What is the purpose of life?

[Tomhargen]

Because, at this juncture in my life, I fail to see one.

[Dan Rowden]

Purpose is a manifestation of consciousness. Therefore the purpose of life is whatever we designate.

[Tomhargen]

So if I designate that life has no purpose...

[Talking Ass]

Your 'purpose', Tom Hargen, is to have come to this website.

You laugh? Well, go ahead. Laugh then. I'll laugh with you.

Your upbringing, those snapshots with cheap point-and-shoots on summer lawns, your parents, the boys and girls of your neighborhood, the pets you had, primary, secondary school, high school, university, all of it---all the people you have known so far, every vista you've looked over. Visions of fields, clouds, cities, war-zones, a truck rumbling by at 3 on some now distant afternoon. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010. The light raking across a field. Sunflowers. Smiling girls. The movies you've seen, the books you've read. All of it. None of it matters now. You are here. Pay close attention to everything that happens to you and around you from this moment on.

You're laughing? Well---go right ahead. I laugh with you.

You have come this far to realize you have no knowledge of purpose. That's a dandy little story you are weaving, Tom. Fine. We start there. Dan says we invent our 'purpose', we 'designate' it. Ha. Ha. Ha. That is true for 1/7th of it, the part you are aware of. But the other 7/8ths is what now has the say.

What's under the surface with you, Tom?

[Dan Rowden]

So if I designate that life has no purpose...

That wouldn't really make any sense, because purpose is not a meaningful designation to life, as such (in any objective sense). And in terms of purpose as a manifestation of consciousness, it exists by default if consciousness exists.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan says we invent our 'purpose', we 'designate' it. Ha. Ha. Ha. That is true for 1/7th of it, the part you are aware of. But the other 7/8ths is what now has the say.

There's no such thing as unconscious purpose.

[Tomhargen]

That is true for 1/7th of it, the part you are aware of. But the other 7/8ths is what now has the say.

So are you saying that I'm not aware of my purpose because I am not fully aware of myself?

And in terms of purpose as a manifestation of consciousness, it exists by default if consciousness exists.

Naturally at every juncture I have a purpose. Like right now my purpose is to type letters in to this box to ask questions and relay ideas. So in the basic sense of the word I have purpose.

But if you think about it I didn't ask what my purpose is. I asked what the purpose of life is.

[Talking Ass]

Dan wrote: "There's no such thing as unconscious purpose."

Too binary to be of much use to me. Still, what is unconscious in persons, when revealed, will often lead to conscious purpose.

[Dan Rowden]

Ok, well, life, per se, has no purpose. You can't assign a teleological dimension to it. But life in the sense of conscious activity always has purpose attached to it.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan wrote: "There's no such thing as unconscious purpose."

Too binary to be of much use to me. Still, what is unconscious in persons, when revealed, will often lead to conscious purpose.

Well, if the unconscious becomes conscious, then purpose will manifest.

[Tomhargen]

Consciousness does preclude purpose, but that purpose doesn't have to be known. I guess what's funny about all this is that my purpose is to discover my purpose. I guess my search is done and my purpose now becomes to choose my purpose.

[Talking Ass]

Life's purpose is to live.

If the unconscious becomes conscious, then purpose will manifest.

Tom?

[Talking Ass]

Tom writes: "I guess what's funny about all this is that my purpose is to discover my purpose. I guess my search is done and my purpose now becomes to choose my purpose."

Me, I'd make an effort to find out what moves below the surface in the '7/8ths' we are not aware of. It's riskier, bt the payoff is (potentially) extraordinary.

Dan: Can a purpose choose us?

[Dan Rowden]

Life's purpose is to live.

That is not true. That's like saying a circle's purpose is to be round. A thing being what it is is not "purpose". That's a distortion of what purpose means.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan: Can a purpose choose us?

Please slap yourself, hard.

[Tomhargen]

There is no predestined purpose. One chooses their purpose.

Life's purpose is to live.

Life's purpose is not to live. Life's purpose is to have a purpose. It might seem a trivial thing to say but it is not. Consciousness is the ability to choose that purpose. To change that purpose from something that was already decided. Life is to have a purpose.

[Tomhargen]

Dan: Can a purpose choose us?

Please slap yourself, hard.

I shouldn't laugh. But it's hard. :)

[Loki]

You guys need to define your terms, otherwise you are just pretending you know what the other person is talking about. If we are going to say life has no purpose, then we better know what we mean by the term life. Also, living is not necessarily the equivalent to life.

[Talking Ass]

Dan,

But life is not a 'thing'.

I went to slap myself, but then craftily, I ducked. I wasn't even aware of it! But then I saw my hand over on the other side.

Tom: "There is no predestined purpose. One chooses their purpose."

People, sometimes, might with the '1/7th' part, chose purposes. I agree.

Life (that is, microbes, plants, most other forms of life) seeks only to live.

[Dan Rowden]

Life (that is, microbes, plants, most other forms of life) seeks only to live.

Stop assigning teleology to things. It's irrational. A thing that lives just lives. It does not seek to do that which it is already doing. Don't make me quote Nietzsche on your Talking Ass!

[Tomhargen]

Stop assigning teleology to things. It's irrational. A thing that lives just lives. It does not seek to do that which it is already doing.

True.

Life is the act of living according to science. I did not choose to live before I lived. If you said that life's purpose is to continue living I think you wouldn't have had to assault yourself, because that is a rational thing to say.

[Talking Ass]

There is not a great deal of difference. Seeks or continues. Life lives.

But I don't think either that strict scientism will give us the only good answers possible. And I think there is a different ways for 'rationality' to function.

Tom wrote: "I did not choose to live before I lived."

You sure of that? I have a feeling that we all very much did. It's not an idea that would fit within scientific viewpoint, obviously, nor is it 'rationalistic' as Dan likes. I actually have the sense that it is part of another 'structure' of knowledge, and that other structure is metaphorically represented by 'the 7/8ths' that is submerged.

I am going to feel really shortchanged if I don't get some Nietzsche now...

[Tomhargen]

But I don't think either that strict scientism will give us the only good answers possible.

I agree. But as Loki pointed out, a debate is pointless if we don't have clear definitions of words.

And scientism isn't a word.


Is it just me or does self-awareness and consciousness seem to arise simply from spare time? It arises when one has completed their already perceived purpose and now must find another.

[Talking Ass]

Scientism is indeed a word. Language is gorgeously flexible. Where do you think all these words came from? Divine dispensation? (Huaar huaar).

[Tomhargen]

Very funny very funny.

Well you say it is a word and I say it isn't. Next poster gets to decide I guess. Majority rules.