The Reason For Life? My Speculations.

This is my first topic so bear with me if I do it wrong.

Life as a collective rests on a yet undiscovered purpose. Each person is like a cell and when built together makes a city, an organ. Groups of cities, like organs make a system, groups of systems make larger systems until finally a body is made and the purpose of those millions and millions of tiny cells is revealed. A cell hasn't a brain, it has no clue where it is or why, but much like a person, an individual, it has a purpose. Purposes too have yet more purposes, like the synopsies of a mind they link and connect until something brilliant is made, a brain. Life is a brain, it can think as we can think but with the benefit of so many different connections, our cells connect, the connections connect, trillions of connections play habitant to each individual and with billions of us living here on our cozy little planet we form a tightly woven creation. The brain of all that is life, what some call god and others call conciousness and still more call fate. We are fate, all of us, like babies we haven't learned to govern our own actions and likely never will, flailing our arms, feeble and young. perhaps it isn't our youth that halts us, perhaps it is our uncomprehension of the systems of life, the meaning of life as a collective word, or perhaps it is simply that we haven't evolved yet quite enough to wrap our selves around such a vast concept, we haven't enough self to wrap.

Life in its entiritey is what has been troubling me lately, the point of the thing. We live, perhaps to make a bigger system as cells do, we the cells create a body, the body perhaps is one of billions also making a vaster system, but were does it end? What is the meaning of these intertwining, overlapping and evergrowing systems if not to make more systems? When more systems are made, what function do they carry out? these gargantuan gods we help to fuel, what's the point in them? Pointless as we might be pointless? There to aid still larger systems? With creatures this large, this eternal and mind blowing, are we even needed? What if at some point, a lunatic somewhere sets off an atom bomb and we all die? Will the system we support die too, and with it, the systems it supports? Will one man's actions effect even the most unfathomably godly beings? If so, who are we to kill each other, to kill ourselves, if in the process we raze what could be the true meaning of life. Perhaps our system is on it's deathbed and no one can figure out what is wrong with it. We could very well be, in the words of The Matrix, "a cancer of creation."

So far as I can tell, there is no reason or greater purpose. If there is, we are by no means the focal point or agent of this reason's pursuit. We are a natural result of the universe's operation. The human mind has been mapped and dissected in it's cognitive function to the point where, despite all we still don't know about the brain, there's nothing of "Us" that we recognize as who we are that survives death. Memory, emotion, perception, affinities, demeanor, imagination, aptitudes... it's all defined by the physical mind, and can be altered or lost. A forceful enough concussive strike in just the right spot can cause trauma which can turn you into a stranger trapped in your own mind. "Soul Energy", if such a thing exists, beyond that becomes as significant to who you are as kinetic or pneumatic energy.

Ultimately, I don't think we even posses free will. Decisions and their resultant action on that decision is merely the executive acknowledgment, conceptualization, and assignment of priority of a bottom-up processes in competition and interaction. Our conscious perception is often referred to as the "internal lawyer" which can act as a positive feedback mechanism for competing unconscious decision making processes in conflict. However, we rely on stimuli and their processing before we can construct a useful model our environment. Cause must proceed the effect. So that we can interact with, rather than just react to, our environment - is a testament to our ability to store information in short & long term memory, and then make predictions based on previous reactions. The implications of these two facets (stimuli preceding perception & subconscious thought preceding conscious thought) are that free will is just an illusion. And that you don't have free will is, itself, ultimately moot - since you cannot escape the perception of it.


So does mean then mean our lives are devoid of purpose? Of course not. We are inherently goal-oriented organisms, because otherwise there would be no drive to interact with our environments regardless of capability. Goals tend to be a wide and varying collection of simple objectives we typically don't even notice consciously, though they are integral our behavior and survival. Perhaps you could say that behavior is merely the expression of the pursuit of a goal. Remarkably, the goal doesn't even have to be wired into the brain as a function - but can emerge as the non-linear result of basic interaction. For instance, check out this short video on robotics and new approaches to design. Near the end of the video, Hod shows a simulation of "cube critters" in a mock environment being rewarded for new reproductive and competitive strategies. However, when you remove the reward and just let the components interact at random - reproduction and competition still emerge as their own intrinsic rewards.

Our ancestors had no goals they were driven to pursue - but goals promoting adaptation and competition eventually turned photosensitive cells into brains that became ever more adept at pursuing these and future goals. So we are still very much goal-oriented creatures, and we just have the unique adeptness of mind to ask... why? Why are we pursuing these goals? What is their purpose? What is my purpose.

