What is the answer?

[Marat]

... philosophy can be incredibly intense - but in the end, what is the point? What is the point of life? It may be a redundant question - THE redundant question - but, I suppose I'm more interested in getting other idea's... To me, what would be worth having beyond the normal life is something everlasting and far reaching. Science fiction?? Probably the best solution. Is there more to understanding time than just making you realize what your life has been, what it's come to, and where it's going?

[cuppajoe_9]

"Keep in shape. Read a few good books. Make a few friends. Now that wasn't so hard, now was it?"

[Nightmare9870]

but in the end, what is the point?

The point of philosophy is to make you look at life and the way you see things and make you think about why you think the way you do. I hope that made as much sense as it did in my head. :D


What is the point of life?

I realize it's a cliche, but I've always thought that the point of life is to pass on what you've learned to others. Everyone is good at something and everyone has something unique to offer to someone else.

[Scheherazade]

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/peanuts/archive/images/peanuts2006101221621.gif

[Eagleheart]

Marat,
until you get your answer you can always soothe yourself with the idea that you are very smart of asking yourself this question/is it not the point of our great minds that well here is what makes you evolutionary supreme...the ability to seek for meaningfulness/ it leaves the inquisitive mind satisfied- hailing evolution...simple right...
so keep on with the question

[holograph]

the point is not to know the end, but to be on the road..

[PierreGringoire]

I think a big part of the definition may be recuperating from failure. How fast can you recuperate after being demoralized?

But to recuperate in a way that gives you inward peace, peace from the failure, and promise for the future.

And what cuppajoe 9 said :thumbs_up

[Draconeus]

The point of philosophy as its origin suggests is to get a greater appreciation or meaning from life. It seeks to ask questions that need to be answered and by doing so push understanding of ourselves and and the world around us. Take the question, u posed ur self, "what is the answer" (ie point of philosophy), and by answering it we come ever closer to an omniscience

[sybilline]

The point of life is yours, what you have decided to put in it. As life is limited in time and space, one must make sense of it, taking into account ones skills and ones defects. People, nature, ideas are only there to help you.

[jiabaoyi]

a point would be to find the truth, and then hope, desperately hope, that that truth would explain the rest.

[dramasnot6]

We read to know we are not alone, isnt it the same with life? Does it matter what the point is when the journey serves as a perfectly satisfying award? I think there is no single point to life, all lives are so beautifully different that the meanings they make out of themselves should be just as different.

[AimusSage]

It is better to have a pencil with a sharp point than one without a sharp point.

Or, as some would argue, a sharp point can cause a too distinct line on the paper, whereas a pencil with an unsharp point can provide a broader, less strict line.

[Bookworm Cris]

Pierre Gringoire said:

I think a big part of the definition may be recuperating from failure. How fast can you recuperate after being demoralized?

But to recuperate in a way that gives you inward peace, peace from the failure, and promise for the future.

That´s worth thinking about... I think you can recuperate from failure this way if you did your best, with good intentions in your heart. If your intention was not to harm, but to do good, and you put your best efforts in it, even when (or if) you failure, you can stand up and face yourself (and thus, face the world) with peace in your heart.
To be able to lay in your bed at night with a clean heart, knowing you did your best; that brings you the feeling you´re doing it right. And wouldn´t it be (at least a part of) the meaning of life?;)

[Sir Dovesinn]

a problem that concerned me too, and still does.
I must say that I read the previous posts and I do not feel consoled. To each of the answers expressed one can ask WHY?

So it comes out that the right way to live is reading books, meditating, being friendly, thinking that what you do is the right and only thing, and passing this knowledge on.

But it is not so. That does not comfort me. And as Pascal says, except meditating, the rest is just distraction, distraction from seeing the truth in front of you: You die and you don’t know the meaning in your life.

I am probably out fashioned but I do believe in absolute and this: each gives his life meaning does not really appeal to me. I yearn so much for the Truth, for One, that it must exist.
And I will not find it, this One, this much I know, but what if in the end I find my one. Paradoxical, yes, it is.
And will I think the same next year?

[Eagleheart]

And will I think the same next year?
You will be surprized to know how many factors should be considered if a mathematical equation is to be constructed for the 50/50 probabilty of your next year condition...And about the factors in the equation - see they actually represent the meaning of your life for the next year...
Meaning is derived from everything you are consciously experiencing...I wonder why the happiest people are those who never question the meaning of their life...because meaning is an experience....
Those who survived in the concentration camps were the ones giving meaning to every simple expected/ however strenuous / task...If giving meaning preserves life, what bigger merits should it have to be acknowledged?

