I welcome you to the page of my blog ilyakolmakov.com! What is a sense of life?
That is how I decided to title this article, but not because I ask such a question, but because I would be interested to know why people ask such a question. I do not at all treat life as some kind of inert process.Opens in a new window, but after all, the fact that a person asks himself such a question does not mean that it has anything to do with meaning. The question of the meaning of life, in my opinion, cannot be related to its meaning at all.
Suppose a person who has just been born cannot ask such a question, simply because he was just born: he is not developed, not independent - neither physically nor mentally. This little man cannot have such a question, simply due to his lack of reason and, as a result, at least some independent idea of the world. Actually, what various kinds of religious ideologies useOpens in a new window, i.e. planting the unformed personality of a person on a religious needle.
Thus, suppressing his own rudiments of the ability for independent development and knowledge of the world. From here it turns out that there are stages of physiological development that do not imply any meaning in the existential sense of the word. This question becomes important as the person becomes conscious. Earlier I wrote in my article about the meaningfulness of lifeOpens in a new windowhow a person has a need for meaningfulness through activity.
Because life, consisting only of the satisfaction of physiological needs, no longer meets his higher needs, acquired as he goes through his personal evolution. That is the question of the meaning of lifeOpens in a new windowis simply not appropriate at the physiological stages of human life.
Addendum 01/11/2019 . On the one hand, at the physiological level of existence, there can be no question about the meaning of life at all, on the other hand, when thinking appears, such a question appears, but the question itself remains meaningless. This question is meaningless, because life itself already exists, and the person himself, as it were, is trying to exist above life itself, he wants to see its predestination, but not be completely in it.
I see in this question an attempt to influence life from an ideological point of view, because a person, as it were, ignores those interdependencies in life that already exist. He is not satisfied with the natural course of things - he needs an idea that would predetermine his existence. Although this approach already suggests that the person himself predetermined to be passive in relation to life, because he does not accept it as it is.
This position of mine may also seem passive, but I'm not talking about some kind of humility, on the contrary - I want to talk about existence in all the multidimensionality of life. Although such a definition as multidimensionality is abstract. I think that accepting life as it is is the highest level of activity. By acceptance, I understand, first of all, the acceptance by a person of himself, and life itself as a reflection of the attitude towards oneself.
That is, an active position in relation to life is an active position, first of all, in relation to oneself, but not from the position of self-accusation, but of unconditional acceptance and acceptance. But this process is not one-time. Rather, it is one's own personal evolution, when a person finds himself in his development above the environment on which he depends on the physiological and other levels.
The questioner about the meaning of life is the one who wants to solve everything with one definite answer, which will put everything in its place. But if everything is not in its place, then there should most likely be a question of how a person lives, and not shifting everything to the absence of meaning.
The question of the meaning of life is a desire to find an already existing meaning, or to come up with some kind of own meaning? But if this meaning already exists, then why look for it at all? What would give it a mental interpretation? If a person wants to come up with a meaning, then what is the meaning of what is already there? That is, the very question of the meaning of life, to put it mildly, is absurd. It turns out that the question of the meaning of life deprives it of any meaning.
Meaning is something that is determined by how a person lives the moment of his life, and not by what may be in the distant future. After all, where is the guarantee that he will find this meaning at all? Meaning is not a static problem that can only be solved by its interpretation.
In children????????
Someone says that the meaning is in childrenOpens in a new window, that is, it turns out that there is a meaning - as long as there are children, and when they leave their parents - it turns out that this meaning disappears? In this case, the meaning is not in the children, but in the fact that the parent has made his children the object of his need for meaning, thereby endowing them with the function of carriers of the meaning of life.
In self-development?????
Someone says that the meaning of life for him lies in constant self-development. But, perhaps, it is strange to engage in self-development for the sake of self-development. And what do we mean by self-development? Does self-development take place in the name of some goal? I think that self-development is a fundamental change by a person in the concept of his own life, which consists in the constant reassessment of his values.
Since the environment surrounding a person does not imply inertia in relation to a person, he has a choice: either to swim in the stream of events, or to consciously perceive himself and his life, interact with the nature of phenomena. Self-development involves adaptation to the environment in order to change it for yourself, otherwise, what does it make sense at all. Here I wrote about the meaninglessness of lifeOpens in a new window.
At work?
Going to work every day, spending a third of my life there, justifying it with the need to earn money. Or even if the person says he enjoys his job. But it's some kind of masochistic pleasure - to be withinOpens in a new window, invented by someone and talk about some kind of joy received from this.
Meaning can manifest itself only in the absence of any framework
If we talk about the meaning of lifeOpens in a new window, then only in the context of the absence of any social, biological and other framework. Since these frameworks do not imply any development options at all, except for a deterministic meaning, which is determined by the environment of existence. Judgments about meaning as about the performance of any natural or social functions are just a temporary role of a person within this environment.
06/14/2022
From the position of my current perception, it’s a little strange for me to hear questions like what is the meaning of life? Intuitively, it seems that a person wants to find some universal answer to many questions, because it is impossible to give one answer to the question about the process, which could be reduced to some simple idea about it.
Let's say when we ask a person why he runs early in the morning? You can ask the questioner himself, why does he ask such a question? Also here, the motives that prompt a person to ask another about why he runs in the morning are important.
Does the fact that a person wonders about the meaning of life mean his desire to discover an already existing meaning, or to give some meaning to an existing life? And if the meaning already exists, then why ask such a question at all? It's just that a person is so arranged that he wants to interpret everything incomprehensible in categories that he understands.
Leaving the house, he does not realize how many factors affect him: atmospheric pressure, his blood pressure, the amount of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of his brain, what he ate for breakfast and whether he ate at all, his blood sugar level. These are all factors that shape life as such. In the context of this understanding, the question of the meaning of life seems a little strange.
It is human nature to simplify everything, which is used, for example, by religions that give a person a certain stronghold in the form of one simplified answer to all questions. Why for everything? Yes, because in it everything comes down to the authoritarian idea of the existence of a god. Of course, this greatly " simplifies " a person's life, in the sense that he receives one simple answer to any, in essence, complex process. That is, religion saves a person from the need to think. So, let's say, it parasitizes on the possibility of using moral assessments in complex things that cannot be explained without the use of common sense.
When something starts to hurt in a person, for example, a head, you may think why is it all for him? That is, at this moment he does not appeal to any objective causes of pain in his head, because he does not know anything about these causes.