To live is to suffer, or so the buddhists say with the first noble truth.
But it seems like we go through much pain and suffering to keep on going with our lives. Sometimes that is met with little reward and yet we keep going. So might say life is pointless and that we are just degrading bags of flesh who feel short changes when life is less than what we want it to so we make it out to be more than what it is. Is there little more to what life offers than breathing, reproduction, death. Is it a curse of the advanced mind to find purpose and meaning in the life that we live even though we live in a universe absent of it? Is that why we create such complicated structures, rules, and rituals in order to feel like our lives have meaning (which is because of our advanced intellect)? Is there any meaning to the things that we do when the methods by which we judge such acts are rather arbitrary as are our judgments about the quality of the acts themselves? It seems like we live in a world of our own design to make life just be more than a struggle and more than simply reproducing. Are we hiding from some truth that living is a curse?
Advanced intellect, are you sure of that? What history says and what history shows the facts are, are not always the same. Man’s intellect is there, but is it really advanced? There could be an argument that in seven plagues that took place in pre-history, that the plagues eradicated the humans with advanced intellect. Just like the plagues in the time of history wipe the Asian genes out of Europe. We are just learning about the Hyksos who moved to Egypt and who greatly advanced Egypt. Then had to leave after 400 years because it is believed of leprosy.
Just look at what Daniel Tammet is capable of doing. 10 Most Fascinating Savants in the World - Neatorama . Now we have a scale of what the human brain is capable of. Then ask yourself, what are some of the changes in mankind’s methods from pre-history to history? One is writing. Going to the Rig Veda and some of the oldest Sanskrit text. The old pre-history stories, math, science, history, religion and laws were verbal and rhymed. Did they have a need for writing or were they able to remember everything like Marilu Henner? Actress Marilu Henner's Rare Super-Memory Recalls Every Day of Her Life - ABC News
If mankind lost the people with advanced intellect then writing would be needed. With the break down in the knowledge base we now have deities in history where there are no deities in the pre-history. There was religion, heaven and the spirit, but no record of deities. Then we can see the evolution of deities in the time of history. Just how smart was that? History is still a puzzle, but just maybe the curse of life was just bad luck caused by a plague. Today we pin life’s curse on phenotype research. The heritability of cognitive genomics is getting some attention for the human traits you are talking about. Myself, I think we will find the advanced intellect with who first made beer. As long as we have beer, life is not a curse.
What about how our entire lives and accomplishments are really just a fabrication based on entirely subjective value statements. Its like we made it all all just to have a reason to go on. But is there really any meaning or value in something where the parameters are arbitrary?
What about how our entire lives and accomplishments are really just a fabrication based on entirely subjective value statements. Its like we made it all all just to have a reason to go on. But is there really any meaning or value in something where the parameters are arbitrary?There is no reason to think there is meaning to our lives beyond our lives as we know them. For some people life is a curse, for some it's a "gift". For most of us, it has good and bad aspects, but everything depends on how good or bad it is and how we subjectively respond to whatever comes our way. Some people live horrible lives, some from the day they are born. To complain that there s no meaning beyond our lives on earth is silly and unproductive. So is creating fantasies about what it might mean to a god or gods. Fantasy may well prevent a person from making the best of what he has. There is no evidence whatsoever that it's not over when it's over or that we'll even know when it has ended. A person can only assess whether his life was a gift or a curse at the end of his life, and then, as far as evidence is concerned, it will be too late to matter. LL
But what about the struggle to live? Why keep on living in this world that we have created? How can one find any meaning in this fabrication?
In the mountains of Baja Mexico out in the middle of nowhere in a pickup truck headed on a horse trail to a gold mining area when a wild longhorn cow started chasing my truck. Went for a couple of miles as fast as I could before the cow gave up the chase. Having grown up in my younger years on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, I had been around cows. But this was a wild cow, unlike any cows I had come across before. Animals left in the wild will revert back into the wild traits. I saw that in the pigs along the Russian River that the Russians brought with them when they settled in the part of Russia that is now Northern California. The pigs looked just like a farm pig, except they grew back their tusks when they lived in the wild. Point being, Darwin’s points on evolution and natural selection were new. But the point on domestication was already accepted. And that point was that animals once domesticated were not as smart and as talented as when wild. Are we not animals too? Could this curse be nothing more than our brain acting on a human desire that some of us have to get back to the way things were a long time ago before that door closes on us for good? And this feeling is coming from somewhere deep in the human traits. Because I got the feeling that the wild longhorn cow and those wild pigs were right at home and living life to its fullest potential, unlike the domesticated animals on the farm.
