To discover the goal or purpose of a human being shouldn’t we first investigate the clearer purposes of the other things in nature?

For example, what is the purpose of a stone? Isn’t it to serve as a building block? On this analogy, a human being is as though the building block of the community, a proper and fit citizen to help form the commonwealth.

What is the purpose of a plant? Isn’t it to nourish our bodies? Then we are as nourishment for the polity, each doing our special work that sustains it. What the purpose of a horse or mule or cow? Thusly a general rides his cavalry to victory, carried on the backs of the citizenry and fed by the milk of his wealthy supporters.

What, then, is the purpose of a general? To guide his army to victory. And after victory is achieved and peace reigns? What then? He fashions his stones, waters his plants, feeds his horses and mules and cows so that, when he needs to go to war again, he has the best possible accoutrement.

And what is the purpose of an Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon? One who would rule the whole world? Who either died young, was assassinated, or exiled? And, finally, what is the purpose of a thinker, in his ivory tower, who, in his hard-fought-for leisure thought on these would-be world conquerors and meditated upon their meaning?

Life has to have a goal? Like it was a bloody football game?

Madness.

I think it's fairly subjective wouldn't you say?

Would any goal that you set for yourself, as long as it authentically represents you, be a goal worth striving for?

In terms of "good", you would have to define what you mean by "good." Are you seeking to ground the goal in a moral / ethical foundation? If so, what would that be?

I would like you to seriously meditate over that thought of yours — Anand-Haqq

I feel like what you are telling me is correct but unless I dig deep into your idea , I can't be sure .... So I will seriously meditate over that thought of mine.
By the Way ,You have a very nice grip over Rhetoric.

:lol:

I meant in happiness reap by comparing all goals with each other.

It wasn't a joke.

Happiness itself is also subjective and varies enormously from person to person.

Your notion of what you reap in terms of happiness could seem bizarre and worthless to another. Likewise their idea of happiness and the goals they have pursued to achieve that happiness could seem just as bizarre and worthless to you.

Perhaps the only meta-goal is growth itself. Or as per Nietzsche:

One must want more to become more. For this is the doctrine life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more, in a word, growth – that is life itself.

Harmonious delight in the possibility of existence.

It’s not a goal because it isn’t quantifiable or measurable, but it gives me a sense of direction, at least.

I’m inclined to think that’s all we really need.

I found something interesting on the Wikipedia page on Socrates, the father of Western philosophy. See vide infra,

According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' life as the gadfly of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the Oracle at Delphi if anyone were wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that No One was wiser. — Wikipedia

:rofl: :clap:

No One

Scroll down to Favorite Philosophers and Favorite Quotations :lol:

It wasn't a joke. — Banno

:joke: :lol: Holy Shmolly! ... I never noticed. The prophecy is finally discovered, by the worthy ... m speechless! lol ! :rofl: :rofl:

He was pretty serious but I thought it was pretty funny.

LOL

The Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team bough a new goalie from Venezuella. During his first game, you could hear the announcer on TV: "The Bay City Rollers' Forward winds up... he shoots... But Jesus SAVES!!" — god must be atheist

this is why I love Canada :grin:

On this analogy, a human being is as though the building block of the community, a proper and fit citizen to help form the commonwealth. — Todd Martin

I have only seen uncommon wealth. And I wonder where that came from :chin:

I have only seen uncommon wealth. And I wonder where that came from :chin: — TaySan

Wealth is pretty common now in the USA. I’m about to receive my third stimulus check, and my sister, worth over $2 million, is receiving hers too.

But, back to the topic: we in this day of advanced egalitarianism and extreme individualism tend to look at ourselves as isolated and equal individuals who can invent and re-invent ourselves. This shows how much Nietzsche’s ideas have pervaded our self-consciousness. But we forget that that philosopher was seeking to inspire a very rare sort of person; a civilization-constituting sort of being, like Moses Jesus or Muhammad—not a “creative” finger-painting kindergartner.