[byquist]

Tough question. I probably look for "paradox," not that I could define that word. Something that doesn't seem to be, but probably is. Or, something that seems to be, but is probably bs. There's a lot in experience that fits paradox.

Toward the end of the long film, "My Dinner With Andre," Wally Shawn (a listener of Andre for over the first hour) can't take it any more, and then goes on a roll trying to get to the bottom of things. He's over the top and that is an interesting feature of life, see oneself or another over the edge (peacefully of course, not violently).

I also look for humor (also verging on some sort of paradox) because it deflates troubles.

Also, I go for the iconoclast, rebel, wacky or off-beat. That dwells in a realm of discovery, where things are "new" all the time. That gives spice to the otherwise, "getting and spending we lay waste our powers."

I recently have encountered in a play, two of the funniest actors I've ever seen. It is a delight to be around their magic. They are normal, but also have that zany side that is rare. Zaniness is another form or outrageousness or paradox. When you're around it, you know it. Somebody wrote the little book, "The Empty Space." Harold Clureman maybe. Anyways, he talks about filling an emply and silent stage -- with what? Junk or quality. So we fill our day with junk or spunk.

[Sir Dovesinn]

Dear eagleheart,
I understand not what you are saying. I am pretty sure that you understand meaning other than I do. We should first define the terms.
What I consciously experience does not result in the meaning of my life. This just makes me up.
And what the devil has maths with my condition to do? This is offensive. Do not lower me, do not elevate me, to an abstraction.
I am no constant, I am other than static. That is why the I typing this is not the same I finishing typing this. Not to talk about next year.

[Eagleheart]

This is offensive. Do not lower me, do not elevate me, to an abstraction.
If I have in any way been offensive then I do apologize...Surely I should examine carefully my examples as I do not intent to use approaches not everyone sees as acceptable...But you must agreee that I cannot adapt my views according to every participant in the discussion...If my standpoint on meaning is offensive then I am disinclined to take any note, but as it stands the way I expressed it is not appropriate, so I apologize for the chosen mode of expression...

I am no constant, I am other than static. That is why the I typing this is not the same I finishing typing this. Not to talk about next year.
Your eventual experiences were intended to represent variables and I was not relegating the personality to the principles of polynomials...Stressing that it is impossible to include all what is happening for an year and thus how changed you will be, I was making the point that meaning is derived from every experience however trivial, and exactly because of this inability to construct an equation of a one-year life one should acknowledge that this complexity of life does not need absolutistic meanings and explanations, but is itself illuminated by meaning...

[Sir Dovesinn]

eagleheart,
You see, exactly this 'absolutistic' is what I yearn for, no matter how impossible and paradoxical that may be.

My intuition(which is beyond reason) is that it must be a unity, it must exist a comprehensible whole to meet my deepest desire. Because this is what it is: irrational desire, longing.
According reason I can acknowledge many things, logical, well based, practical. But this does not bring me any comfort whatsoever. My reason may embrace at different times theories which appeal to it. She has its own laws. I can do nothing about it. But still I discover myself unsatisfied and truly bleak.( I live my life as many do: doing the things I want, the ones I need, the ones I must and so on…, and I smile wholehearted while doing so. But the most important thing is missing: the absolute meaning of existence, which I torture myself searching in reason although I know that it dwells somewhere else.)


You need not excuse yourself, I take no offence in polemic, and I hope others don’t either. I wish to be sincere because I do not post here for the love of typing. I wish to read what others experience and how do they deal with their problems, to come across new ideas.
:p

[Eagleheart]

My intuition(which is beyond reason) is that it must be a unity, it must exist a comprehensible whole to meet my deepest desire
Well, intuition is something I am powerless to confront with arguments, given its essence...I cannot question your intuition, because intuition does not have argumentative basis to be questioned...It is a right of your own...But how absolute meaning contradicts individualistic meaning?...Some of the people I have talked to about this hold that perhaps absolute is every person' fulfillment of his mission in life for example/ directed most of the times to a better world/...Does absolute mean the same for all or the direction is the same but the ways different? Every person driven to some absolute aim / perhaps a divine world/ but employing a different life struggle and individual mission?