There is nothing natural about the question of the meaning of life. We had to be taught to ask the question, and we had to be taught to accept that its answer thereby defines our desire to live. Like the up-selling stereo salesman, it is the art of those teaching the meaning of life to teach us to expect what isn’t there. And just as the want for more bass was created by the first salesman to attract customers, the first of life’s meanings was taught by the first guru to attract followers. These teachers, these salesmen, are self-serving: they teach that the question is natural and necessary only so that they may provide their answer. “The human ear craves more bass; the solution: my product.”
It is too late today to undo what these teachers of the purpose of existence have done: we ask of life that it provide meaning where that question is unnatural. And let us be clear what unnatural here means: that these are the wrong questions. Meaning cannot be given, and so the question misses the point entirely: it must be created!
Even though we no longer believe in priests, we still crave only what a priest can provide.
What came first the wise-man or the questions one needs to be wise to answer?
People probably asked about life etc, as opposed to being given the desire [like; you need bass]. Then as more specific questions arise, someone thinks about them and finds an answer or some manner of an answer acceptable to the questioner.
Some people are genuine others are not, we cannot attribute either part to the whole, no?
Its probably the most natural thing in the world to a creature capable of such questioning, otherwise how is that aspect of thinking to be expressed ~ and hence even exist in the brain to begin with!
quetzalcoatl: I am contending that the question of the meaning of the whole of existence did not exist until one endeavored to teach the meaning of existence. It was only after such teaching became commonplace that we expect life itself to provide us meaning. To be clear: my concern here is not the act of questioning as such, but rather the act of questioning the meaning of life as such.
Sure but one of our main concerns from the outset is death ~ predators etc, and when we see someone get killed we naturally wonder what happens to that person. Such infers the very question of; ‘the meaning of life’ and so it is one of our primary questionings.
Equally another primary questioning is concerned with our everyday habitat, one looks at the sky and sees the heavens, and so questions; what are those lights, what’s beyond those lights.
Then we eat some magic mushrooms and pretty patterns emerge, astrology is born etc, etc.
I agree, though with the caveat that we can’t choose whatever meaning we want. I think we discover meaning as much as we create it. It’s the same process.
Good topic. In a rich life (full of spirit) the very conception of meaning may be derived from the life, if such an idea arises at all. And by such a spirit many different meanings may be conceived even at once - an overflowing spirit can not think logically in such terms, because the multitude of meanings rising out of his physiology into his intellect would drive him mad if he were to take them all seriously, as if they were some kind of science. Meaning here is an object of play, an experiment of the mind with itself (a relatively conscious part experiments on a lesser conscious part) with the aim to discover ways to influence the subject, to arrange it, in order to fit the quantum of power that it is. So there, no meaning is alike. The Jesus meaning - well let’s not go there quite yet.
The purpose of meaning-giving (that is actually all there is, valuing) is to manifest the energetic tension of the soul (I think that “the soul of” means “the life of”), the highest meaning is the one in which our expression (will-affect) finds its most (… powerful, beautiful, terrible…? ) realization in experience. As Quetzalcoatl mentioned some such experiments have resulted in magnificent artworks, such as that primordially misguided science of the orbits, astrology - a wildly ambitious, indeed psychedelic form in which man successfully established a continuum of meaning to the physical universe. The belief is the actual miracle on which the system of miraculization is built.
A poor spirit (or an impoverished one, beaten down by life) must project meaning (or it must be dictated to him) in order to understand why he is alive at all. If he fails to do this, entropy (the death-drive) consumes him.
As far back as i can remember i asked my self, “Why am i me, what I am, where I am, when I am, as I am, Why am I not in some other place or body or time with the same consciousness?”
To tug on the golden thread that Abstract is already pulling on, don’t we naturally ask questions like this beginning at a young age? Examples: Why is the sky blue? Can I have a sip of what grampa is drinking? Why should I believe what you say, dad? Why should I follow what you say, dad?