It's not that the answer is beyond us, but that we are unsatisfied with the answer. We frame the question in a way which is inapplicable, and thus unanswerable. As rhetorical and vexing as expecting an answer to "what flavor of grass do unicorns prefer?"

So we are goal-oriented purposeful creatures self-aware in a universe which has no goal or purpose. So it is up to us to find our own purpose, or rationalize our own purpose. We define our reason for life, and fulfill it. Simply rephrase the question.

Don't ask; "What is the purpose and meaning of my life?".
Try asking instead; "To what purpose and meaning do I assign to my life?"

The 'purpose' of life is to have grandchildren. Living things are machines designed by evolution to protect and replicate little twists of protein.

Human beings derive a sense of worth and of purpose in life from their interactions with others, as evolution has designed them to do.

The answers to the Big Questions are all rather simple, but also rather disappointing.

The thing to do is get over it.

I guess I am in the camp of not really having to have a reason for existence. IMO we are just the product of a statistical anomaly and in an infinite world there going to be things like us that pop up from space dust.

That, or we are an alien science experiment.

as evolution has designed them to do.

So now evolution designs things. That's really just to much.


For every design, their is a designer.
The answer to your question is very simple.
The purpose of life is, Survey said.

To please God.

reply to post by randyvs


He's talking metaphorically. Evolution doesn't design anything, as designing implies a designer, whereas evolution is a process.

"To please god" is your opinion, and your opinion only. And, you mean the Christian god, as opposed to the countless thousands of others people have believed in throughout the ages.

I think what Verbiage is trying to say is that individually by itself, life has no apparent purpose, but as a whole it has. But then, when will it end, and what's the purpose of the larger entity.

It's a very legitimate curiousity and a very good point. Ultimately of course either God or the Universe or whatever you believe in, holds the key to the direction of this evolution. And as for whether mankind is the cancer of creation, well I have to say.. not really.

reply to post by Verbiage


No guess work the answer to your Question

The Reason For Life? My Speculations.

My answer woud be:-

To experience ???

No other Reason....

"We are here on Earth to fart around"...Kurt Vonnegut

reply to post by davesidious

To please god" is your opinion, and your opinion only. And, you mean the Christian god, as opposed to the countless thousands of others people have believed in throughout the ages.

Your very right Dave. That is my opinion. Based on what makes the most sense to me, when all questions concerning the morality and obvious design of this existence, have been both pursued and exhausted for any
and all logical answers to said questions.K? Not to mention the many
anomalus observations that are my own concerning what is, and yet
should never have been.

cheers

Originally posted by randyvs
So now evolution designs things.

That's really just to much.

Do you take everything you read with such crushing literality?

For every design, their is a designer.

Could you please explain why you think the existence of a design necessarily implies the presence of a designer?

The purpose of life is to please God.

Well, it's not doing a terribly good job of it, then. From what one learns in the Bible, it seems God is always either wrathful, or disappointed, or full of sorrow and regret. Indeed, he seems quite emotionally unstable and often lapses (for example, in the later chapters of the Book of Job) into full-blown psychosis. If He designed life to please him, he's made a pretty poor job of it. Or maybe it's just that He's impossible to please?

Your very right Dave. That is my opinion.

Well, don't go posting your opinions as if they're facts, HAL 9000.

"To please god"

yes, but why does 'god' want us to exist? Why does it please him? for what purpose does 'he' need us to exist and by existing to please?
It's not the answer, just my speculation in a religious context.

The reason for all life? Good question. But a loaded one. It presupposes there is a reason to be had.

Is there a reason for all life? Better question. No assumptions.

And in the end the ultimate answer is yes: The reason for all life to exist is to allow the universe to become aware of itself. These replicating, remixing, ever changing molecules we call "life" are just here to awaken the universe of its own existence.

We are the universe waking up to itself.

Realize our unique Identities
Define the Terms of Communication
Share our Lives in favor meeting all Needs
Learn about the Creator by Creation
Pass on what is worthy of Knowing
Forgive and forbear one another
Maintain a wholesome Balance but
be willing to Be by taking chances
Remember not to be wasteful
Testify with the truth in hand
Judge GOD entirely and
relate with the LORD
to observe cessation
Become Exceptional
and Co-create
the Universe!





[edit on 2010/2/23 by YeHUaH ELaHaYNU]

reply to post by YeHUaH ELaHaYNU

Could you explain why exactly you think that these are the purposes of life?

A point-by-point breakdown, if you please.