What is your philosophy and meaning of life?

To learn mostly. I view all my struggles and suffering and an opportunity to grow. I also make a point to thank my creator for my blessings often. Pretty much praying although I don't belong to any religious groups.

I highly value humility, love, stoicism. I expect something when I die I just have no idea what.

a reply to: AfterInfinity

that doesn't mean there isn't room to provide our own.

I've tried this many times, but in vain. My capacity for conscious self-delusion is remarkably small. Seeking the truth is one of my highest values.

"There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

I like that quote. Not only does it make sense in a universe void of some higher meaning, it also can spur someone to action. I'm fascinated by what George Orwell called "doublespeak". You could say that to someone, fully intending to say that they are wrong about the existence of "fate" and they could come away knowing only that they thought you meant they should "be what they can be" or some nonsense.

a reply to: MyHappyDogShiner

Why does everything need to have meaning?, what if there is no real meaning to anything?, how free a sensation would one have if it were all meaningless, to consider nothing but doing no intentional harm to any living thing and simply live your life until you die?

If life really is meaningless, intentional harm means nothing. Neither does the intention to do harm. It wouldn’t really be meaningless if something meant something. The purpose of life would be to minimize harm to everything alive because no living creature is inherently less “important” than any other. That includes plants and grass and bacteria. You may not intend to harm the plants and grass, but I’m sure it doesn’t feel good for the plants to be stepped on like that.

What if there were nothing to aspire to beyond death?, only hope that there is a reward for your good deeds?.

If there’s nothing to aspire to beyond death, what’s to stop the peasants from revolting?

Why does there have to be a reward or reason to treat other living things and each other as we would like to be treated?

For one, our economic system in its current form does not encourage it. We’ve been conditioned from day one that everything worth doing is rewarded, and the last time I checked this form of expectation is still being instilled to this day.

There is no meaning to anything aside for those who use others and exploit the existence of others to free themselves to take time to search for a meaning to life when there really isn't one.

Is the search for meaning, a meaning in and of itself? I may have to think about that. It sounds interesting and ironic.

You exist, but believe a pack of lies to ease your mind and justify the dastardly things you do to other living things to survive.
Life is meaningless, but that doesn't make it not worth living.

Nothing you do is dastardly. The universe is meaningless, and dastardly implies an attachment of a negative judgment (meaning). “What is the meaning of life?” is an impossible question to answer in all but the most literal definitional meanings of the word. What is the meaning of an asteroid flying through space? There isn’t one. It is the inevitable result of one statistically impossible set of events that occurred. That we can ask the question is more a result of inactivity and an artifact of language than it is of any “depth”. You appear, from your reply, to be more on the border between nihilism, and secular humanism.

a reply to: zackli
how do you now that asteroids flying in space are meaningless, what if just before impact with a planet or sun a disk releases and sends a message out to those who flung it in the first place, just like a universal pinball machine, you get more points if you miss the black holes and hit a habit-ed planet. ' Ha, I hit earth that's 1000points'.

I don't have a philosophy. I'm just 'getting it done' because i have to.

I used to have the philosophy of love God and neighbor. I still try to do that.
But it's not as easy as it seems. And since getting chronically ill, I"m really
too damn tired to have a philosophy. I'm just 'getting it done'. And I'm
trying to 'get it done' without ticking off the taskmaster (GOD).

ETA ... I do believe that 'the truth will set you free'. But at the same time,
the truth will also piss you off to no end and it'll be unpleasant to accept.

Found this on my Facebook. Seems pretty relevant.

a reply to: zackli

I've tried this many times, but in vain. My capacity for conscious self-delusion is remarkably small. Seeking the truth is one of my highest values.

Self-delusion? Deciding what the world means to you, and how you should react to that meaning, is not delusional. No more delusional than sticking your child's stick figure drawings on the fridge.

I like that quote. Not only does it make sense in a universe void of some higher meaning, it also can spur someone to action. I'm fascinated by what George Orwell called "doublespeak". You could say that to someone, fully intending to say that they are wrong about the existence of "fate" and they could come away knowing only that they thought you meant they should "be what they can be" or some nonsense.

Seems to me that you are being deliberately difficult in processing the message I'm trying to convey.

Understand that everything is necessary, in that which you make up around you, the input is the output, no chance, seek and explore, not always the door you expect, but necessary for the next door, accept the outcomes, find you own individual way and learn……………….

Become you

Here's mine.

The smallest thing that you can give could mean the whole to the recipient.

Namaste

a reply to: subtopia

I don't you caught me... Time to go join a cult! I'm thinkin' Christianity just because it's the predominant religion of my country. All of those hot christian girls... And the cold ones too. Can't forget those.

a reply to: AfterInfinity

Self-delusion? Deciding what the world means to you, and how you should react to that meaning, is not delusional.

I don't arbitrarily decide what the world means to me, I was raised in a society that arbitrarily chose the measuring stick by which I measure what seems to me to be the most likely way the world actually is. I assure you, you will most certainly be called delusional if you arbitrarily make up your own meanings and tell those meanings to a psychiatrist. I believe it's called schizophrenia.

No more delusional than sticking your child's stick figure drawings on the fridge.

That's not deciding on what something means. That's using previously-made social meanings. It is a given that a child's stick figure drawing will be important to his or her parent, and it would be deemed abnormal if that meaning was absent.

More generally, the fact that a delusion is shared by hundreds of millions or billions of people does not make it any less delusional. Just look at the membership percentages of different religions. Are they all accurate?

I do the same thing, only using different social forms of making meaning. The fact that I come to the conclusion that the assumption on which a meaning rests has no definite basis using those very forms of meaning-making is only slightly ironic.

Seems to me that you are being deliberately difficult in processing the message I'm trying to convey.

The message you're trying to convey in this reply is, indeed, difficult to process. Nothing deliberately difficult in my translation, just pointing out how certain statements can have completely different meanings from the point of view of the speaker and the point of view of the listener.