But what about the struggle to live? Why keep on living in this world that we have created? How can one find any meaning in this fabrication?OK, I get it. No one has ever told you why we are here. Is that correct? Let me try. Early genesis stories tells us earth was created for mankind by the gods. God was a term that meant knowledge. The gods were the people of knowledge. What part of the human tree, we don’t yet know. The earth was warming up and the Age of Domestication was in full force. Most of the nuts, vegetables, grains, fruit and farm animals that we know today were created during this age. The earth was not made for mankind. Mankind changed the plants and animals that made the earth a hospitable place for mankind. The gods had to deal with building canals for farming. The problem was that the gods were not built for the hard manual work of maintaining the canals. The workers went on strike. They burnt their tools in protest at the house of one of the upper gods. That upper god called a meeting of the upper gods and told them that the workers were right. That the work was hurting their backs. It was decided to call the mid-wives and create workers who could do the work. The gods were experts at creating the farm animals that we know of today. So changing a human animal was most likely very possible for them. The genesis stories say they created six to twelve humans. Now if that is true then there should be some clues as to when and what the gods of domestication created. Some of the new finding today put the white skin people have only been around for the last 12K years. Wikipedia for example “…. but may have originated as recently as 12,000–6,000 years ago "given the imprecision of method" ,[21] which is in line with the earliest evidence of farming.[22]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color That would mean that modern humans were created to maintain and take care of the earth for the benefit of mankind. And if you are having problems with this world we have created, then you are not doing your task that you were created for very well. Stop complaining and get to work! :-)
To live is to suffer, or so the buddhists say with the first noble truth.Less than a year ago I had a Buddha priest stay at my farm for a couple of days. He did not speak or understand English. And people came along that took care of him. He was by far the happiest person I have ever met in my life.
To be honest that all sounds like bs to me. Especially the part about wild animals being smart and talented. Also you cannot compare humans to pigs as humans hit their stride when they didn’t have to worry about surviving in the wild. If anything could be argued it’s that humans could not reach any sort of “potential” without civiiization.
The rest after that is just made up nonsense.
It also doesn’t answer my question
Of course it is especially on Halloween.
To be honest that all sounds like bs to me.Good answer, thank god. I came across your posting and thought you were either suicidal or a drama queen. I just could not just ignore your plea for help. I took the direction to get you to dialogue to see just how serious you were about why you should keep living. You tagged me on this one. :cheese: Of course the answers to your questions is known to everyone. The reason for life is to reproduce. But if you were being suicidal, I couldn’t go down that street not knowing your sexual preferences without taking the chance of making your situation more peril. Therefore I went for an intellectual direction on the subject to get you to respond on one of the more controversial paths of your posting subject matter. Now that I know you are OK, let’s put this baby to bed. You’re not ready yet to leave the programed thinking and step up to table where one of the puzzles of mankind is trying to be solved. You really have to be open minded and willing to use common sense where the facts don’t exist all the time. The good part is that we have more and more professors willing to work in this controversy dominated method. Here is an example on the data I brought up. Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities. Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said. His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence" genes. “I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues," Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics. “Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Professor Crabtree says.
