Meaning and values and experience…
so when people ask me what I do on my off days, I say, I study
philosophy… after they are done looking at me like I’m crazy…
they always, ALWAYS ask, what is the meaning of life?
It would take a whole another post to wonder why people ask
that particular question, but anyway, my answer depends on
how much I really want to engage… most of the time, I don’t…
and so I will give a generic answer like, the meaning of life is whatever
you make of it… and I run, because I really don’t want to engage anymore…
occasionally, if the person seems like they are asking a honest question,
I will go into further depth and say…if you look at animals and we are
an animal, it seems that from an evolutionary standpoint, there is no other
meaning outside of the continuation and perpetuation of the species…
now this is a species meaning, individually, we create our own meaning
outside of this continuation of the species… we have no great individual
meaning outside of our perpetuating the species…so we have a two track
meaning… species wide to continue the species and individually, whatever
we want…traveling or studying or making rugs whatever…
but if you think about it… what is the meaning of life?
we have experiences and we draw “meaning” from those experiences…
but what really happens? the enlightenment period point was
“How are we suppose to live” both individually and collectively
as a cultural and a society… we are suppose to be tolerant and
not superstitious, wary of authority, open minded, reasonable…
your basic “liberal” idea’s…how we are suppose to live as individuals
and as a society…
we have experiences and how do we draw meaning from them?
we have an experience and we give that experience some value…
then we compare the value we learn from that experience to other
experiences and we then either change or modify or keep the value…
for example, I have experience people who lie… I have learned
from my experience with people that the value I like is honesty…
it is a value that has value both individually and as a society…
and the older I get, the more I value honesty… with each experience
I learn the value of honesty… for me, the honesty of experiences
with people give me the meaning… I gain meaning from the
interaction I have with people who are honest… honesty creates
meaning… value creates meaning of experiences…so I experience,
then I create some value to that experience then I understand the
meaning…so the path to meaning lies first with some experience,
then I attach some value to that experience and then I gain some meaning
from that experience…with each experience… we can then test the
value in question… for example, with each experience, I can see the value
of honesty and that gives each experience more meaning…
from values we reach meaning… and value are tested every day
in our experiences… what values work in what experiences and
we then refine each value in light of our experiences and from that
refinement, we reach meaning or ever new meaning…
we see from our experiences that love is of more meaning then
hate if we react from hate with each experience, then the experience
will not end well, but if we use the value of love with each experience,
then the matter will end much better… that is how we can
and understanding of experiences and values and meaning…
they each support each other… we have experiences, then we
give some value to that experience and then by repeated experiences,
we see the value of that value and then we also see the meaning of that
value…
experiences, values and meaning…
Kropotkin