I believe Aristotle, in an off hand way, puts it rather plainly, “Man, by nature, has a desire to know, evidence of this is the delight we take in our senses…” There is a sort of aesthetic play when to comes to asking such fundamental questions. Not all of us but, maybe by and large, most of the rationally capable folks take part in this, and do so enthusiastically.
These teachers might have us wonder on wondering instead of going through world of wonder wondering, This later form has an aesthetic playfulness to it. Students should confront their teachers and perhaps think about why one would want them to teach me. “why should I choose this person to teach me? what can they offer me?” This is a basic question of Plato’s Protagoras.
Also, if a teacher never wants to have an open dialogue in class or even in their office then perhaps he isn’t teaching but brainwashing. The ideas that are floating around in class should be bounced around a bit, even polished and tarnished a bit. Philosophy students should be able to test ideas.
I don’t think it was a conspiracy by these teachers. I don’t think they were arguing in bad faith. I think the most likely scenario is some people felt a need, conceptualized it as that question, then they made their need contagious to the rest of the population.
Like any other idea that has spread.
It’s natural.
In fact, the word natural is being incorrectly used here. You’re working off the assumption that what is contrived is unnatural. Even if the original teachers never felt that question and instead sought to use it as a drug, it is still not unnatural, and regardless of it’s origins, it’s genuinely felt now.
Before going too much further into the thread, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions: First of all, how did you arrive at your opening argument? And, is there, to you, a semantic difference between “the meaning of life” and “the purpose of existence?”
Personally, I believe questioning both existence and non-existence (which is another way of interpreting your words) started somewhere back to the time of the Neandertals–and, possibly, before then. There have been discoveries made of burial sites from that era which, if they’re being correctly interpreted, indicate ritual burials and the thought of an afterlife in that tools and/or utensils were buried with the fallen. I also believe the varieties of proto-Homo were a heck of a lot smarter than most modern Homo sapien sapien think. JMO, of course, and not to be delved into in this thread.
Philosophical questions such as these were left to the shamans, elders, tribal wisemen, for sure. Everyone else was too busy with everyday survival to spend the bulk of their time thinking. So questions about the meaning of life or the purpose of existence became ‘religious’ or ‘philosophical’–generally not readily explainable by the rest of the tribe. With the death of God and the rise of science, modern man has deepened the chasm between himself and the metaphysical/transcendental.
Asking that life–existence–provide man reasons for existence, is, of course, unnatural, even silly–but is the ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ of life what science is really looking for? Is science not looking for physical descriptions of life and existence? I know you didn’t bring up science–I did–But doesn’t science underlie your questions?
I see science and philosophy both being asked to provide answers to the meaning and purpose of life/existence–much like the tribal shaman and wisemen were asked when a hunter brought home his friend for burial after a brutal hunt. “Why did this happen to my friend?”
In that sense, I don’t see the question as ‘unnatural.’ It’s simply not within the purview of science to answer it. However, since God’s death, it’s what modern man relies on. What else can he do?
I actually agree with your general sentiment, though. What I disagree on is the way you conceptualize it. As I see it, that need is not necessary. I don’t feel it. When someone died in my past, I never felt the need to ask why, and when someone tried to comfort me by providing an answer to that question, it didn’t do anything to ameliorate the grief.
It is this tolerance for that question, the capacity to live without having to ask it or having an answer for it, that I want to make contagious.
It’s like that episode of futurama where Fry goes back in time and his grampa died - or maybe I should say what he thought was his grandpa, or maybe his actual grandpa until he died and Fry became his own grandpa–. Anyway, in that episode his grandpa is vaporized in a nuclear explosion, and Fry tries to comfort his grandmother (before boning her) by saying…:
Some people can do without the worry of a grand why, just like Mildred can do without having to worry about her fiance coming back as a zombie. Fry, however, probably genuinely feels that worry, and he needs a reassurance.
