Human Life....

Moving away from the war and all the political stuff into a meta-topic, human life.

Previous forum discussions have examined everything from Abortion to religion and homosexuality to war/ terrorism casualties; but what of life itself.

Is it life, in the biological sense, that is intrinsically important or is it something else like deeds, actions or beliefs?

I’m going to leave this open rather than state my own opinion simply to encourage debate on an intelligent nature rather than contribute to the ongoing mudslinging that is so fashionable at present.

Try the DNA and memes tangent, for fun and open mindedness. On a results basis, it`s the only thing that stays constant, generation after generation, throughout the genepool shuffling.

(Ill detail a bit. I dont know if you have read Richard Dawkins book, The Selfish Gene, but it does get you to consider that a different view of history and evolution, and goes more steps beyond the Darwin theory. Like the hypothesis that bodies are just machines for DNA to carry its replicating business through the ages via different forms. Bodies, humans included, would just be a vessel. Values and similar human concepts are meaningless, unless they affect a gene`s propagation through population and time.)

As for the short-term, more in line with what you had in mind in posting, I would rather not speculate on it. Things have changed so quickly in the last century that standards are, too, always changing. Just look at the speed of changes in the sexual liberation and evolutions debate…imagine the rest…

It is everything.

life is what you want to make of it. With your parents helping you out when you are young. But as you get older. You live life on how you want to. Not someonelse thoughts and beliefs.

It’s definitely an interesting topic. My first thought is that emotional bounds are one of the things that make life important, but from a more primitive (primitive as in closer to nature) sense the auto preservation instinct that ensures the survival of each species is probably what led us to somehow start facing life as sacred.

To tell you the truth I have to think this over. I’ll get back to you on this.

Given that you specified human life, I would think that it is the intellectual, spiritual and emotional that are truly important. These, of course, require biological life, but biological life is not sufficient for these qualities.

I always think of people like Stephen Hawking – he is an example of a man barely physically alive, but who has an amazing mind, and its the processes of those mind that truly make him human. One can also think in terms of people who have been in accidents who only have the physical – those who are brain dead and only kept alive by machines. To me, that’s not life. Families keep them sustained in the hopes they will regain the consciousness that embodies human life, but without that potential (or the irrational hope for it) they would never just keep a body hooked up to a support system.

Recent science is “speculating” that the entire universe may be a computer simulation. Isn’t it interesting that when you break matter down and down ie: molecular>atomic>subatomic>quantum… that it starts to behave in a very binary manner. Computers are binary in nature. Now I’m not trying to hi-jack this thread but I think this has relevance to iscariot’s post. If this was fact then would we truely have biological life? I’m thinking a machine with sentience and goals and compassion would be more alive than a human that is catatonic. Technically speaking we are just biological machines so I don’t see the difference. Therefore it is deeds, actions and beliefs that are intrinsically important. To me anyways. :wink:

Life is pain, deal with it.

Hmmm, I’ll expand.

Take a new born baby. [Please take it…]

Other than the emotional attachment and the social obligations attached what makes it’s life actually worth anything.

Essentially, it’s just another high protein food source.

It has no intrinsic intellectual value
It hasn’t created anything of note [messed nappies don’t count]
etc

So what makes it special? [Or as Blackadder suggested, “It’s just a cheap substitute for Turkey at Christmas”]

Modern social construction argues that we should revere human life.

Unless of course we choose to abort it.
[I have no opinion on abortion].

Yet in this “valuing” of life, we worship elites, structure society to create and promote an underclass and essentially treat %90 of the population as worthless. that 90% BTW, doesn’t necessarily mean the Poor, it means those we see as different.

Let’s face it, our social values determine the worth of others in our lives and worldview, thus if we follow this logic it’s not actually life per se that is valued.

heh - diging myself in deeper.

ISCARIOT: You could also add that the human race is the only race where the children ever go back to their parents once they have left the nest.

Does this make life(span) longer? Most probably yes.

Does this keep populations attached to the past (by memories of family/culture)? Most probably yes.

Does this further blind people to the fact that we are not that much different than our predecessors of the animal kingdom? Most certainly.

Does this make a population stronger and/or healthier long-term? Most probably not.

