The Purpose of Life

DaveC426913 said:
OK, well that raises the question of the definition of 'life' about which we are talking.

I took it as given that the definition we were using was 'the life of we people' - as in: critters who have volition and free will.


If the definition refers to 'all life' then that presupposes an entity above us all. (I don't see any way of having a purpose of all life without the presumption of a supernatural entity.)
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Just don't presume.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
Either you are putting on an act, or you are really very ignorant and stupid.
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When I was in the fifth grade I was ordered to stay in bed for six months. They never said why, but I was stuck in the house for months. Read everything in the house. Twice. Mom, being desperate, got one of those big ass library dictionaries and gave it to me. I read it cover to cover. Still remember 99.99% of what I read. (As tested by Purdue researchers.) I use the words that make the point I want to make. If you don't like big words tell me which ones you don't know and I won't use them on you.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
When I was in the fifth grade I was ordered to stay in bed for six months. They never said why, but I was stuck in the house for months. Read everything in the house. Twice. Mom, being desperate, got one of those big ass library dictionaries and gave it to me. I read it cover to cover. Still remember 99.99% of what I read. (As tested by Purdue researchers.) I use the words that make the point I want to make. If you don't like big words tell me which ones you don't know and I won't use them on you.​
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Your ego is so large, it has swelled your head. You may have all that data, but you can't put it together.
 
The purpose of life is to produce, reproduce, and recycle. Beyond this, I have no idea. I know the only true constant in life is change, so I suppose evolution is a predetermined necessity associated with life.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
A tree is alive. A tree does not willfully evolve, learn and enjoy doing anything or anybody.
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DaveC426913 said:
OK, well that raises the question of the definition of 'life' about which we are talking.

I took it as given that the definition we were using was 'the life of we people' - as in: critters who have volition and free will.
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I would argue that it's less that a tree does not..., and more a matter of qualitative and quantitative differences which we do not (yet, possibly*) fully comprehend. Nevermind the science crap, I defer to Gary Snyder here:

The word wild is like a gray fox trotting off through the forest, ducking behind bushes, going in and out of sight. Up close, first glance, it is "wild"—then farther into the woods next glance it's "wyld" and it recedes via Old Norse villr and Old Teutonic wilthijaz into a faint pre-Teutonic ghweltijos which means, still, wild and maybe wooded (wald) and lurks back there with possible connections to will...

Wild is largely defined in our dictionaries by what—from a human standpoint—it is not. It cannot be seen by this approach for what it is. Turn it the other way:
of animals—free agents, each with its own endowments, living within natural systems.
of plants—self-propagating, self-maintaining, flourishing inaccord with innate qualities.
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(Gary Snyder, "The Etiquette of Freedom", contained within The Practice of the Wild)

* Well, as far as fully comprehending goes, that ain't ever gonna happen. A partial, incomplete understanding is conceivable though.

Edit: Why is it so hard to copy/paste from pdf texts, without having to do a bunch of reformatting and crap?
 
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DaveC426913 said:
Well, I recycle my pop cans, so I guess I'm not destined to be pushed out into the ocean on an ice flow quite yet. Thanks for being merciful.
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You could always just relocate to one of those massive floating islands of "recyclable" plastic waste.
 
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