heres the thing...

[mrRuckus]

here's teh thing guys.... and this is kind of what my posts about people are good, live without fear, don't limit yourself to just hb10s, etc. is all about...

you only get this one life. the clock is ticking. one day the lights are going to go out and never come back on.

so you have a choice.

you can wake up each day and make the most out of life or you can wake up each day and complain about life.

if you wake up and make the most of it that means that you emphasize the positives. you give people in your life a chance. you love and accept yourself. you live without fear. you stand by your principles (and if you haven't developed them yet, then work on doing so). and more than anything, you show appreciation for everything that you have - no matter how little it may be (because whatever you've got, you could always have less!).

Bit of devil's advocate here...

If it's so short and the clock is ticking then i question why waste of it on principles. Or why should I care about anything but my own needs? Who has time for that? I have sh1t to do and happiness to attain! tickticktick

Principles aren't gonna matter much when I'm dead.

you don't need a woman, a job, money, a car, etc.. to have what you want. its all in your head. if you want to be happy and enjoy life then be happy and enjoy life (and i've just told you how in my wordss above).

I don't? I don't know how to reach some buddha state when i'm cold without a home and have an angry, empty belly.




don juan kitteh

 

[dietzcoi]

Boy, I can see both sides of this discussion

On the one hand, Squirrels is really digging into philosophy, he has followed the road of Marcus Aurelius and Buddists.. our life is but a dream inside a dream, it will all be over so soon, and mean nothing 100 or 1000 years from now.

On the other hand, the hedonists say, we are here, we might as well enjoy the "ride" while it is running, even though we know it will all end.

I think we should realized that our life on earth is fleeting, understand this fact, without letting it depress us.

We have to live a good life and enjoy ourselves (within reason) without pretending it means something bigger. Maybe it means nothing. But it is all we have...

Dietzcoi

 

[joekerr31]

I'm all about self-reflection... but like you mentioned I'm ready for the next ride. I can't spend my whole life analzying my childhood experiences. I've been analyzing those experiences longer than I actually had the experiences themselves (that's my version of why I suppose, trying to make peace with the past).

But I doubt I'll ever get off the "why" ride but maybe the ride can get upgraded when the rest of the theme park goes through renovation.

oh youll always get on the ride now and then. but the difference is you can turn a corner where you realize that its JUST A RIDE.

you can stop making WHY the point of life, and see it for what it, a natural curiosity that is part of your human nature - and to give it its proper weight.

get on the HOW to live ride - what youll find is that you'll enjoy that ride so much more than you'll naturally want to stay on that ride more than you will the WHY ride.

the why ride is an important ride, but one way or another you can't spend your whole life on it. well you can, but you shouldn't.

who knows, some people never get off that ride. they live their whole lives on it and die on it. but you want to avoid that if you can.

 

[joekerr31]

Bit of devil's advocate here...

If it's so short and the clock is ticking then i question why waste of it on principles. Or why should I care about anything but my own needs? Who has time for that? I have sh1t to do and happiness to attain! tickticktick

Principles aren't gonna matter much when I'm dead.[/URL]

if it were possible to be happy without principles i would agree that principles are useless. but principles are needed to be happy.

our nature is that we have a conscience. and when we 'do unto others as we would NOT want them to do unto us" our brains are wired such that we instinctively think less of ourselves - we know we are NOT being the best us that we can.

part of enjoying the ride is having self respect and forming caring, trusting bonds with other human beings - you can't do that without principles.

 

[joekerr31]

Boy, I can see both sides of this discussion

On the one hand, Squirrels is really digging into philosophy, he has followed the road of Marcus Aurelius and Buddists.. our life is but a dream inside a dream, it will all be over so soon, and mean nothing 100 or 1000 years from now.

On the other hand, the hedonists say, we are here, we might as well enjoy the "ride" while it is running, even though we know it will all end.

I think we should realized that our life on earth is fleeting, understand this fact, without letting it depress us.

We have to live a good life and enjoy ourselves (within reason) without pretending it means something bigger. Maybe it means nothing. But it is all we have...

