There are two branches of explanation to the meaning of life. These are broken down into consequences and content. Consequences would be an expectation that life is building up to an ultimate goal, or that anything a human being does has an inevitable consequence and meaning. On the other side is content, where the meaning is within life itself.

Now under each of these categories there is a subjective and objective explanation as to the meaning of life.

Subjective Consequence

This is best described in religion. Instead of confronting the meaning of life, or looking for it in consequence that can be measured or observed, we look beyond our own world and explanation into the heavens. Thus the meaning of life is not discovered or attained until death, and then it is only subject to a deity or other religious belief. The problems with this are the same old problems with religion when discussed in a philosophical context. There is the problem of God and the status of God as evil or good, the notion that one must die to know, and the lack of any kind of reasonable evidence in our everyday experience.

Objective Consequence

Rocks. This is how my professor in existentialist philosophy put it. Objectively, that is using evidence in the real world, and observed logical conclusions, the consequences of our actions are just a different pattern of atoms. If I decide to throw my pencil across the room, then it is across the room. If not, then it is still here. The consequence of such actions, in context of the meaning of life, is that when all is said and done and billions of years have passed, rocks in outer space may be in a different place.

Subjective Content

The meaning of life is whatever makes me happy and whatever I see as valuable to me. This sounds like a reasonable claim. However, it is not. This is a leap away from the question, avoiding the meaning of life by assigning value to meaninglessness. It is the path of empty desire. Self fulfilling and is more of a distraction than anything else.

Objective Content

Meaning comes from everyone around us, and is evaluated objectively and logically. The ultimate truth of which comes with death. Everyone dies. Therefore the one objective and most reasonable answer for the “Meaning of Life” is death itself.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, huh? Those existentialist are sure the life of the party.

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There is an old story about a man who came to see the Buddha because he had heard that the Buddha was a great teacher. Like all of us, he had some problems in his life, and he thought the Buddha might be able to straighten them out.

He told the Buddha he was a farmer. “I like farming,” he said, “but sometimes it doesn’t rain enough, and my crops fail. Last year we nearly starved. And sometimes it rains too much, so my yields aren’t what I’d like them to be.”

The Buddha patiently listened to the man.

“I’m married, too,” said the man. “She’s a good wife … I love her in fact. But sometimes she nags me too much. And sometimes I get tired of her.”

The Buddha listened quietly.

“I have kids,” said the man. “Good kids, too … but sometimes they don’t show me enough respect. And sometimes …”

The man went on like this, laying out all his difficulties and worries. Finally he wound down and waited for the Buddha to say the words that would put everything right for him.

Instead the Buddha said, “I can’t help you.”

“What do you mean?” said the astonished man.

“Everybody’s got problems,” said the Buddha. “In fact, we’ve all got eighty-three problems, each one of us. Eighty-three problems, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you work really hard on one of them, maybe you can fix it – but if you do, another one will pop right into its place. For example, you’re going to lose your loved ones eventually. And you’re going to die some day. Now there’s a problem, and there’s nothing you, or I, or anyone else can do about it.”

The man became furious. “I thought you were a great teacher!” he shouted. “I thought you could help me! What good is your teaching, then?”

The Buddha said, “Well, maybe it will help you with the eighty-fourth problem.”

“The eight-fourth problem?” said the man. “What’s the eighty-forth problem?”

Said the Buddha, “You want to not have any problems.”

Some ancient eastern wisdom is actually pretty damn contemporary. Try to eliminate all your problems, and problems will pop up in their place always. Ignore your problems and distort the reality of them and they will haunt you forever, eventually piercing through your veil of ignorance. Deal with problems as the come, prudently and logically and without worry, in the moment. Worrying about something before it happens does nothing, and similarly stressing over something that has already happened will never change the past.

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“Soon the Killer Bees will occupy territory north to San Francisco and Richmond, essentially half the United States”

Well, I for one, await our Killer Bee overlords. And I am still waiting, some ten years later. Where did they go? I guess these bees weren’t the conquering sort.