Human beings in ancient times, on the other hand, were very differentiated and unequal, much like their languages: Greek and Roman society was as complex, as full of hierarchies and differentiated roles as the conjugated verb forms and noun cases of Latin and Greek which served their various linguistic needs. It is as difficult for us to understand with our modern mindset such complexity in societal relations as it is for an English speaker to learn the accusative, or appreciate the subjunctive or optative.

That is why discussion in this thread of the proper or best goal or purpose of a human being is so aimless and subjective—when it is not at all obvious that subjectivism and individualism are the proper perspectives from which to view the question. For example, is it obvious that it is not the proper goal of a woman to remain in the home, tend to its economy and take care of the children? Does the fact that this idea is outdated and universally scorned mean that it is not true?

Again, is it obvious that no man is born to serve, to be subservient to his superior fellows, and others to lead? Don’t we instinctively sympathize with a man whom we see relegated to an inferior position by adverse circumstance, though his qualities suggest he should occupy a higher place? Don’t we likewise resent the advancement by good fortune of a man whose qualities indicate he should serve rather than command?

The democratization of society may lead to the optimization of each individual to set his or her own goals as freely as possible; it may also lead, on a mechanistic analogy, to a multiplicity of different natural “gears” failing to anymore mesh and set the machine of society in motion. In a clock each gear has a specific purpose, role and function; is human society like a clock?...or is it rather like a scale, on which individual equal weights are placed in order to come up with the right balance?

I think that it's all about how you approach your goals. There are some that are better than others, as that a person should believe in something like eliminating poverty would be more noble than something like believing that they should become the king of Earth, but, outside of few outliers, I think that it's just generally in the approach. People often become lost in the pursuit of self-actualization to the point of irony.

To use myself as an example, as a Pacifist, I think that the purpose of international politics should be to facilitate conflict resolution. I consider for this to be a lofty ideal that I should hold dear. What I recognize is that, though this does happen to some extent, that just simply isn't what international politics is like. Failing to cope with this in the past is how I came to become as a stereotype of a Pacifist spy attempting to bring about global communism. What I was unwilling to accept was that there just simply wasn't too much that I could do to change the world for what I, at least, considered to be for the better. Having not accepted this, I then undertook what was kind of a political crusade. As much as anyone doesn't want to be told what place they have in the world, I have decided to share this anecdote so to suggest that, though people kind of ought to have lofty ideals, they really should remain within the realm of the possible. I'd have been much better off volunteering for the War Resisters' International, the local Pacifist non-profit, or a human rights organization or something. I could have made a substantial difference by focusing upon a particular conflict and engaging with the work that people are already doing. I, instead, created what I believed to be an intelligence operation so as to somehow generate peace on Earth. I think that just about everyone would agree with peace on Earth, but I must admit that that was kind of grandiose, to say the least.

Philosophers often, I think, develop these rather grand, but ultimately kind of vague concepts that they believe can effect a global paradigm shift akin the Copernican Revolution. I think that this is a symptom of that the intellectual class who, at least, attempts to orchestrate contemporary culture has yet to absolve itself of the celebration of what just simply is hubris. You had "great men" in past eras of history because of that, given that there was some form of aristocracy or another, there were only a few men who had been offered an extraordinary education. You could think that you could be published by this or that publisher someday and that, to get there, you could be published in this or that journal and that would be an entirely sensible thing to do, though you still may have to accept taking this or that research position or this or that adjunct professorship. They say that life is what you make of it. I don't know. I also made the inverse mistake. I thought that my goal in life should be to become a barista. I was of kind of slacker ethos before I fell into the politics of the ultra-Left. I probably would've been better off maintaining that ethos, but I will say that only aiming high enough to be making more than minimum wage with tips is also indicative of certain Postmodern pessimism. I only really thought that because I felt like it didn't matter what I did; I just wasn't going to have a future. You should just want to have a good life. All that really matters aside from the community that you participate within or help to create is that. Whatever goals get you there, I would say, are good.

