questions without answers

or i could just do as i did, and point out that the question doesn’t make sense. there is no god deciding when it’s our time. people don’t die because they’re finally ready for a higher level of consciousness. there is no “why” like that. people die because the conditions for living are no longer being met. “People die to remind us that we are still living” HAHAHAHA that’s ridiculous.

It makes sense to other people.

and so far none of those people have given a coherent, sensible answer to the “why?” so…it still doesn’t make sense.

I don’t honestly get the impression you’ve even tried to understand. No worries.

i don’t think you’re trying to understand me, so you’re subject to your criticism of me as well. if you say i shouldn’t dismiss his ideas without trying to understand it, then you should treat me the same, unless you’re a hypocrite of course. so try to understand where i’m coming from, and explain to me why i’m wrong.

I have already tried: I think you’re being overly literal and rigid in your interpretation of what the question means and ignoring why it’s asked (although not how it’s asked :slight_smile: ). It’s not a formal logic class.

You even admit that it’s “your paradigm on viewing the world”, which makes your rigidity in the matter (and mockery of those with other paradigms) seem all the more arrogant. You can’t see anyone else providing valid answers, and dismiss the answers that have been offered. Yet if you gave your literalist answer to someone asking the sort of questions in the OP in that context, they’d be dismissed just as you dismiss others. There’s a complete lack of empathy or self-criticism, no consideration of the paradigms others might have, as far as I can see.

I understand that you want to strip everything down, keep it simple, and come up with the definitive answers. But you haven’t, in my opinion, and it seems you don’t want to consider that possibility.

that’s not an explanation of why i’m wrong. that’s an explanation of why i might be wrong. i’m not asking for you to explain to me why i might be wrong, i’m asking for you to explain to me specifically why i am wrong.

it’s like if we did a math test, and you were the teacher and i was the student, and i put a wrong answer and you marked it wrong, and then i asked you to explain to me why it’s wrong, but instead of explaining the correct way to do the question, you told me, “oh you’re wrong probably because you didn’t get enough sleep in the morning.” that’s not the kind of answer i’m looking for. i want to know HOW TO BE RIGHT, and you’re not providing that.

The whole maths analogy shows you’re still thinking rigidly, analytically. I’m not a teacher, you’re not a student, there’s not an answer that I possess and you have to demonstrate that you know or can calculate.

I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you’re saying, only that what you’re saying is not an answer relevant to the question. You can be right in what you say (or not) and not answer the question.

Q: What’s 2 + 2?
A: an addition operation.

if you’re going to tell me i’m wrong, then surely there’s an answer you posses that i don’t, and i’m asking you to teach me that. that’s what’s going on here. i’m asking you to teach me.

Seems to me that this whole “how and why” thing is about looking for purpose… a goal…

Because that’s how we humans operate… or at least, that’s the economic way of thinking about how we humans operate… saves us the truble of having to know the workings of our brains in detail… and if it works, it works…

We know we die because of how our bodies are built, and we know our bodies are built this way largely thanks to random mutation and natural selection… so when you ask “why” you’re helping yourself to the assumption that there’s some kind of goal seeking mind behind evolution and it’s development that indended for us to come into existence and die… and now you want to know what the purpose of that mind is… ???

Are you fucking kidding me???

you’re going to make shit up and then ask questions about the crap YOU, YOURSELF, MADE UP… ???

Go ahead and invent a purpose for the mind you invented… what the hell!!!

“I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you’re saying”

“I’m not a teacher, you’re not a student”

Seriously, are you ignoring what I write, or are you trolling?

Your answer is not the answer the original questioner in context was looking for. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I know wrong answers. This is not some contradiction or hypocrisy or sophistry. There are very, very many questions I don’t know the answer to. But for each one, there are many more answers that I know do not answer the question.

you’re saying i interpreted the question wrong, are you not?

I don’t know how you interpreted it, but I think you answer it in a way that wouldn’t satisfy someone moved to ask it. I’ve said (or tried to say) several times that I don’t have the answer that would do so.

I think this is an interesting point. But I don’t think necessarily you have to assume a directing mind for meaning or purpose - although many people will do so, of course. You could also see it as questioning how to work negatively-perceived events into your own self-made meaning and purpose consistently.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to come to terms with death… but trying to do so by being intellectually dishonest about it, seems cheap… don’t ask “why do we die”… ask “how should we deal with death?”…

But to take it further, if we are honest about the physical facts and accept the narratives that we create are really our own homegrown intersubjective truths that we use to make sense of the world, I don’t think it’s intellectually dishonest to say (e.g.) “People die to remind us that we are still living”. I wouldn’t recommend this particular example as, for among other reasons, it confusingly applies intentionality to the dead, but it’s not a religiously-based abdication of truth, just a narrative we supply to ‘place’ death in a meaningful context to our life. It’s certainly not a causal claim appropriate to a “how” question, though, and the point I’ve been trying to make is that it doesn’t need to be.

Edit: I think actually that that echoes what you say.

I see no problem and find myself in perfect agreement with what you just said… so long as it is understood the way you meant it… the danger is, of course, that it might invite misunderstanding.

Knowledge in what sense? If you have a list of things that bring you a lot of fulfillment a greater knowledge of them might bring you even more.

Zorba has it both ways. He lives his life and then, from time to time, he contemplates it. Basil, however, is there to find a new answer. And there is never only one.

The problem, of course, is this: In living our lives we sometimes smash into the lives of others. Then we have to figure out the least dysfuntional way in which to do so. And here there is never one answer either.

And if human existence is a blink of an eye on the scale that is evolution, just think how insignificant it must be when the scale is of cosmological proportions.

But everything is necessarily linked to the bigger questions I suppose is where my point was leading. You can’t search for knowledge but consciously put a cap on it and go ‘that’s enough’, curiosity is too powerful.