This bee decides to forgo blood lust for a flower instead. How nice

So, since I haven’t been mauled by a hive of angry bees every time I walk outside, I can assume I was pretty much the victim of sensationalist journalism. Where can I get back all those sleepless nights? But seriously, a lot of people worry about a lot of things. These people have problems. You should never worry about anything you cannot control. It’s a futile waste of time.

The news media is here for one reason. To make money! Don’t be fooled by some mission statement to give practical and honest reporting of the news to the masses. Those people are reporters, they are under some kind of delusion they work for someone who isn’t in a suite looking at revenue figures. When some reporter reports a 20 second clip on a murder, or a 3 minute segment on those killer bees that are going to take over the United States, use some common sense and skeptical nature.

Remember this when the Earth’s magnetic field collapses, the flu pandemic comes, aliens attack, the earth stops rotating, global warming melts the ice caps causing Water World, global warming causes an ice age, hurricanes destroy everything, the Chinese invade, or a Texan becomes president.

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This post is actually something that I wrote over a year ago. I am clearing out my saved posts in Wordpress and found this one and many others. Of all the little snippets of posts that are not finished, this one looks mostly complete, so I figured I would publish it. It is still interesting to think about.

I can play video games for hours, I can read a book for hours, I can watch movies for hours, watch a good television show for hours, and generally get caught up in worlds which are not real at all for hours at a time with little thought of reality around me. Normally, and throughout my life, I haven’t given it a single thought … but while trying to create a comprehensive philosophy for myself, I arrive at a paradox of sorts.

See, there is some common sense to realizing that living in a fantasy world is bad for you. Medical professionals sometimes call it a “peter pan complex” and it can get quite serious. The most extreme examples are highly mentally unstable, creating entire worlds within their own minds as illusions. Most of us can say, well that will never be me. However, upon closer inspection of our lives we run into a problem.

If I play a computer game for 6 hours a day, everyday, for months, that is pretty extreme. A large portion of my day would be in a fantasy world outside of reality (for the most part). Most contemporary critics would say this is bad for you. Hell, China is actually making it political policy to limit playing of online games. Now, not to turn this into a “games vs. tv” debate, right now it may be more socially acceptable to watch 6 hours of TV a day, but it is still the same kind of escape. Either way our minds are engrossed in a fantasy world for entertainment. These might be extreme examples, but add up the time you spend each day and you may be surprised.

I have read articles by people saying we need to limit this kind of behavior. It makes sense if you don’t really think about it in depth. Just kill the bad and ignore the why, after all it’s the American way. Just think, however, where the bulk of the average American’s time goes. To work. You work 8 hours a day, usually close to 10 hours with travel and preparation time. Are you in the real world while you are working? Surely you aren’t being entertained … so it must be the real world, and the real world is good, right? Not exactly, on both counts. You work 8 hours a day to provide for yourself, your family, to “get ahead” like every American thinks is their destiny to do. Every generation must do better than the last! Where does it end? Has anyone really thought it through? Just what the hell is real anyway? Where do you draw the line? The experts say that escapism is bad, and that it keeps us away from the real world, the world that is important and right, the world that makes sense.

What a bunch of bullshit. Does anyone think about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and where it is all going? I have, and really when you think about the real world, escapism doesn’t sound too bad. How do you change a government that never seems to get it? How do you get all the countries of the world to actually accomplish global tasks that must be done? How do you stop capitalism from widening the gap between poor and rich, impoverishing millions every year across the globe? How do you stop murder, genocide, crime, disease, famine, terrorism, etc, etc on a global scale? Every year it does get worse, even though many don’t see it on the micro level, it happens on a macro level, globally.

What’s the point of all this? You can’t fix it. We have seen hundreds of movies and books on government corruption and big business, yet it still happens. We have seen countless studies on the links of race, gender, etc on income levels, and yet the problem remains. We see thousands of animal and plant species go extinct every year, and the people that can do something do not care. There are reasons none of these things get fixed, and it usually boils down to money. I am not saying they are even fixable, as if they were not so complicated, they would be fixed by now. However, human beings have a nasty habit of waiting until we hit that wall at full speed until something is done. Then it becomes a “crisis” or a “disaster” and everyone says, “how did this happen?” and people like me can say, “I told you so.”

