Meaning is not given, it is built.

That goes for language, and for life.

We harm this planet and each other and we can't contribute nearly enough to justify the harm. — TiredThinker

There are people who can- and you should listen.

Can we properly examine life while still alive? — TiredThinker

Based on your premise of there being no evidence of another life, this would be the only time we can. As you did just now.

If there is no afterlife can we assume life had no meaning? — TiredThinker

That would only give it all the more meaning as a matter of fact. I mean. What else is there? Something valuable or rare is only valuable or rare because it exists but in such few numbers. Right?

If there is no afterlife can we assume life had no meaning? — TiredThinker

If there’s no life after the afterlife can we assume the afterlife has no meaning? If there’s no life after the afterafterlife can we assume the afterafterlife has no meaning? If there’s no life after... I think that I’ve made a point.

Neither a finite life not infinite life have any more or less meaning than the other. Even if you had infinite life after this one (or if this one just went on forever), you'd still need to find, or rather make, meaning for it.

There was a great comic on this topic a week ago:

The Elflord and the Mayfly

Only during life can we supply it with meaning. If there was an afterlife there would be no meaning to life, and no sense in living it.

Sayonara; off to the lounge with you!

We shouldn't go that far now. Here. Watch this.



Life isn't perfect or constantly tolerable. And that's precisely why it is. Think about it some.

Erm.. how about 'welcome to the forum'? Lol.

See this is classic core belief being challenged. Aside from making not only himself but by association literally anyone and everyone part of whatever ideology (probably atheist) seem like an ass... it's just unattractive and uninviting. Depressing really. Just. Yeah, no. Clearly not the way to be happy and find inner peace. Ironic how sometimes those who seek to destroy faith end up being its greatest ally. All part of the plan I guess. :grin:

Heh, I was making a sarcastic joke about how threads like this one about the afterlife have been increasingly moved by Mods to the Lounge, a section of the forum that does not appear on the main page, essentially relegating such threads that the mods find unseemly to the graveyard. A convenient way to get rid of them without outright deleting them. I for one think about the conundrum of an afterlife quite often, and find it to be a very philosophical and worthwhile topic of discussion.

Mistakes were made.

Same time, I understand how blind faith in something (allegedly, hopefully the right thing) can be non-conducive to philosophical discussion and fruitful debate. After all, that's what the forum entails.

No reason faith should be a hindrance to logic. Perhaps that's the message of those who do as you say they do? Who knows.

I think we probably agree, but I'm not following you.

It has meaning now.

United we stand...

:up: I go back and forth on this a lot. One thing I've come up with is that "meaning", as understood even within the confines of this idea of life having meaning only in the present, is a concept that stems from some sort of metaphysical "meta-meaning" situation. We thought life had meaning in relation to an afterlife, but now we've amended that, and, using the same language, we say that life only has meaning in the now. And then it gets twisted up with some concepts borrowed from Hinduism or Buddhism.

...Confused we fall?

'Afterlife' doesn't give life meaning. If anything, death gives life meaning, but meaning is imaginary.

or some might argue that being happy is the only meaning to life — TiredThinker

I think you've hit on the important part right here. To be more specific, if you are unhappy to begin with, life will seem to lose its meaning. The opposite is also true: when you are happy, you tend to see the meaning in your life. Consider that happiness might be the cause, and meaning is the effect. If you can find other ways to increase your happiness, the fact that life is finite should bother you less. Just my thoughts on the subject, I'm no expert.

if you are unhappy to begin with, life will seem to lose its meaning. The opposite is also true: when you are happy, you tend to see the meaning in your life. Consider that happiness might be the cause, and meaning is the effect. If you can find other ways to increase your happiness, the fact that life is finite should bother you less. — Bird-Up

:up: :100: :clap:

Can life have meaning without afterlife? — TiredThinker

It looks like the answer to your question is implicit in your question. I understand that the view implied in the question is universal and not peculiar to you. What is this view I talk about? It's the one where we think only eternal life can have meaning. If so, the meaning of life must be to live [for as long as possible (given existing realities) but preferably, till the end of time itself].

The followup question is, "what is live/living?" The intriguing fact in re living is that it invariably involves attempts to, well, cheat death. People want to be part of something that outlasts their finite lifespan - they make discoveries, invent things, build monumental structures, develop new ideas, etc. All these activities which allegedly give lives meaning are simply alternative methods of living forever. In other words, again, the meaning of life, as suggested by all this, is to live (for as long as possible or, better still, forever).

Is this the correct way of looking at the meaning of life?

Well, any opposing view to the above will have to contend with the fact that meaning (of life) is, well, meaningless, if there is nothing that can have meaning (no life). I suppose this is the exact reason why people seek meaning in eternal existence - no life, no meaning is the argument here. At death people are annihilated and nothing remains that can have meaning, any meaning, at all. This, I guess, is the rationale behind the belief that only eternal life is meaningful.

Consider now the scenario in which a person is immortal and just that and nothing more? Does the mere fact of being immortal give meaning to this person's life? The conundrum here is, if you accept my argument for why we see meaning [only] in eternal life, this person's immortality serves only to ensure the eternal existence of that which can possess meaning but the meaning this immortal being can possess is not immortality itself but must be something else above and beyond it. In other words, meaning is still an additional item that must be attached to eternal life.

