Discussions On The Meaning Of Life [Reply #5]

The Question:
What Is The Meaning Of Life?

[Editorial Note: this question sparked a small philosophical feud, if you will, on the Facebook group. Below are the entries relating to the said feud:]

TB wrote on June 28, 2007:

“But this beckons the question: how did people come up with these questions in the first place? It would seem illogical to waste ones time thinking about things that have little to no value in terms of survival.”

That’s the definition of being human. We have a over-capacity, too much consciousness. But only nihilists suffer from it. The rest? Well, what is the size of the population again and how much cleavage have I seen on Facebook?

MB wrote on July 9, 2007:

I guess you subscribe to the Nietzschean “Ubermensch” theory, where humanity is something to be overcome. Although I do believe the theory has some merit, it seems to be all too convenient to those who wish to give their ideas some importance. I see ideas more as a currency in a communal market of concepts. An idea is valued the more it is believed in. Or in other words, the more an idea is believed or cherished, the more “truth” it has. Although this does mean that truth is defined by democratic means, which is not always a good thing, it determines how “important” that idea is.

Ideas are in constant competition with each other, in a metaphysical sense. The ideas that are valued the most by the most people are those that we must consider true. However, since ideas are constantly being generated, the concept of truth is always in flux. For instance, the belief in a supernatural god, which has a colossal following, is in a global sense the “truth”. As members in this global think-tank, we must defend and advertise the ideas which we deem to be true.

So in this sense, it does not matter if you think of things relating to philosophy or society. As long as you believe in something and advertise your belief, you are helping to make your idea the global “truth”. This is why religion and political groupings will always exist.

This idea doesn’t only apply to matters that relate to activities such as philosophy. According to Kuhn, even science, logic and reason are suspect to this type of thinking. Science is prone to “paradigm shifts” that revolutionise how we see the physical world. One only needs to think of quantum and relativity theory to see how this works.

Enough said, this is an idea that is up for debate. The more people that think this idea has merit, the more it will have some grain of truth in it. The balance between those who come up with ideas and those that support them is vital. Some people may never come up with a thought or a movement that will garner any major support, but without the masses of people who give an idea credibility there would never be any great concepts for people to think about.

So any thought by any person can be the next big thing.

TB wrote on July 12, 2007:

Your assumptions are totally wrong.
If this was a philosophical group, people would think instead of masturbate their own quasi intellect. You don’t know how to categorise my philosophy because you haven’t been trained to catogorise that particular philosophy.
Use your head, become a philosopher. If I wanted high school cliches I would ask Britney Spears.

MB wrote on July 12, 2007:

I’m sorry if I offended you with my previous post. That wasn’t my intention. What I try to do when I write posts is to not only give my opinion on a subject but also give some insight into why I think the way I do. If it sounds pretentious, I apologize. I am the first to agree that my style can seem somewhat confrontational at times and I am working on a style that would be more accessible.

Every time I write here on these boards I try to explain something that has been bugging me or expand a topic into some other direction. That way a discussion doesn’t get stale or boring. That may make my posts long and most likely rambling, but it helps me air out issues that I’ve been interested in and have been giving a lot of thought on.

Also about how I categorized your philosophical thought, I found it had many parallels with Nietzsche and the “superman” concept. If I got the wrong impression, sorry. It just seemed like that was what you were talking about.

But anyway, I hope this doesn’t deter you from posting.

JP wrote on July 19, 2007:

If I wanted High School cliches, I could just as easily read your first post:

“And it has a classic answer; there is no meaning to life. But conscious people become nihilists because they ask for the meaning behind everything. Since this cannot be fullfilled homo sapiens spends it’s time trying to overcome his surpluss of consciousness. The human being is a paradox in other words. It is trying to not be human.”

Classic example! I’ve yet to see any originality from you on this thread, yet you accuse Martin of “not being trained to categorise your philosophy?”. I beg your pardon, I’ve yet to come across this philosophy that you advertise, as it is directly at crossroads with the previously mentioned originality of yours. I do suggest you either:

A) learn not to attack people on such hefty basis.
B) stick to YOUR high school cliches, seems like you use your head the way Britney does.
C) do something productive like producing Swiss army-knives, I’m in need of one as it is.

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