Psychic

I’ve started this thread as an answer for the question “is life worth living?” by secular elation.

This exact question you are asking is the question that freed me from the shackles of theism and dawned truth over me.

I started wondering; why GOD created us??!?!?! It made no sense at all, in each and everyway that a supreme being create US?

Anyway going back to your question. When I started doing my evolution, I was particularly interested in evolutionary psychology.

I guess I’ve found the answer. We are all, in a way, nature’s design. A vehicle to transport and transmit Genes. Natural selection created and structured our minds in a way to preserve this goal. Early in evolution, a gene that would give the emotion “you have to stay alive” would flourish real easy.

So if you ask the almighty Natural selection “why did you create us sir?” he/she would answer:
“first I would like to point out my amazement that you ever got to ask this question sir! I didn’t design you to question your existence! I guess I have miscalculated things early when I gave Homo Sapiens such flexible mental organs. I fear that if you continue this argumentation you might end up destructing my goals and disobeying my rules, I designed you to survive, and you are now questioning my design. I never cared for your happiness or pleasure, and I am not gonna do that now. You are designed to carry those genes, and never once ask for more. Sir aren’t you proud of my genetic gift to you? You are my ultimate design. You are responsible to do your job, to transmit those genes to the next generation. So instead of your futile arguments, I would advice you find a mate and start being a functional unit of my design again.”

I am definitely sure you are not going to like Natural selection’s(NS) answer. You know why because you can’t possibly love NS, NS simply doesn’t care about you! Doesn’t care of you are happy or sad, if you are depressed or laughing...etc so you might be feeling now “screw NS, what a malicious, manipulative, and selfish father I have”

So we are back again to where we set off. We still need to find a cause for living inside us. First, IMHO, I think living your life is a kind of a deal, a bargain. So I am going to hypothetical divide life events into happiness and sorrow. so someone asking “what’s the point of living?” is very likely to be getting more sorrow than happiness OR has a mental attitude that makes him only see and over estimate the sorrow he gets. Maybe a combination of both. Because someone really satisfied with a deal has no urge at all to reconsider it!

I myself, was not at all satisfied with the deal. I was getting more sorrow, and I have a depressive personality that makes me make mountains out of mole-holes. my life was a deal that sucks. So instead of saying: “aah, life is ain’t worth it, I am not getting much happiness to compensate for the sorrow, so I think I need to end the deal and end this life”. Instead of this, I said “aaah, until this moment I had a deal that sucks, they are not paying me enough happiness to help me endure the sorrow. SO I shall try my best to be a better dealer and get a better deal!” So I spent my last to years trying to get a better deal. To maximize my happiness and lessen my sorrow. and guess what? It worked fine for me! I am a happy person right now. I created things to make me happy. And I came to terms with the things that makes me sorrow. and I am smiling again! J

So my answer is life is a deal your parents offer you when they copulate. I see no reason not take the deal. But you have to be a better dealer, that’s all.

To further elaborate “I see no reason not to take the deal”; I would say nothing now, because this post is getting longer and longer and I can’t squeeze my mind anymore. I’ll elaborate in a later post.

Eric Starnes

Translation: Shut up, stop thinking, and go find someone to impregnate.

"Human life must have been some kind of a mistake."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

SergeyS

Sometimes I say that to myself.

sweep

next you'll be telling us that our genes are intelligent

thomaq

Psychic,
i didnt know natural selection could communicate ideas. i just thought that what ever happens IS whatever happens. people DO procreate, people DO instinctively try to stay alive (for the most part). but this says nothing of what people SHOULD do or not do. but i think you were just being poetic in the OP, i'm not trying to be a smart a$$.

Pyrrho

If you will pardon me for saying so, your post with natural selection as being purposeful is nonsensical. Things following natural laws are not purposeful at all; they just happen.

Furthermore, "natural selection" weeds out many species, so even if there were a purpose to it all, it would not be the continuation of all species. Additionally, eventually the sun will no longer provide the earth with the appropriate energy, and humans will all die out anyway (if humans have not killed themselves off through their own stupidity first).

You are looking at things in a far too localized fashion, as if we are now the end product of something, rather than just a continuation of natural processes. These natural processes will, according to the best scientific evidence, inevitably lead to our termination.

Psychic

Hey hey hey, chill out guys. Wow you guys in the philosophy forum can’t take anything into your minds unless it was so sophisticated that you have to wander in the streets to understand. Ladies and gentlemen fasten your seat belts, we are going down on the level of sophistication.

Guys I surely know that Natural selection is not something that exists outside our minds. It is just the way things happen by sheer random chance. Moreover you might need the word “metaphor” to your dictionary.

What Natural selection said in my OP carries much truth regarding why we exist on this earth? And it gives the basic facts about the human beings. But afterwards I made It clear that Natural selection’s reason for our existence cannot be satisfying to us.

I think I would need you to reflect more on the “deal” part of my view of life. I think the model of considering life as a deal is very simple, and can be very useful. At least it has been useful to me! And I wonder if it is just too simple for you guys around here! I am sure I can come up with something… more perplexing

DoubleDutchy

A valuation of life as such can never be true or untrue; it has significance as a symptom only.

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

pi_noir

Referring to life's "deal". I think the cards have been stacked against us. Like Frued said in "Civilization and It's Discontents", people can never achieve sustained happiness-it's a flaw built into the system of conscious beings. As soon as something pleasant continues for too long, it becomes less pleasing. So the mosst practical route seems to be to follow in the evolutionary rut and satisfy our basic needs. The goal of our species is to carry on our genes, obviously. But Nature and natural selection are at the bottom purposeless sinnce there is no grand design(er).

Why do we need a purpose to go on living anyway? Maybe this need for ultimate justification is just something that we have absorbed through our culture. Maybe we should learn to be content w/ being just an interesting part of the universe's decoration, like a sunflower or a supernova.

Psychic

Well on the matter that you can live without a goal I totally disagree. totally disagree. I think that everyone should have a goal. and that's primarly for two reasons:

First, you are giving depressed people who are not getting much happiness out of life a reason to walk away from life.

second, even if someone IS satisfied with his life, one should have a reason for living and should have a goal. because if you never ask "why live?" you can't never know "what to do with life?" and lving like an animal satisfing basic desires is a true waste of life (IMO).