All that can be said then is that eternal life (afterlife) is necessary but not sufficient for life to have meaning.

:chin:

Meaning is not given, it is built.

That goes for language, and for life. — Banno

This.

We harm this planet and each other and we can't contribute nearly enough to justify the harm. — TiredThinker

How can you justify this judgement? On what principles do you think that the changes we make to the planet, in our ever so short life spans, are harms rather than benefits?

Here's one way of looking at it. To leave the planet unchanged after one's life is to neither harm nor benefit the planet. So to benefit the planet is not to leave the planet unchanged. The bigger the change that a person makes, the more potential there is for there to be great harm, or great benefit. On what principles would you distinguish a beneficial change from a harmful change?

meaning is imaginary. — whollyrolling

Does anything differentiate what is real from the imagined? How could it... after all, meaning is imaginary. Perhaps you simply meant you consider other's meanings of meaning to be meaningless?

The afterlife is presumed to be everlasting. I wasn't assuming there was an after. But if existence is building blocks from what came before, and nothing comes after, and all we've accomplished is what lesser beings have done, than how can we feel special? Not by virtue of uniqueness, but by being more than here and now and having little control over that much.

As far as I can tell we live and when we die our very mind ceases to exist. Even if we created a sense of meaning and purpose those lessons are not applicable if nothing comes next. We are equal to worms. We simply produce a ton more dopamine than the next animal so that every small thing seems like an accomplishment. But when we die statistically most of us won't exist on paper after 200 years. No record we ever existed. That can't be a satisfactory outcome in existence?

... if existence is building blocks from what came before, and nothing comes after, and all we've accomplished is what lesser beings have done, than how can we feel special? — TiredThinker

I don't see how a finite or everlasting existence differs in this respect. A static afterlife would be dead and meaningless, as I see it.

I do recall an episode of Voyager in which one of the Qs (an immortal being) wanted to end his existence. Apparently he had done everything and seen everything. I feel everything is in the scope of our mind. Our strongest memories tend to be the earliest ones. But over time they are harder to locate, but as far as I can tell are still there. The awe of life isn't from seeing everything. It's from appreciation of things much larger than us. Limits to our intellect are important. It's a ratio. And each experience of previously experienced things will always be unique.

Life has no meaning, and its purpose is just to make more itself but more complex,
even with an after life or immortality, life would be meaningless, as it would make any action truly futile, especially in a deterministic world like ours, and you would truly just be a slave of existence and immortality.

being happy is the only meaning to life, but that only sounds like a way to prevent sadness and suicide. — TiredThinker

being happy is very subjective, often comes at the price of others' happiness, and doesn't last as much as suffering.

Can we properly examine life while still alive? — TiredThinker

yes we can, via rationalism, and viewing ourselves in the third person instead of our own eyes, then having our peers try the same and see if we have the same findings

ultimately in my opinion, life cannot truly ever have a meaning.

Have you first defined meaning?

Lets go with this. You're defining "Meaning" as "Impact in some later life". So when you get to that later life...is there any meaning anymore?

You've been pushed with meaning as a religious means. You have been told to sacrifice for others; to not have a reward today, because you will have a reward much later. You have been taught to devalue your current life. To look at yourself as a poopsack that will only be worthy when your soul rises again. That you are a thing of harm and destruction that must be tamed and held back with struggle for a greater reward and existence later.

You were taught wrong.

You are a combination of atoms and molecules that have existed for trillions of years. You are a chemical reaction that not only works to keep itself going, but has gained something that has not happened (to our knowledge): sentience. You are matter, that realizes it is matter. You are part of the universe, that realizes it is part of the universe. You are able to see yourself. That's utterly flipping amazing, and incredibly rare.

You get to observe what you are around you and decide, "Should it be this way? Can it be better?" You get to find meaning in the now. In the breath that you take. In the thoughts that you will have for a precious few 80 years ( if you're lucky).

The rest of existence doesn't have this. The rest of existence is unaware of itself, blissfully smashing about and just doing what it started so long ago.

Do you think this is amazing? Or should it just go away? Should existence return to not knowing itself? Should we preserve existence that knows itself? What meaning will you attach to life? Can you, in recognizing yourself in the universe, figure out how to best express yourself in its logical laws?

Intelligent life has an incredible meaning. You don't have to wait to die to have it. Tell yourself today you are going to make something of it. You may stumble, you may make mistakes and even fail. But everything you do is a small portion of existence that has that precious sentience. Don't waste it.

My definition of meaning isn't about profit in a next life or ethereal afterlife. It is about being more than the matter I am made of. Being able to be aware that I am made of matter seems irrelevant if I can only ever be made of matter, and be destroyed as easily as anything else made of matter. The mind must prove to be greater than matter. Enough so to exist without matter. That is why I don't think life can matter without a new phase of existence afterwards.

Apparently he had done everything and seen everything. — TiredThinker

There is a problem with the principle of plenitude, which states that given an infinite amount of time, every possibility will be actualized. If there are infinite possibilities, it's impossible to actualize them all. So the principle of plenitude hits its nemesis when we assume infinite possibilities.

In other words, we cannot assume both infinite time and infinite possibilities because infinite time necessitates that all possibilities have been actualized (principle of plenitude), while infinite possibilities implies that it is impossible to actualize all possibilities.