May 12, 2007
My Apologies…
to those who believe differently than I do about this topic. I’m going to rant a bit…
I was just surfing a forum for some tech information and read a post by someone whose signature said:
__________________
The meaning of life? There is no meaning. You’re just a more complex carbon chain reaction than a dog, a tree, or an amoeba.
Now, I believe that God gave us free will and that this guy is entitled to his opinion. No problem there. I just think that it really must suck to live that way! I mean, thinking that you are just an accident of chemistry, that there is nothing more to life than a complex happenstance of quirky molecular attraction. How the hell can someone live like that? How can you live thinking that there is NO meaning?? What keeps you from acting out every tiny whim? Why don’t people like that stab their co-workers with a pencil when they whine during staff meetings? How come they actually pay their taxes? Why would you bother to do anythingother than exactly what you damn well pleased to at that exact moment? See a hot chick? Bend her over a barrel! Like that guy’s car? Hit him with a brick and take it! It doesn’t matter! There is NO MEANING TO ANYTHING!
I can hear someone saying now – “Well, stupid, you don’t do that because of the consequences! You’d get arrested, because in a civilized society people don’t do that to each other. And those that do, suffer the consequences…”
Ok, good point, sounds good. But think about it a bit more. That means that society is the ultimate authority, the ultimate judge and the ultimate standard by which everything is measured. We live our lives by society’s standards. Isn’t that a “meaning” to life then? Isn’t that what a “meaning” is? If I say, “The meaning of life is to be happy” or “The meaning of life is to serve God” or “The meaning of life is to get rich” – aren’t those all things that one then judges himself by? Am I happy? Am I serving God? Am I getting rich? Meaning is a delineation – a mark in the sand whereby other things are judged. So, if we say life has no meaning, but yet live in society, we are making society the ultimate authority and therefore the ultimate meaning.
Don’t you see how horrible that is?! Society is the ultimate meaning!? Are you kidding me? All we live for is civil obedience? Fitting in? Keeping up with the Jonses? Peer pressure is REALLY the best that it gets?
Society is the ultimate meaning???
How on Earth can that be? Are you kidding me? People really believe that crap? Come on! Society produced these people:
And, even
I know, I know… Not nice of me to throw that freaky drag-queen in with the picture of Hillary… Oh, um, well um… Never mind. *SNICKER* (sorry, couldn’t help that! 
)
Anyway, my point is that society simply cannot be the paragon of existence and the ultimate achievement of life. And, there MUST be meaning to life, because we all judge ourselves by something. Even if you don’t believe in God – something is the lord of your life, and therefore it has meaning. In fact, I really feel sorry for anyone who pretends that it doesn’t. I think they are scared of reality with meaning, because they simply haven’t quite figured out what it is yet. And, if they are wrong, there could be serious consequences.
In fact, I almost feel more sorry for them than I do for the goat pictured above. No, not Hillary, the other one! Ahem. Really, I’m sorry. I’ll stop – honest, I will. :D
… And now I am just not going to sleep tonight…
I fully disagree. A system of order is not “meaning”, it is a “system”. What you are trying to superimpose on the system is the second defintion of the word “meaning” (according to dictionary.com) – which is:
2. the end, purpose, or significance of something: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of this intrusion?
The meaning of a system is to maintain an order, but to maintain order is not the meaning of life. One can be derived from the other, but not the other way around.
I personally agree with the initial comment. We won the universal mathematical jackpot. At least for the remaining few trillion years of this universe until it rubber-band-snaps back on itself and starts over.
The “purpose” of my life? The “meaning” in my life? I would say the closest thing I have to such existential questions is to live my life in a way that I am comfortable and accepting of – to the limits of the system of society, regardless of other peoples thoughts or views or actions.
While you find such a concept ’sad’, I find in that, the ultimate freedom. Mainly because if I find I can not be happy within the limits of this society’s system, I can try to find a society in which I can be happy. If I was a psychopath, this might mean going to some third-world, war-torn country, and offer my gleefully sadistic services to whatever warlord I wished.
Thankfully I’m not, and I’m extremely happy with my technical job, my computers, taking care of my modest home, and working on my project cars.
Hey Trinten,
Thanks for stopping by and speaking up! Alternate views are always welcome here…
Actually however, it was the guy whose post I was originally responding to who invoked the second definition of Meaning. So, blame him, not me. :^)
Yet, I still say that everything has meaning. Every action, every thought, and every accidental carbon chain reaction – they all have meaning, because they are all distinct, defined aspects.
You say a system of order is not “meaning”, it is a “system”.
Yet, I say it is impossible to have one without the other.
How is it possible to be authoritative without meaning? How is it possible to form a “whole” without meaning? The simple act of being authoritative provides meaning. And, to form an assemblage, the assemblage must have a definition. Even if it is defined in terms of what it is NOT. It is NOT chaos. It is NOT disorder. Those attributes give it meaning. They give it definition.
There is an undeniable cohesiveness to anything that is ordered that necessitates the separation of itself from that which is unordered. Something formed commands more attention than something that is unformed. There is no way around that. Take all of the complex molecules that make up my body and scatter them and you’ll no longer take notice. Form them into me, or even into something else, and you will still take notice. It is the form that provides true meaning. The absence of form is simply potential, which is still a sort of meaning. Everything has it.
Which, gets me to the first definition of meaning:
“Intended to be expressed” – something specific that is to be conveyed. A cohesive expression.
“Signification” – something that has Significance
“Import” – something that has Importance
It seems that this too supports my primary thesis, that everything has meaning. The original person’s comment that we are just a more complex carbon chain reaction than a dog says that we have meaning. A complex carbon conglomeration has meaning, because it has form.
What that meaning is however, is up to the complex carbon conglomeration.
In the case of your conglomeration, it seems that the meaning is simply to be happy.
I get that, and I relate to it. In fact, at one point when I was directly asked the question “what is the meaning of life,” I responded with “To be happy and to help other’s be happy”.
So, I’m with you…
At this point in my life however, I believe that there is more to it than that.
Lincoln said “Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be,” and I’m certainly inclined to agree with him. Heck, you can improve your attitude simply with the physical act of smiling. I think happiness is a decision, and that there is more out there to discover.
An old proverb says: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Sounds like there is probably some neat stuff out there too…