There are two primary types of people. People that escape reality because they want to, and people who escape reality without knowing it. The former person asks “why?” at every opportunity and makes a decision to escape because they want to escape a life where the “why?” is endless. The latter person never asks “why?” and follows the herd in a life they have never even attempted to understand.

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Come on you lazy bitches! You talk about honoring your mothers choice to do the same? What about the countless women before you who have fought so hard against gender discrimination? Is it hard for a modern women to have children and work? Yes. Can it be done? YES. Does it take more effort than these women want to put out? Probably. Which is surprising because they are supposed to be the cream of the crop.

“I think it’s really great,” said one male student. Another said, “I think it’s sexy to be a stay at home mom.”

Are you girls buying this? Come on! At least make it challenging for us guys to oppress you. I mean come on, we think you have been gaining ground for the past 50 years only to see you throw in the towel now? Give me a break.

Before you think, “hey it’s their choice to do this,” yes I realize that its their choice. Choices in society are not made in a vacuum though. It’s obvious that some social force is turning the tide and it is quite disturbing to me. I wish I was smart enough to link this with the rest of the “conservative” oriented thinking going on in schools (reference the poll that said a majority of highschool students said it was actually alright if the government censored the media).

“I accept things how they are,” she said. “I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.”

This from a woman in a top university. Let me just say … oh … my … God … what in the hell is going on here. I’m seriously confused how any woman can not realize that equality is far, far, far from reached. Hello! It is still a man’s world. There are so many statistics to back this statement up it isn’t even funny. Hell, a bunch of my classes here have discussed this very issue and from what I hear from women who discuss in class .. I thought you girls would fight the good fight for the foreseeable future. Obviously the “smarter” you are intellectually, the easier you are manipulated. That is just sad.

Note that staying at home is a noble decision to make as a women, yet a rising trend indicating that young women are accepting traditional roles that have been fought by other women for 50 years is disturbing. I am all for a women’s choice to stay home and raise children, and although the economics of it are increasingly difficult, it definately can benefit the children in the long run. However, more disturbing is the percentage of women who decided never to work at all and the growing trend that seems to indicate young women are returning to a pre-60’s and 70’s frame of mind where you are Mrs. Insert Husbands Name Here who is required to serve him in any domestic capacity he wants. While this certainly has appeal to me as a man (haha), as a jerk who questions most everything about society in general it is disappointing that progress is not being made on the gender equality front.

gender roles, women, inequality

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Now, there really isn’t much debating about whether we actually do ruin the future with actions today. It is pretty well known that human beings as a whole don’t care much about the future unless it is there immediate future. When sacrifices have to be made today for tomorrow, we usually ignore them or do them half-assed. So is the way it has been and probably will be for a long time. Why? Probably something having to do with capitalism or being mortal and not caring about things that occur after we die.

However, morally everyone is inclined to examine their actions in reference to both the present and the future (as well as the past, if it were possible to time travel). It is the same kind of argument used to illustrate moral responsibility regardless of distance. The easiest example is the drowning baby. A baby drowning in a shallow pool, you walk by, morally you are bound to save the baby. What person wouldn’t? To illustrate why distance doesn’t matter, the details can be changed so that you can “mail in” your saving part, so you do not even have to be there. This is roughly equivalent to sending a check to a relief organization.

Time works in much the same fashion. Imagine that you know the baby is going to drown and by your actions today, you can save the baby. You are morally bound to do so. Of course in social science nothing is that exact. However, one can easily see the parallel is, say, calculating a 70% chance of baby drowning and putting in equal amounts of effort to keep the even from actually happening.

Sure this kind of analysis does not work all the time, and it is very easy to get around it by selectively predicting outcomes in the future that require no effort today (i.e. predicting the best case scenario). But I think if everyone had the same mindfulness to the future, they may yet be able to claim that they are moral people.

By the way, I am not moral, and make no claims to be. I like writing about morality because of 10 people I approach on the street asking if they are moral, almost 10/10 will say “oh yes I am,” which pisses me off to no end. That is about the time where I start systematically destroying their sense of morality. Remember, it is ok to be immoral. Most people are. Don’t worry about what God thinks either … even if he exists he doesn’t care.

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