I mean the meaning/purpose of a fish is to swim and swim well. A tiger must predate well and so on. What of humans? That which sets us apart from the rest of the living world is our mind, its higher faculties of logic and creativity. I believe, ergo, that cultivation and employment of these higher faculties define us. — TheMadFool
As for science, it looks like it's at the top of the list of mankind's creative and logical achievements. It helps us understand, therefore manipulate, our world to our advantage. Scientists and mathematicians have to be rational AND creative, sometimes, I believe, at the very frontiers of these abilities.
So, according to me, yes, there is a greater meaning/purpose in immersing oneself in math and science. — TheMadFool
As for science, it looks like it's at the top of the list of mankind's creative and logical achievements. It helps us understand, therefore manipulate, our world to our advantage. Scientists and mathematicians have to be rational AND creative, sometimes, I believe, at the very frontiers of these abilities.
So, according to me, yes, there is a greater meaning/purpose in immersing oneself in math and science. — TheMadFool
I guess the big question is, WHY is it meaningful to create technologies? — schopenhauer1
The gent scholar types want to think that understanding principles of science, and applications in technology provide some inherent meaning. Thus, by edifying themselves in the immersions in these topics, they feel they are participating in something grander or important. — schopenhauer1
Yet, it won't take long for scientists and non-scientists to realize, in complete understanding of their choices, that science is the one true activity that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. — TheMadFool
Yes, there's art and music but these are non-rational as far as I can see and so must be on a lower rung of the hierarchy of natures that define a human being. — TheMadFool
I mean the meaning/purpose of a fish is to swim and swim well. A tiger must predate well and so on. What of humans? That which sets us apart from the rest of the living world is our mind, its higher faculties of logic and creativity. I believe, ergo, that cultivation and employment of these higher faculties define us. — TheMadFool
↪Number2018 What do you make of that quote? — schopenhauer1
The gent scholar types want to think that understanding principles of science, and applications in technology provide some inherent meaning. Thus, by edifying themselves in the immersions in these topics, they feel they are participating in something grander or important. The fact that the world works in such a way as applying mathematically-derived, precise scientific principles to materials, processes, functionalities, etc. makes it such that their work is really "doing something", perhaps above and more so than those who are not engaged in these activities. — schopenhauer1
Of course each one of us is "participating in something grander" just by being alive. Each one of us is a member of multiple communities whether he wants to be or not. Each of us is a member of a family and lineage, a citizen of a nation-state, a resident in a municipality, for instance. Each of us is a member of the community of living things, of sentient animals, of human beings, of sentient beings wherever and whenever they may be.Are there people on this forum who believe they are participating in something "grander" by: — schopenhauer1
I'm not sure I understand the rest of your question. It seems you're taking issue with an idea you attribute to others, something about math, science, and technology being "meaningful" or "important". It's not at all clear to me what you're driving at.
I'm not sure how to coordinate your use of "important" with your use of "meaningful" and "grand". Are you asking whether people think pure and applied math and empirical science are "more important" than other human pursuits? Don't you expect that there are many different ways to tally up what counts as "important"? — Cabbage Farmer
I guess the big question is, WHY is it meaningful to create technologies? I've already discounted the idea you mentioned earlier, that it is our species' purpose. Any other ideas? Understanding the regularities of nature, usings specific and complicated maths to determine exact outcomes. What is it about this that makes this a bastion of meaning? — schopenhauer1
The gent scholar types want to think that understanding principles of science, and applications in technology provide some inherent meaning. Thus, by edifying themselves in the immersions in these topics, they feel they are participating in something grander or important. The fact that the world works in such a way as applying mathematically-derived, precise scientific principles to materials, processes, functionalities, etc. makes it such that their work is really "doing something", perhaps above and more so than those who are not engaged in these activities. — schopenhauer1
All this is intensive minutia mongering. Life itself is about immersing oneself in the details in order to obtain some goal of survival, entertainment, or comfort. At the social level, these goals are intertwined with incentives and rituals to induce production and replication of resources, people, and the culture itself.
There is only repetitive, minutia mongering until death do us part. — schopenhauer1
This all led me to wonder where desires come from, if our whole existence depends on what we desire then where do our desires come from in the first place? Then I realized that we could see all our desires as evolutionary tools that were selected through competition for survival, that everything is as if we have the desires we do because they helped our ancestors/species survive in some way. — leo
We feel desires. These desires lead us to set goals and attempt to reach them. Without any desire we wouldn't do anything and would quickly die.
Our fundamental desires have no justification, there is no justification to our desire to live other than if we didn't have it we would die quickly. — leo
This all led me to wonder where desires come from, if our whole existence depends on what we desire then where do our desires come from in the first place? Then I realized that we could see all our desires as evolutionary tools that were selected through competition for survival, that everything is as if we have the desires we do because they helped our ancestors/species survive in some way. As if we were machines controlled by our desires, attempting as best as we can to fulfill them, and surviving and reproducing and perpetuating the species in the process, in this grand cosmic game. — leo
Your adjectives for minutia mongering are affective terms, describing what it feels like to be involved in a kind of experiencing that we don't particularly enjoy, that is tedious, somewhat boring and unfulfilling. What exactly is it about such experiences that make them less than satisfying to us?
