Tag Archives: The Meaning of Life.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS : YOU HAVE SO FAR SURVIVED COVID-19 BUT IS THERE A TRUE DEFINITION OF LIFE.

10 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Life.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

 

 

(Three-minute read) 

Life has no meaning but each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.

Life is what separates living things from everything else serving humanity.

“Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have—and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.” Philip Appleman

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” Thomas Merton

“The meaning of life is not to survive but to die.” 

It would be fair to say that Scientists, Philosophers, and religions have spent millennia pondering what it is that makes something alive. In a very literal sense, we do not yet have a meaning for life.

In fact, there are currently over 100 definitions of life.

For instance Nasa ” A self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.”

However the classic borderline case of life is a virus – it’s inert as long as it does not encounter a cell. 

So the decision as to what is alive or dead is where the cut-off point lies with a virus.  

A virus carries DNA and RNA the blueprint for life. They, therefore, exist between the boards of chemistry and life. 

What about life as we do not know it.

It seems obvious that at some level all we see about ourselves, living or otherwise, is merely a manifestation of chemical reactions and the laws of physics.

The chemical reactions occurring for the universe’s first few billion years led inexorably to our teeming world, yet no one would describe them as life. But so what? 

The creation of artificial life is now a fully-fledged branch of science creating new organisms that so far no one has assembled together into a functioning synthetic life form.  

If this was to happen it would redefine what we presently understand or didn’t understand by life. 

We need to get away from our current concept as AI increasingly shapes the human experience, how does this change what it means to be human?

Humanity is in the process of losing something significant.

Algorithms could soon—if they don’t already—have a better idea about what is alive or dead.

As they become more and more predictable, the creatures inhabiting the increasingly AI-mediated world will become less and less like us. 

So to find a working definition for ‘life’ seems to me to have little practical value.

It is estimated that there are 1031 virus particles in the oceans – they vastly outnumber all other organisms on the planet.

Viruses are the most common biological entities on Earth.

Experts estimate there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, and if they were all lined up they would stretch from one side of the galaxy to the other alive or not, viruses are doing rather well!

I would argue that the only satisfactory definition of life, lies in the most critical property of genetic heredity: independent evolution.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: NOW THAT YOU ARE IN LOCK DOWN WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKE LIFE WORTH LIVING?

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Digital age., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Human values., Humanity., Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Religion., Religious Beliefs., Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

 

 

(Five-minute read)

I know it’s a heavy question, but now perhaps it is one of the most important questions we all have to answer in the future. 

It can be tough to notice all the amazing things that life has to offer.

Can we be satisfied with the successful pursuit of love, work, and play?

A fulfilling life can be elusive, as there aren’t any concrete factors that truly determine whether or not a person has truly found happiness. Satisfaction often yields happiness, but even the pursuit is enough to give life meaning.

For me, it is sharing that gives life meaning. 

Active listening by taking your friend’s feelings into account when making a decision and phasing out people who introduce stress or negative feelings out of your life.

The successes of your friends are important and worthy of celebrating.

Get to know them.

Find value in what you do. I.E. finding a job that aligns with your personal passions. It’s important to find a line of work that offers the amount of freedom you feel is necessary and appropriate. Accomplishing something of value.

Obsessing over past failures can’t change what happened. The opinions of others carry only as much weight as you allow them to.

Giving back. Find a cause you are passionate about and donate to it, volunteer your time, or offer your support in some way.

Remember that your strengths are a big part of what makes you great.

Forgiving can be among the hardest things to master, as often it’s the things that hurt the most that are most in need of forgiveness.

Remember, life is always worth living and there are people out there that can help.

It’s about the relationships we create, develop, support and maintain with people, colleagues, friends, and members of our family. Every person we meet adds invaluable experience to our life. Even the most complicated relationships we find ourselves in teaching us something worthwhile.

The answer rests in the ability to create, to dream and to strive to turn those dreams into reality. It’s all about big and small achievements when we prove ourselves being able to push the limits away. It’s about discovering the depths of your unlimited potential. 

By accepting what is going on and what happened, we release ourselves from oppressive judgments and wishes for things to pan out differently.

Enjoy all the little things, and with the time you will discover their profound meaning and that they weren’t little after all.

One thing that makes life more fulfilling and worth living are really connecting with the world around us. Nature. 

Religious faith may be reassuring, but science cannot objectively tell someone whether they should adhere to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or some other religion. It cannot even tell an individual what version of Christianity (Catholic, Baptist, Morman, etc.) or Islam (Shia or Sunni) they ought to adopt. Hence, religion and vague spiritual ideas—such as “everything happens for a reason”—can not provide an evidence-supported basis for living.

But most people, fortunately, can find lots of reasons to value their lives. 

Time does not stand still for anybody so perhaps Boris Johnston Priminster after his Coronavirus experience now realizes that sharing is what makes life go around and not get Brexit done.

One thing that makes life more fulfilling and worth living are really connecting with the world around us. If you consider your most precious memories they are probably with other people when you were doing something beyond your personal satisfaction.

Living a full, meaningful and thriving life comes down to being engaged in the world around us, not in virtual reality.

All human comments appreciated. All lie clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : IS IT LIFE OR DEATH THAT GIVES MEANING TO LIFE.