On this analogy, a human being is as though the building block of the community, — Todd Martin

I know it's a partial quote, out of context, but it seems that the hapless chap was used as a substitute in the pyramid, when a building block was missing from the inventory.

@god must be atheist

Your “hapless chap” seems to me to be like a piece of cardboard you pull out of a nearby dumpster or chance upon in the trunk of your car when you are stranded on the side of the road because you ran out of oil and lack a proper funnel: you take that chap and bend him in your hands into the shape of a funnel, stick his narrow end into the intake, and pour in the needed lubrication.

The same sort of thing can be done in a sudden war, especially when you have superior technology: you recruit the youngest most physically hale sorts of men, as the US did in WWII, and bend their unformed minds to operate guns and drop bombs...

...but it is better, if you can, to train your soldiers in peacetime for war...and to always keep a proper funnel behind your seat or in your trunk.

That's a nice dissertation. I think it could easily apply to European society as well. Although I'm aware of the huge differences between north, east, south, west on this war-torn
continent.

is human society like a clock?...or is it rather like a scale, on which individual equal weights are placed in order to come up with the right balance? — Todd Martin

Personally I tend to favour balance over ingenuity. But I don't know if or how this extrapolates to (modern) society. It's definitely worth pondering.

Your “hapless chap” seems to me to be like a piece of cardboard you pull out of a nearby dumpster or chance upon in the trunk of your car when you are stranded on the side of the road because you ran out of oil and lack a proper funnel: you take that chap and bend him in your hands into the shape of a funnel, stick his narrow end into the intake, and pour in the needed lubrication. — Todd Martin

What?!? :monkey:

Do you agree that , there are some goals that are good for you than some other goals....

I mean , goal 'A' will not be good for you as goal 'B' will be. — No One

I'm not quite sure what a goal is in this context. I sometimes make plans; I rarely set goals. Are they the same?

A highest goal? Or the only goal indispensable to all other goals? To unlearn misery.

I do agree that it is important to unlearn misery because misery can be such a rut. Perhaps, that could even be a goal in the psychological treatment of depression.

e.g. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

I am not sure how much cognitive behavioral therapy does work on unlearning depression, but it does enable critical thinking about the way we view our experiences. I have worked with cognitive behaviorial therapists when I worked in an inpatient therapies unit, but the focus was more behavioral. However, that may have been because most of the patients were in hospital for obsessive compulsive disorder, so had programmes designed by therapists designed for this. However, I have been impressed by CBT, especially the ABC model. Did CBT come into your cognitive science course?

CBT only can be used effectively, IIRC, in coordination with psychiatric interventions to treat clinical depression. One doesn't "unlearn depression"; rather (via e.g. (Epicurean, Stoic, Spinozist, pragmatist, or absurdist) philosophy, or Buddhist meditation, or Vedanta yoga, ... or CBT, etc) one can unlearn maladaptive habits which contribute either to triggering and/or to exacerbating conditions like 'depressive mood disorders'.

Btw, I'd encountered CBT some time after my graduate studies in cog. psych. while helping a suicidal bipolar girlfriend find an adequate therapy group to meet with regularly. Eventually I was allowed to observe (remotely) and discuss the approach and techniques with the therapist who was also a trained (Stoic) philosopher.

I do agree that CBT is best used in conjunction with medication rather than instead of it. But, one newer development is online CBT. When a therapist told me she was leaving her job to work in the development of online therapy I was very sceptical, but I suppose it may help people before they get to the point of needing anything more, and I have found that just reading about habitual thinking, like in mindreading, black and white, as well as catastrophic thinking make a lot of difference in the interpretation of daily events.

Yes, agreed.

As long as death exists Happiness is the only Logical goal for humans life.The way someone will achieve it is a total individualistic process.There is no recipe