Is it the sheer amount of 'stuff' that is the essence of minutia mongering, or is it the inadequate way in which that 'stuff' is organized, interrelated within itself and with respect to our goals? Think about what are called 'flow' experiences. When we are immersed in such experiences, time seems to fly by, we feel the opposite of bored, we don't consider what we are doing a means to another end, but its own end. But is a flow experience characterized by a paucity of 'stuff', the escape from detail? On the contrary, in such states of being we maintain a hyper-awareness of all that goes on around us. — Joshs
There is more than one way to look at desire besides thinking of it as separated from cognition and experience. It is only when we begin from a desire-thinking split that we are faced with a self-invented problem of having to explain how we are pushed(drive, motive) or pulled(environmental re-enforcement) into action. We inherited this quandry from the notion of static equilibrium used in the physical sciences, But a living system is not a static thing, it is a self-enclosed system of exchanges and interaction with an environment. It exists by changing itself, and thus is a dynamically equilibrating system. — Joshs
Ok, I'll go with this schema. It is the burden of these desires (that lead to more minutia) that I am concerned with. Once born, you are responsible for your desiring. To live in a society to "get stuff done" we need those desires to be driven to ever more knowledge, application, capacity, and aptitude for understanding and performing minutia. The opposite of this is sleep, nirvana, being immersed in some form of oneness feeling. It is the general, not the specific. It is rest not intense mongering and tending to the minutia. Once born, we are responsible to see the minutia carried out. The bird must follow its prime directive. The human must KNOWINGLY monger its minutia, live its daily life, constantly evaluating the situation, making conscious, deliberate decisions, that are more minutia mongering. There is no end to it once born. — schopenhauer1
I'm not discounting creativity, but creativity in solving the material-functional things that get stuff done is what counts. Next time you turn on your light, adjust the temperature, open the computer, walk on any material in your house, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, etc. etc. you'll know what I mean. — schopenhauer1
.All that matters is that stuff is getting done that works and is functional, is usable, and takes the material world and does something with it — schopenhauer1
Meanwhile, you were never born for yourself, nor can you be. You were always being used. But hey, the outcome of birth is that now YOU have to deal with the impinging factors of life. — schopenhauer1
What the main point is in a nutshell is that some people think that trying to master all the minutia of some topic inherently provides some sort of worth. Thus the more complexity you understand of a subject, the more your life is justified. By knowing the complexity of a subject matter, this somehow provides you more worth. — schopenhauer1
Existence is about the stress- the stress of living with others, the stress of getting by, the stress of finding comfort, the stress of finding peace, the stress of mastering minutia, the stress of labor, hell, it goes down to the very stress of our own desires as @leo stressed. It doesn't go away- robot paradise or not. Flow and creativity don't justify or compensate for the negative characteristics. If someone said birth entails all this, but you get to have flow states and creativity, I'd tell them to shove it where the sun don't shine- they can keep it. I see the hope for achieving flow states and creativity as just ANOTHER propaganda tactic thrown out there by psychologists and social scientists to make sure people are getting along well enough in society. That is complicity, not a justification for life's continuance. — schopenhauer1
And I think that if there was much less stress and much more joy in your life you too would see the meaning and the justification, which is why I think that what you're really looking for is joy in life, find out what prevents you from experiencing it, and then your quest for meaning and justification will be over. It is not the meaninglessness and the lack of justification that takes out the joy, it is the lack of joy that gives rise to the feeling of meaninglessness and the absence of justification. — leo
What happens if life really is bad. We tend to psychologize the badness and make it YOUR problem or MY problem. If it is your or my then it is not A problem in general. What happens if life is actually bad, but by psychologizing it, you are being complicit in perpetuating the badness by trying to correct the ones chiming up about it. Like a bad boss who doesn't want to hear complaints- shape up or ship out is the message. However, there is no improvement plan- it is just better coping techniques. Life itself can't be the problem though, right? — schopenhauer1
And these unavoidable constraints of existence cannot be what makes life really bad, because many people find their life worth living. — leo
But the real solution lies not in staying constantly deep in nature, or in ingesting that substance constantly, it lies in overcoming the fear for good. I am still afraid to face my fears, it isn't easy for me to talk about my fear of people, it wasn't easy for me to come and read what you might have answered to my previous post, what if he rejected me, what if he said that what I say is bullshit. I believe that one day I will succeed, to the point where the fear will be gone for good, where I will see the world for good without this filter that destroys life. I don't want to perpetuate the badness, I want to help you feel better, to help you enjoy life. Maybe because you remind me a bit of myself. — leo
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