My contentions that life does not provide us with meaning and that meaning must therefore be created if it is to be at all led to the question: From where did the expectation that life be inherently meaningful arise? My answer to this question is the theory with which I started this thread: that the question was taught by those who could profit from such a teaching, those with the “answer”. This, of course, is philosophical experimentation: I felt it would incite discussion, at the very least. Within this discourse, for me, there is no difference between “the meaning of life” and “the purpose of existence”; thanks for clarifying.
Indeed. I believe these “shamans, elders, tribal wisemen” to be the first teachers of the meaning of existence, the first to have taught the tribe to ask the question, the first to have profited from the question.
I did not mean for science to lurk beneath the surface of my opening post. My concern is the commonplace expectation that life be inherently meaningful. The question “what is the meaning of life” presupposes that life has a meaning at all. And this is a common question. I agree, however, that science isn’t really looking for the meaning of life, but that’s a totally different discussion that I’ll avoid for now.
You agree that the expectation that life be inherently meaningful is silly (or do I misinterpret you?). The question “what is the meaning of life” presupposes such an expectation. It is for this reason that I’ve termed it “unnatural”. Modern man does rely on science, which is, to speak with Nietzsche, merely one more of God’s gruesome shadows, but he does so with the understanding that science be legitimated by some sort of narrative: be it either that with knowledge we grow closer to “understanding” life, or that science will aid in emancipation from corruption, or otherwise. Modern man does not rely on science for science’s sake; it is a replacement for God, after all.
Jakob: Again, your contributions are well-appreciated. I hope to engage some of your ideas here when I have more time.
I find the question “what is the meaning of life” to be commonplace enough, though you’re right: not everyone, by virtue of their being human, necessarily asks the question. However, I’m not sure that your tolerance for the question is correct either. I take issue with the supposition that life is inherently meaningful. It is not. However, I want to “make contagious” the impetus to create that meaning, rather than the “capacity to live without having to ask” the question.
Why? Extrinsic purpose is like an e-cigarette. It’s a replacement, a way of coping with a vice. It deals with the symptoms which produced that need, not their root cause.
Perhaps the fact that there is no seemingly logical explanation by science to suggest the origination of the thought the thing may have originated from a less likely source.
It is odd to think that the idea of meaning of life arose, I can see that, I had similar thoughts, as it seems to presuppose the existence of a giver of meaning or purpose. yet the interesting thing is that the next step i took was to think that what such meant was that it was up to me to define my meaning or purpose. But then I realized that everything i am and live through depends on all other things happening outside of me, and as such I must rely on the exterior for myself, I must not only rely on it, but give unto it to insure fair return. As such it became evident that perhaps I did not have much choice in what I could do, there might have been variance in how, but even then there seemed to be more farsighted ways of helping one’s self through others. And then i began to question not the meaning of life, but what it was that defined all the limitations on how things can be done. That I think would be a better question to ask. Like why is it that there must be space between two things in order for a thing to pass. It seems illogical to work any other way as we are used to this way, but why was it not such that things were such as to logically work otherwise…?
Did the shaman teach the tribe to ask the question or did the tribe (as in my example) ask the shaman to come up with an answer to the question?
I remember studying the RC Catechism for Children, before making my First Communion. One of the first questions (the answers to which we learned by rote, of course) was “Why did God make you?” At 7yrs old, it was a bit more than I was capable of doing to say, “Excuse me, sir, but that question makes some fundamental assumptions that, at this point, I’m not yet interested in nor am I able to answer.” You’ve also made some assumptions in your OP–and some people have disagreed with your assumption that people ask, “What is the meaning of life?”
I don’t agree that the expectation that life be inherently meaningful is silly. I agree that the expectation that life/existence should provide any answer to the question is silly. How can life answer any questions about life, which is the way I read your question?
I apologize for feeling compelled to ask my questions, but I’m not used to the extravagant language so often used by posters in forums such as this. Since I don’t know you, I don’t really always understand the allusions. But I have started to read Nietzche–his Joyous Wisdom–and find him to be quite readable, with a pleasant sense of humor thrown in. I’m making marginal notes, as well.
