I think I found the purpose of life...

Not really. But it felt like it for about a moment.

I was kind of sleeping almost, basically spacing out (meditating?), for somewhere close to an hour, when what felt like a revelation suddenly awoke me. Let me try to explain this.
I believe that the best things tend to be the things that get cut off; that can't finish, then it doesn't get a chance to turn bad. For instance, if you were looking foreward to a party, but it turns out you can only stay for a few minutes, and everything was good in those few minutes, your perception tells you it was a really awesome party, you just couldn't attend the whole thing. It doesn't get a chance to finish, so the feeling never really goes down, it just ceases to exist. Or, (better yet), if it turns out you can't go at all, and you were really looking foreward to it, it makes it that much better, because the dissapointment has nothing to do with the quality of the thing that was making you happy(the party). I'm trying to put this into words.
It occurred to me that this concept can be used to describe life. Assuming you believe life is good, it kind of reinforces the idea that death is just the next step, or something like a necessary evil, in order to make life good. Or, I suppose, it could work the other way around: If you don't like your life, you could take comfort in death. But I don't really see any need in that, usually.

I dunno, it made a lot more sense in my head.

 

So good and bad are merely your perceptions. For something to be called Good, there is also something bad that needs to be there in the picture.

 

Not necessarily. You're assuming that for every thesis there is an antithesis.

You seem to be talking about personal standards instead of good and evil, and personal standards are subjective.

 

that's my theory on why great people die young....because they're too good to be on this earth

 

yeah its that christian denial thing alright - hey why dont you whip yourself with branches and chains when youve had too much fun - those catholic perverts have got top you havent they ?

 

You assume too much . Tell me what a thesis is in the first place? Thesis is that which is not antithesis, and that which excludes everything from its meaning except the characteristics that you call a thesis.

Try to speculate where your understanding comes from, before trying to argue about relationships within your thinking process and language itself.

 

My understanding of the thesis and antithesis comes from greek philosophy, which basically states that when one concept comes into existence, an opposing concept comes into existence as well.

But do good and evil necessarily have to be opposing? Or can good simply be an absence of evil?

It's an interesting thing to ponder...

 

um... what i think hes saying is amazing.. considering he was half asleep when he thought of it.
well done dude =]
and it does make me think
peace

 

The supposition that if one concept comes into place, the opposing concept is true, but what I am stating is that the concept that comes into place only does so because it is not every other concept that was already in place.

For instance, the concept of "good" derives its meaning from that which is not good, which is not only "evil" but also ideas like politics, science, religion, mathematics etc. The word good stands alone in its meaning when it opposes every other word that does not mean good.

Evil/ good/ right and wrong are just words that we use to judge things based on a certain presupposed criterion. This criterion stems from how the language is constructed itself.

Therefore, good cannot be independent of your language, evil's existence is also considered to be true whenever you state good. Both good and evil whether they exist in a language or not, cannot exist in reality as independent entities apart from language.

 

what about when you really have an amazing night all the way through? wouldn't that be better than missing out on a potentially amazing night?

 

This topic looks like it's almost veered off it's original path...almost.

Are we using the argument of good vs. evil's existence in reference to the incomplete situation? If so, I believe you're getting my point; that because bad must exist in some way (in idea or possibility if nothing else) for there to be good, the incomplete situation's only bad would be the fact that it ended early, therefore allowing one to perceive an ongoing good time, just without their presence. So, essentially, the only bad is the lack of further possibility of either.

Possibly; that's the problem with this theory--how far is too far. Skipping the goodbye's and downward slope (leaving, getting home, etc.) would leave it at or just past a climax...almost seems like a rollercoaster, when you think of it this way.

 

if you stay unattached and in the moment, it doesn't have to be that way.

 

I guess if you wanted to distill your life down to only the good bits, like a TV commercial or a Hollywood movie, you could keep wandering around forever and not settle. I mean, as long as you keep moving, it's all very open-ended...

But imagine you walk down a street, getting bits and pieces of people's lives... but then one of them talks to you, and you hit it off, and fall in love... and then somewhere down the line, something happens and you end up hating each other. Does that mean you should have stopped seeing each other while you were in love?

Life isn't supposed to be about avoiding despair, or unpleasantness... it's about getting through things, and learning from them! Everything peaks and dips, lives and dies, it's natural... but it's not always good to keep moving... unless, I guess, things become irredeemably oppressive. But I suppose at that point, it's better to just give it a rest rather than abandon it completely...

 

well said.

 

Everything is complete within itself and also a part of the greater whole. Good comes from God, and evil is live backwards. Our perception allows us to only view bits and pieces in 30 seconds a frame. A lot of missing information. So our conception of a bad time cut short to become a good time is only a matter of filtering, but a feat of great engineering to say the least. Better to just enjoy and avoid all the judgment. Or focus on only what we really want- our true mission in life- at least discovering what that mission is. Take the ego out of it. Hope this isnt veering too much!

 

I believe the purpose of life is to be happy and to make others happy!

Peace and love

 

I suppose that nothing really has a definite end... or the end is always the decision to stop, or to leave. But I suppose even then it's just your decision to not revisit certain things, because you can always try to go back to where you were.

I always think of these things in terms of relationships... like people in your life can be so important to you at one time, and then they stop being important, or something happens where you need to get away. But I guess the same thing can be true for a way of life or a drug or a place you're living in... you can get a sense of having gone as far as you can go. But then you also miss people and places and things you used to know, so you can go back to them and hope that they are willing to do the same, even though things won't be the same... they could still be good, or maybe better!

But no matter what happens, you still keep a piece of every experience-- so I guess if you've gotten all you need from something then it's time to move on. But then there are always surprises as well... like things that maybe you missed, or something that's different now that you've changed, and the other person or whatever has changed...