Dietzcoi

both aureulis and the buddhists say to enjoy the ride. they say what you say towards the end of your post.

both argue that there are principles that will lead you to enjoying life. learn how to properly see life, develop a rational perspective on life, and you will enjoy the 'ride'.

but squirrel is nowhere near the philosophy of aureilus or buddhists - his philsophy right now is more nietzchian nihilism than it is buddhist nihilism (there are differently flavors of nihilism out there

he's seeing one side of the coin right now. he's see the what or the why. he hasn't started to look at the HOW yet, which is the other side of the coin and its the other philosophic half that balances out the equation.

 

[joekerr31]

That is exactly my question: why do people want their lives to have meant something after they are dead and gone?? Why is this obsession? why does man have this need to 'account' for his life?

because people somehow think if they acheive something then their life will have meant something. in western culture everything is about tomorrow, never today - everything is about the outcome, never the process - everything is about winning never about doing the right thing.

 

[joekerr31]

These are both attitudes that assume there is no life after death.

you should live life the same, whether there is or isn't an after life.

 

[Gerard-890]

Joekerr I had to bump this thread, this thread is something that goes against the Status Quo around here that for some reason seems to be drifting to a negative, whiny, prissy, attitude.

23 Americans died in Iraq in December, their families didn't have a great Christmas and I'm quite sure wasn't like me and a couple of my friends, who hung out in that cold street in Time Square .

I have a LOT of things to complain about, from losing money in investments, not thinking thoroughly enough and losing valuable relationships, and other things, the list if LONG.

Trust me, if I needed something to feel BAD about I could come up with enough stuff to create a 65 year, on-going 3 hour television series.

But you know what?

If you are going to live life you must ACCEPT life. You must learn to accept the failures and accept the successes.

You must learn to accept the way things are, only until you do that will you EVER be able to CHANGE things.

I accepted that my business is going down and needed change, I changed what needed to change and I am one of the top salesmen in my INDUSTRY (not company but industry).

I got there by taking a look at my situation, listing the positives and negatives and figuring out how to obtain the positives and avoid the negatives.

That's the only way you will succeed in life. Like JoeKerr said, stop whining with negative prissy attitudes, that is a total waste of time and quite honestly if you are going to WASTE YOUR LIFE like that then go and donate your heart to a sick child in another country who would LOVE to take your life.

You whine about women, when women love you.
You whine about government, when government protects you.
You whine about God/Nature, when he gave you existence.
You whine about the economy, when without commerce you wouldn't survive.

Nothing is perfect or ever will be perfect, but most of all, a lot of things are FINE AS THEY ARE.

Try observing the mass amounts of opportunities that we have today that others didn't have years ago and others in starving countries don't have, let's put this on our face( ) and let's march into life ready to achieve success. Hell if you don't want to do it for you, do it for the kid that can't.

 

[STR8UP]

You could say that...like seeing the strings in a puppet show, or realizing that Santa Claus is just your mom and dad.

See...that's the thing. "Enjoyment" seems to require forgetting just how stupid it all is...but once you KNOW you can't UN-KNOW those things. How can you determine the best way to live without knowing what your life is??

That's the problem.

Once you have TRULY seen the wizard behind the curtain there's no going back to believing in the "great and powerful oz".

I am sure there's a way to come to terms with this knowledge, but it takes a hell of a lot of fortitude to say "Eh....chances are things are gonna go to sh!t.....I'll just enjoy it while it lasts." Yhat may be he only attitude to be able to get yourself through life, but it sucks.

 

[squirrels]

But your view is no exception to that rule. In an entity of no difference, true and false is one and the same. You can't accept your own conclusions as true because doing so would require them to be equally false, thus rendering your own views inconsequential. That's the paradox.

Nothing paradoxical about it at all. The only reason you COULDN'T accept the inconsequentiality of your own views is if you had too much ego to accept that "right" and "wrong" are a made-up distinction in your head.

That's the point exactly. Death is as good an alternative as life...it's the ego protection instinct of human beings which makes it seem otherwise, and true thinkers can see beyond it, although for most, it still governs them.