To me, the danger of thinking one's own life meaningless is that it tends to make one believe that MY life is also meaningless. That may be, but I'm attached to it in a very un-Buddha-like way.
That definitely is a form of attachment from my point of view. But within Buddhism, there are some 'meanings' or 'purposes' which one may seek. Buddhist teachers warn against becoming attached, for example, to enlightenment as a purpose. There is also the Bodhisattva Oath, in which one pledges to devote one's life and future lives to seeking the enlightenment of all sentient beings. That also become a purpose or meaning.
The question that arises in my own mind about doing good or evil within the framework of a life without meaning is how do we know that what we do is either one. I may mean to be evil but do something that comes out well for other people and I may intend to do a kindness but cause much distress. As you say, do-gooders have brought their share of sadness into the world. We must nevertheless do something, else entropy kills us quickly -- pretty fast if we find it meaningless to get a drink of water every few days.
I deliberately used 'good' and 'evil' in a superficial way in my previous post. From a taoist perspective, and I think this is true in some other eastern value systems, good cannot exist without evil. It's considered an exercise in futility to try to eliminate evil. As for entropy, it's gonna get us one way or another. But I don't think finding life meaningless requires one to ignore basic health and safety.
One last question: why did you confine yourself to a single meaning? Might you have many meanings, the consequences of your acts unknowable by you? OK, that was two questions, but they're asking the same thing.
'Meaning' or 'meanings' - the difference is moot to me. One times zero or twenty times zero - the product is still zero. I could view myself as having a hundred meanings or a hundred purposes, and we'll still get hit by an asteroid.
however... it only makes sense when one chooses..to be alone... chooses unhappiness and has no connect with the past...or future... for mike this is it... nothing more... no love... no family... nothing... i suppose... it would be easier...and more comforting to think...that all life is meaninless...if i felt i was meaningless...
the funny thing is... mike lives life...meaningful.. compassionately... loving and kind... go figure...!!!
My view on this may be formed by my upbringing, but I can't say that for a certainty. Thank you for saying I live life compassionately and with love and kindness. I believe it is possible and even desirable to have those qualities. But a person can live life with love and compassion without saying, 'compassion is my purpose,' or, 'love is the meaning of my life.' These are elements of my life, and I hope I'm succeeding at them, but in the big, big picture, it doesn't matter whether I'm successful or not.
Seems to me that the whole meaning of your life is to convince others that it has no meaning.
I get it! Your life has no meaning. So stop blogging, stop facebooking, stop twittering, and stop telling others that their lives have no meaning because that would mean that you think your life is so meaningful that you have the right to tell someone else how meaningless their life is.
If your life has no meaning, by what authority do you tell others about theirs?
No authority whatsoever. It's just my opinion.
But something I want to make clear is that I don't think that believing life has no meaning requires one to sit absolutely still, doing nothing at all. If a person wants to do that, fine - the end will still come, whether we're active or quiet. But that means it's just as okay to be active as it is to be quiet. For the short term, I think it's better to be a good person than a bad one. We still have to live, however momentarily, with the consequences of our own actions as well as the actions of those around us. But again, in the big, big, picture, the point is moot.
PS: As I read my own writing, I feel like I'm usually expressing about nine-tenths of an idea, and there's always something missing. I don't know if that's because I can't articulate my thoughts clearly, or if I've just gotten so intellectually lazy in my advancing age that I can't or don't think things all the way through.
3 comments:
your position is an interesting one and therefore worth discussing.
It seems to me your point is not that there is no meaning to your life or mine. your point is that there is no meaning to anything at all ever. You take the position that the universe will end in cold and lifeless used up matter and from this you infer that since no human activity will be detectable at the end of the universe, no human activity can have meaning "in the big, big picture."
this being true, it would be just as accurate to say there is no meaning to any life or any activity, whether human or not.
At that point, we have one of those paradoxes: the meaning of life is that there is no meaning (but what we give it).
I'll pick a nit with you, by the way, on whether your prediction of the end of the universe is accurate. There are other theories. One that I am fond of is that there are dimensional "branes" bracketing the universe we can detect and that at some point, mass and energy that would otherwise dissipate will bounce back toward the center, creating new energy.
My next argument is Aristotilian: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Just because you can find no evidence of a meaning to life doesn't mean that there isn't one. I will suggest to you that when it comes to meaning, we may simply be up against one of those blind spots the universe hands us, like the uncertainty principles.
For some of the latest thinking on the universe, there's also this intriguing possibility: there are at least 10 dimensions, even though only three (maybe four) are actually detectible by us. Could our "meaning" be extra-dimensional to our perception? Could our meaning continue AFTER the cold dead end of our known universe in one of those other dimensions?
Interestingly, both the Old Testament and the Tao te Ching make an extraordinary claim that might bear on the subject. They both claim that "wisdom" existed before the universe existed. And, for that matter, doesn't the notion of "enlightenment" itself carry a connotation of an existence outside the physical universe? Certainly all those reincarnating souls exist outside the time/space continuum. Might not our elusive meaning also exist on that plane, present and felt but unknowable?
I agree that in comparison with the immense universe, my share of three score and 10 years of life on this little rock on one of the swirling arms of a mediocre galaxy means very little. I am simply not important to the universe. That, however, does not mean that I have no importance and it doesn't mean I have zero meaning.
Your position, as I understand it, reminds me of something Jean-Paul Sartre once said: "We must act as if there is a God despite the radical impossibility that there ever was one."
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Some - occasionally conflicting - memorable quotes about the "meaning of life":
When it's all over, it's not who you were. It's whether you made a difference.
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing -- then we truly live life.
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
I think the thing that bothers me the most, MCARP, is that you play both ends against the middle.
First, you tell us that there is no meaning to life because the universe will someday die and that no human activity will survive.
Find and well, I suppose, but then you tell us that there's no need to be attached to our meaningless lives because the physical universe is no more or less than an illusion that prevents us from the unification experience that transcends all physical experience.
Which is it? Does the physical universe mean everything (therefore making "meaning" meaningless) or does it mean nothing and the transcendent non-illusory reality everything, in which case, our meaning has no attachment to the physical universe?
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