To be honest that all sounds like bs to me.Good answer, thank god. I came across your posting and thought you were either suicidal or a drama queen. I just could not just ignore your plea for help. I took the direction to get you to dialogue to see just how serious you were about why you should keep living. You tagged me on this one. :cheese: Of course the answers to your questions is known to everyone. The reason for life is to reproduce. But if you were being suicidal, I couldn’t go down that street not knowing your sexual preferences without taking the chance of making your situation more peril. Therefore I went for an intellectual direction on the subject to get you to respond on one of the more controversial paths of your posting subject matter. Now that I know you are OK, let’s put this baby to bed. You’re not ready yet to leave the programed thinking and step up to table where one of the puzzles of mankind is trying to be solved. You really have to be open minded and willing to use common sense where the facts don’t exist all the time. The good part is that we have more and more professors willing to work in this controversy dominated method. Here is an example on the data I brought up. Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities. Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said. His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence" genes. “I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues," Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics. “Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Professor Crabtree says. I call that bs because l it doesn't address my question and also it cannot be proven. That is simply an opinion. I woldnt say that people from Athens back then aren't likely to be smarter than people today (they probably might be less so since they know far less than we do today). We did it survive on wits we survivors on cooperation. The entire paragraph just shows a poor understanding of evolution and the passing of genes. He has little more than personal opinion and no data to support it. But reproducing isn't a reason for life, that's what it does. But that doesn't mean it should keep going. Also telling me to use common sense is idiotic (because not only is common sense subjective it's also virtually nonexistent). But you still fail to answer my question at all, instead just going on tangents that are completely irrelevant to my point. It doesn't answer why one should stay alive, especially when our lives amount to little more than seeking pleasure (or simple stimulus response).
Your statement also doesn’t explain why we should help others or bother to solve such issues (because again it doesn’t solve the problem I posted).
So you didn’t put anything to bed, you just dodged it all.
It’s funny that you say “to live is to suffer”, when presumably you’ve had a nice breakfast, sat down at your laptop with wifi and internet access, and so on. And I think in another thread you were the guy that had no kids. So you’ve never had a sick child who was suffering. You sound like a pampered baby. You sound like ME thirty years ago. Quit the “woe is me” crap and get out there and live. Do something nice for someone, even if you don’t know why you’re doing it. Just do it.
To be honest that all sounds like bs to me.Good answer, thank god. I came across your posting and thought you were either suicidal or a drama queen. I just could not just ignore your plea for help. I took the direction to get you to dialogue to see just how serious you were about why you should keep living. You tagged me on this one. :cheese: Of course the answers to your questions is known to everyone. The reason for life is to reproduce. But if you were being suicidal, I couldn’t go down that street not knowing your sexual preferences without taking the chance of making your situation more peril. Therefore I went for an intellectual direction on the subject to get you to respond on one of the more controversial paths of your posting subject matter. Now that I know you are OK, let’s put this baby to bed. You’re not ready yet to leave the programed thinking and step up to table where one of the puzzles of mankind is trying to be solved. You really have to be open minded and willing to use common sense where the facts don’t exist all the time. The good part is that we have more and more professors willing to work in this controversy dominated method. Here is an example on the data I brought up. Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities. Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said. His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence" genes. “I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues," Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics. “Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Professor Crabtree says. I call that bs because l it doesn't address my question and also it cannot be proven. That is simply an opinion. I woldnt say that people from Athens back then aren't likely to be smarter than people today (they probably might be less so since they know far less than we do today). We did it survive on wits we survivors on cooperation. The entire paragraph just shows a poor understanding of evolution and the passing of genes. He has little more than personal opinion and no data to support it. But reproducing isn't a reason for life, that's what it does. But that doesn't mean it should keep going. Also telling me to use common sense is idiotic (because not only is common sense subjective it's also virtually nonexistent). But you still fail to answer my question at all, instead just going on tangents that are completely irrelevant to my point. It doesn't answer why one should stay alive, especially when our lives amount to little more than seeking pleasure (or simple stimulus response). Titan, let’s be clear on our statements. When I said using common sense. I was referring to a method of research where facts are not always available. What we have as common laymen is the ability to watch the experts and professors from an unbiased viewing point and use our common sense as to what we think the best and correct theories are while maintaining our ability to be able to change 180 degrees on our views at any time. Some people refuse to use unproven theories and they spend a lot of time judging and criticizing others. I did give you an answer to your question. I said that it is mankind’s task to take care of the earth for mankind. What could be a more purposeful reason for living added to the reproduction and raising the next generation? You can see people on this site that are doing just that with Climate Change.
