What is the point to life?

[dogscoff]

What's life for? Why, it's for figuring out what life is for, of course.

Oh, and to ask someone else is cheating, so you didn't just read this.

[Mephisto]

Seems to me that the question is more about what death is in the end. A wise men once said this about death (beware, rather long):

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give no judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a m an give, O judges , to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true. Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble, wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accUsers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them. Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Apology of Aristoteles, 40c to 42a

[sachmo]

I think the meaning of life is up to the individual. My meaning of life is to try and raise my kids to the best of my ability, and love them without reservation. At least this is the assumption I am operating under, and if my "meaning" is incorrect, it's going to take a lot of effort by someone to change my mind.

[Renegade 13]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
What good are memories of good times, and bad, if life after death is nothingness where concience thought does not exsist?

Think about this, do you remember the time before you were born? If not, then how do you expect to remember the you were live after you have died?

Our lives are meaningless in the end, and the journey there is made even more terrorfying because we know what will happen.

What is the purpose to life if death is the end result?

The simple truth is you can't think like that, as it will rob you of all joy in life. I believe the meaning of life is to enjoy it for what it is, not to brood on what may or may not happen in the future (such as death). Sure, I believe there is no such thing as immortality, either through rebirth, or through life after death. I think death is simply nothingness, an absence of consciousness, not eternal torture in a hell, or eternal bliss in a heaven. Simple nothingness. However, the point of life is to contribute in some way to better ourselves, and to try to better all of humanity in some way, however small.
And we can attain some measure of immortality. If we have children, we never really die, and all of us are remembered by others, even long after death, so I guess it can be said that none of us ever really dies, at least in the memory of others, and because of our contribution to others.

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by Atrocities:

*snip*
...if you know that the end result is just going to be death

*snip*
...if life after death is nothingness where concience thought does not exsist?

*snip*
...if death is the end result?

First off, in the material I quoted above you are making some assumptions that I don't agree with. I'm a Christian, and I believe that there is more to it than what you've stated.

However, even assuming for the sake of discussion your chosen limitations, what about enjoying life while you live it? What about making the lives of others more enjoyable, or at least less miserable? What about leaving the world a little better for your descendants, or for just people in general if you have no descendants? What about not letting down those who are depending on you right now, and who are perhaps looking to you for an example of how they should live?

SpaceBadger

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Think about this, do you remember the time before you were born? If not, then how do you expect to remember the you were live after you have died?

that's like argueing that an amniesiac didn't exist before there amnesia.

[Puke]

Someone's baiting an arguement. I'll bite, but I'm not going to hang on to the hook.

Life isn't anything. It does not "Mean" anything. You dont get anything or go anywhere when you die. You're just dead. Thats it. And you're not much more than that, right now. Your a collection of cells, which are a collection of atoms, that exist from one moment to the next, and your consiousness is only self percieved because some of those cells are altered by events as time goes by, and thus you collect "memories." but its not alot fancier than that. You're not all that different from any other animal, which isnt all that far off from a plant, which isn't all that dissimilar from any random collection of chemical reactions.

Someone on this forum has a great quote from Democritus of Abdera that sum's it up:

By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: but in reality atoms and void.

That being said, you might as well enjoy what you've got. Stop being so f-ing pompous and dont think that you have to justify everything with some sort of higher purpose. You're not chosen and theres not some mission to your life, and your not going to achieve or lose anything in death. Have a good time. Live in the here and now, because its all you've got. And only reflect on the future or past when it pleases you to do so. Live for youself, unless it pleases you to live for others. In short, do what you like. To quote Bob Marley, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

And for some more uniquely up-beat nihlism, give Ex-Oblivione by H.P. Lovecraft a quick read:

But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and the dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

edit: fixed my quotes

[ October 06, 2003, 18:35: Message edited by: Puke ]

[Atrocities]

I have this theory that I think helps prove the pointlessness to life.

You live in a very nice area, say Portland Oregon for all of your life. The cost of living was afordable say around 20k. The climate is great, the recreational areas are great, the people - well normal. Then the rich folks "discover" it. The next thing you know the cost of living, poverty level, is $40,000 a year and most of the people who have lived here their entire lives can no longer aford to stay. The rich ran them off just like we did to the Indians. "Oh this is a very nice area you live in here. We are going to relocate you to this god forsaken waste land so that we can have your property."

The rich win by simply being able to aford the increased cost of living. They win because any one who makes less than 40k a year now can not afford to live around here. Now the rich can pick up houses on the foreclosure market for pennies on the dollar and get richer selling them to those who earn above the poverty level of 40k a year.

They simply raise the cost of living to the point that only the rich can aford to live.

Our lives are given meaning by simple things, the pleasure of reproduction, the taste of food, the creativeness that we all posess, etc. But in the end, we realize that all that really matters is what makes us happy while we are living.

Family, good food, friends, the places we love to live, the things we enjoy doing. When those are all taken from you, what is left?

I not saying people should go out and off themselves, god no, what I am saying is if all that we base our lives on are things that can be taken from us, plus factor in the knowledge that death will come no matter what, then life is really a cruel thing.

So if life is a cruel thing, then living is a punishement as we must endure the loss of all that life offers as a reward for living.

We are born into this world with nothing and we leave it with nothing.

[Loser]

Life is not cruel. Life is indifferent. Existence is unjust. Experience is inconsistent.

The evil, the pain, the Adamic burden, the sin is in memory. Keeping the past around, holding your action against yourself, holding another's behavior against them, this is from where suffering comes. An awareness of reality outside the present is the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It empowers us to change our world and ties us to things we cannot change, our personal epic histories.

Enlightenment, contentment, redemption, they all require an acknowledgement of the past, not an escape from it. But this acknowledgement is not made for the purpose of maintaining some perpetual accountability, it is made to free the consciousness from dwelling on painful impossibilities.

Letting go is the key to happiness.

[ October 06, 2003, 19:11: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Puke]

well, yeah.. if you're on the losing side, i suppose. thats just a part of evolution, more powerfull societies have taken desireable land from less developed cultures, and it even happens internally in our own country - and other countries - where the empowered take advantage of the average or the disadvantaged.

call it cruel if you like, but its evolution in action. people are no different from animals. the pendilum can swing the other way too - the french revolution being an extreme example. dont read too much into it all. life and family and friends all remain. if the activities you enjoy are all expensive, then i cant help you there. but item and property ownership isnt really all that rewarding. at least, not to me.