05 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Humanity., Life.

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

There is no simple answer to this question.

Humans have been put on this earth with the knowledge of self-awareness and the ability to manipulate the environments that they inhabit to a greater extent than any other species on the planet.

Ultimately one must wonder what purpose there is to one’s own existence and define what it means to be.

So before we go any further let’s get a few definitions out-of-the-way.

Philosophers such as Socrates and Plato believed that our purpose in this life was to gain knowledge in preparation for the next life.

Epicurus believed that pleasure is the main goal in life. He did not believe in an afterlife or that a person had a soul that lived forever.

Richard Robinson’s viewpoint: Life Has No Purpose he argues that “there is no god to make up for the limitations of our power” and that man must look after himself and live his life for himself.

James Joyce’s “There is no person in this universe to love us except ourselves”.

“Araby” displays the theme that life has no meaning through the use of setting, characters, symbols, and motifs.

“If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, then he hasn’t got a reason to live.” These were famous words of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“

To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” Friedrich Nietzsche’s articulate definition of life.

However the problem is that every type of human activity has a malignant equivalent.

Like the pursuit of happiness, the accumulation of wealth, the exercise of power, the love of one’s self are all tools in the struggle to survive, they all lead to the pursuing pleasures (hedonism), greed and avarice as manifested in criminal activities, murderous authoritarian regimes and narcissism. 

We create ourselves and that is what life is all about. Not so.

This is vanity not meaning. We struggle to be better than others so we can have the money, the glory, and the luxuries and when we achieve this like Bill Gates we will have to find meaning by doing good deeds.  

A desire to find a higher purpose or meaning keeps people from the possibility that life has no meaning.

Lives that are filled with vanity, which is meaningless, have no meaning other than looking at yourself in the mirror.

These things cause us to think about what we can’t see and even allow us to engage ourselves in questioning the meaning behind our existence and what our purpose is here on earth.

As soon as the caveman progressed to the point where he ceased living in terror of the animals, the weather and all the gods, he started thinking about his life and what it meant. Since the conception of language and the thousands of technical refinements that brought us to the printed page, mankind has written much about this mysterious force.

It is interesting to note that “life” has 44 definitions — one of the most defined words in the world.

Where did we come from?’, `Why are we here?’, `Where are we going?’.

The abstract idea of life cannot be explained by such simple ideas as being animated, breathing, or speaking. Ordinary machines in this century can perform all of these basic functions.

If humanity was not able to say what they were thinking and feeling it would be very hard to create a life. Also if humanity was not able to speak what was on their mind, we might as well be dead.

The most difficult thing in life is finding something worth living for. The second most difficult thing is knowing when you’ve found it.

Maybe you are frustrated and confused when you think about this.

That is good. Frustration is a push on the back, to get you moving, so you will look around and make discoveries.

So we have to examine the nature of meaning itself.

Meaning is by definition the point, or the intended goal.

If life and the universe is some sort of toy or form of entertainment for some prime mover, what would then be the meaning of humans and the universe.

Consider the goals of the deities of various cultures. Some strive for a balance between the forces of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. This balance seems to simply be a choice of the deity, the way he thinks it ought to be.

The concept of a prime mover as a source of the meaning of life is flawed, because in talking about an actual point to absolutely everything, we are simply considering the goals of a being more powerful than ourselves who has chosen one of many possible goals that humans can conceive of.

This is to say that, if a God like this exists, his goal for life and the universe is not necessarily valid as a meaning of life, the universe, and himself.

For instance, the Bible claims that the Christian deity created the universe and placed humans in it that they might be in awe of his power.  If this is so, why is worship the correct response?  The meaning of the universe as created by God is the entertainment of God, but what is the meaning of the larger system containing God and his creations?

Is there a POINT to this?

Is there some kind of logic circuit in the brain that emulates the universe. It is true, then this structure in the brain is truth itself, defined, the pattern of the universe, and we need search no further than ourselves to find a meaning.

So why do we have so much trouble thinking about things that we have never actually encountered, like infinity.

But there can be no singular meaning of life to stand for us all, or even any one of us.  Life is different for us all.  A person’s lifetime is filled with self-examination.

Life and its meaning is far too complex for any human to fully comprehend because it to come from some outside source “‘Everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been”

Up to now we have used logic and reasoning in order to explain why things happen and to advance ourselves.

THIS TRIED AND TESTED METHOD IS NOW BEING REPLACED AS YOU READ WITH AI

( ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)

Trying to put words to the meaning of life is a task of absolute absurdity, as life gives meaning to Life.

For me it’s realizing that the purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. For me, this is a work in progress.

Unfortunately there isn’t anyway for me to figure out whether I am right or wrong so I will leave you with the words of Robert Browning,

“Each life unfulfilled you see,
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy;
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired-been happy.”

In order to create the perfect life things need to be said whether they have meaning or not.

The quandary with defining death is not as abstract and elusive as that of life.

All that we have accomplished, ends.

Then the process begins all over again with the next generation. We are here to reproduce. It has been genetically coded into us.

Is that the meaning of life.?

Interpreting the idea of life in terms death may become something of the past but without death there will be no point in living for eternity.

What are you as an individual contributing to this life? I dare you to press the like button.