

The quote is poignant regardless of your religious affiliation. Barker was saying that the meaning of life is intensely personal. Each of us invents it through our own experiences.

Re: The Meaning of Life

#8

Post by nnx »

"People at the end of their life who claimed to be the happiest with their life were the ones who had spent the most time in this state of flow."

I can certainly believe this.

If you are not familiar with the concept of "flow state" (Samadhi in Hindu cultures [1]), I'd recommend reading the wonderful "Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art" by Stephen Nachmanovitch [2] over the more famous "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi

[2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0874776317

Re: The Meaning of Life

#9

Post by Uncompetative »

hawkharris wrote: post #7

I went to a debate about the existence of God a few months ago. Dan Barker, an atheist who has contributed to the Daily Show, had the winning quote: "There is no meaning of life -- and that's a great thing: it means that there's meaning in life." The quote is poignant regardless of your religious affiliation. Barker was saying that the meaning of life is intensely personal. Each of us invents it through our own exper…

That is so much shorter than what I posted on Derek Siver's site it is embarrassing:

Born at the end of the '60s just before Christmas I was named after a saint. Later I found out that Santa Claus was largely invented by Coca-Cola to sell sodas and all the unlikely, but commonly held, beliefs that he was omniscient and omnipresent for at least one night of the year was seriously undermined.

Then it was only a short jump to realise that Jesus was probably all made up too, that he wasn't the son of God and, by extension, there might well not be a God.

I became a devout atheist at the age of seven - by 'devout' I mean that were there to be a Rapture as some believe that there will be, I will consider the 'proof' of the second coming to be symptomatic of hallucination, possibly a spiked water supply, and refuse to believe in God because I prefer to live my life that way without one.

The question "What is the meaning of life?" had no easy answers in 'forgiveness', or 'love thy neighbour', or the promise of an afterlife for those who did good deeds as if we were on Santa's omniscient list of good children to recieve presents. So I used logic and logic alone to arrive at the definitive objective answer no matter how it may seem uncomfortable to my sensibilities to reveal it.

The truth is, that to ask this question objectively you have to necessarily be totally objective about life and to be objective about anything you have to be outside of it with a detached point of view. With 'life, the universe and everything' with a whole 'philosophical universe of discourse' included in the set of things being considered I had to immediately dismiss all instrinsic attempts at an answer as not definitively objective due to their lack of detachment and inescapable subjective bias.

Realising that I needed to be outside the 'universe of discourse' to properly pose the question I saw what the difficulty with answering this had been all this time...

...'meaning' is part of the 'universe of discourse' and it not available if outside of it.

Consequently, all claims to a definitive meaning of life are erroneous in logic as an objective answer cannot be found. It is not so much that life is meaningless and we should all be nihilistic atheists, but that we are free to live any way we please as there is no wrong answer - as there is no definitive objective ULTIMATE answer!

Every way you wish to give your life meaning is equally valid for your life, with the caveat that this is an ephemeral guideline you choose to adopt not an eternal truth - actually, I like the way this same argument was presented "in reverse" by Mr Sivers as whenever I have posted about this in various fora in the past I have felt that I've come across as overly alienating by hitting them with the cold truth first instead of pandering to their intimately held, but unfortunately subjective, beliefs. Putting it all the other way around encourages more people to read on and seems more life affirming - even if I know, in truth, that life is without extrinsic meaning.

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