It's funny that you say "to live is to suffer", when presumably you've had a nice breakfast, sat down at your laptop with wifi and internet access, and so on. And I think in another thread you were the guy that had no kids. So you've never had a sick child who was suffering. You sound like a pampered baby. You sound like ME thirty years ago. Quit the "woe is me" crap and get out there and live. Do something nice for someone, even if you don't know why you're doing it. Just do it.It was kinda nice to see him telling Mike that he doesn't make sense, at least he's smart enough to see that. However, he's saying the same things to Mike that he says to everyone, that we didn't answer his question, and we can't prove things. A clock that isn't running is right twice a day. I don't think Tita would be happy even if you said he was absolutely right. He doesn't want to just complain, he wants us to justify why that's all he should be doing.
To be honest that all sounds like bs to me.Good answer, thank god. I came across your posting and thought you were either suicidal or a drama queen. I just could not just ignore your plea for help. I took the direction to get you to dialogue to see just how serious you were about why you should keep living. You tagged me on this one. :cheese: Of course the answers to your questions is known to everyone. The reason for life is to reproduce. But if you were being suicidal, I couldn’t go down that street not knowing your sexual preferences without taking the chance of making your situation more peril. Therefore I went for an intellectual direction on the subject to get you to respond on one of the more controversial paths of your posting subject matter. Now that I know you are OK, let’s put this baby to bed. You’re not ready yet to leave the programed thinking and step up to table where one of the puzzles of mankind is trying to be solved. You really have to be open minded and willing to use common sense where the facts don’t exist all the time. The good part is that we have more and more professors willing to work in this controversy dominated method. Here is an example on the data I brought up. Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities. Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said. His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence" genes. “I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues," Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics. “Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Professor Crabtree says. I call that bs because l it doesn't address my question and also it cannot be proven. That is simply an opinion. I woldnt say that people from Athens back then aren't likely to be smarter than people today (they probably might be less so since they know far less than we do today). We did it survive on wits we survivors on cooperation. The entire paragraph just shows a poor understanding of evolution and the passing of genes. He has little more than personal opinion and no data to support it. But reproducing isn't a reason for life, that's what it does. But that doesn't mean it should keep going. Also telling me to use common sense is idiotic (because not only is common sense subjective it's also virtually nonexistent). But you still fail to answer my question at all, instead just going on tangents that are completely irrelevant to my point. It doesn't answer why one should stay alive, especially when our lives amount to little more than seeking pleasure (or simple stimulus response). Titan, let’s be clear on our statements. When I said using common sense. I was referring to a method of research where facts are not always available. What we have as common laymen is the ability to watch the experts and professors from an unbiased viewing point and use our common sense as to what we think the best and correct theories are while maintaining our ability to be able to change 180 degrees on our views at any time. Some people refuse to use unproven theories and they spend a lot of time judging and criticizing others. I did give you an answer to your question. I said that it is mankind’s task to take care of the earth for mankind. What could be a more purposeful reason for living added to the reproduction and raising the next generation? You can see people on this site that are doing just that with Climate Change. You actually didn't answer my question. Also using common sense as a measure for anything is bound to end in failure. But who says it's our task to look after the earth for man? Who gave us that? And why should we bother with that (which is the key point you didn't answer).
It's funny that you say "to live is to suffer", when presumably you've had a nice breakfast, sat down at your laptop with wifi and internet access, and so on. And I think in another thread you were the guy that had no kids. So you've never had a sick child who was suffering. You sound like a pampered baby. You sound like ME thirty years ago. Quit the "woe is me" crap and get out there and live. Do something nice for someone, even if you don't know why you're doing it. Just do it.That doesn't explain why I should do any of that (it's still irrrelevant to my point) or address the whole fact that such good feelings are just chemical processes in the body and what we do is perform actions that trigger them. It's like a drug addict almost. http://tinybuddha.com/topic/life-has-no-meaning-other-than-our-own-pleasure-and-suffering/ I think this pokes a few holes in your helping others bit also (just to stay on topic).
But what about the struggle to live? Why keep on living in this world that we have created? How can one find any meaning in this fabrication?What fabrication is that? Our struggle to live is genetic. You imply we have a choice. Whether we find meaning in our lives has no impact on our iinstinct to survive. Meaning is conscious, the struggle to live is not.