ARC-CO: Good post. The further we probe down the atomic structure and the more we find (worlds within worlds), the more the (irrelevant) reverse logic applies too. Maybe our own known universe maybe just a collection of atoms of a far bigger organism. I don`t care whether this is true or not, it is out of our ability to control. ;0)

ISCARIOT:

Yet in this “valuing” of life, we worship elites, structure society to create and promote an underclass and essentially treat %90 of the population as worthless. that 90% BTW, doesn’t necessarily mean the Poor, it means those we see as different.

Based on my last post, and if your numbers are correct, then all this humanity factor makes us, large scale, just 10% less selfish than animals, who dont care about anything but their offspring (and only themselves after they have left the nest). Or you could say that it counts only 10% of the time of ones life time, max.

This would also further my belief that nations and unions give people the illusion of being something, while all of their constituents are all selfish at start, although varying in their degrees of altruism (altruism being good as long as it help keep your hide alive). Should that be so, why not call things by their name and just call ourselves citizens of the world. Period. After all, culture is a meme like all others.

Food for thought.

(End of tangent. No hijack meant.)

Out of our ability to control…at the moment. But possibly not out of the ability of “others” to control. Heheh. Okay way off topic. :wink:

A new born baby is not a blank slate! I saw a tv presentation by Steven Pinker…let me rephrase that…an astounding presentation by Steven Pinker on human nature. But it has relevance to this arguement(Intelligent arguemtent.) Here’s a link to his book:

http://www.mit.edu/~pinker/slate.html

Sorry not much to add right now…it’s late. Ciao. :wink:

Man, am I the only one who believes in absolutes. Relativism really seems to ahve gotten a foothold in our culture.

Iscariot: I believe that God gives life intrinsic meaning. If there is no God I’m not sure if the question could truly be raised.

Who or what else could give life it’s meaning? When you speak of values where do they come from?

DanC: I’ve listened to discussions about Richard Dawkins where he is quoted as saying (I’m paraphrasing) That we are all machines and we just dance to the music of DNA.

Do you realize the philisophical implications that entails? Think about it.

fitone: If I want to live my life as a murderer and a thief why should I conform to your belief that think those acts are wrong? Unless of course you don’t believe those things are wrong.

Zepplin: GOD. Meaning no offense but you define God and I’ll tell you if I agree.

The question of whether man creates god, or vice versa is a moot point here, for in either situation your take on what precisely “God” is determines your relationship to existence. What if your God/dess is Kali or Vishnu?

Now, if you define you God in terms of your societal belief structures, then you’re back to square one - the assignation of value; where from and why.

You can’treally call God an absolute value because not all people believe in “God” generally, or the same god in a non-specific sense.

Arcane: When you get down to it when could all be a collection of 1’s and 0’s, the thing is though, the social being we call me or you in this specific representation of reality still has to function witha set of operating instructions, thus, using your tangent, is the value of life encoded into our operating structure as hard code/ core programming or is it soft?

heh.

I personally look at life as everyone given a situation, good or bad, and then it is up to you to deal with it. Too many people think life is what happens to you, but I see life as how you react to what happens to you.

Some people are fat, and decide to join NAFFWNASE. (National Association of Fat Fucks Who Need A Stupid Excuse.) And others come here and learn how to change themselves. And others just get their stomach stapled.

Years ago I foolishly used my credit cards a little too much. Just a few minutes on the computer using a spreadsheet I came up with a plan to quickly pay off my debts, and with only $50 extra a month. Unfortunately right after I implemented my plan, my wife came to me and mentioned she had some trouble breathing. We ended up spending $300 a month on medication. (One year delay before our insurance covered meds.) And even with 80% coverage on medical bills, we still ended up with thousands owed to doctors and hospitals.

After years, we finally dug ourselves out, and things were going good. Instead of being intelligent, we moved to a more expensive apartment, and got a decent car. Doing just one of these things was not too bad, but combined they were a little too much to prepare for unexpected expenses. (We have moved since.)

Now I look at this past, and I really have myself to blame for these problems. If I had not let my debt pile up in the first place, my family would not have had years of difficulty.

I don’t know if this is quite the response you were looking for.

I don’t believe in a true meaning of life. I believe it is up to people to create that for themselves. If there is a true meaning of life, I believe people would be disappointed by the answer. If there is a god, and a person were to ask why we were created, how would you like to hear, “Oh, I was just bored one day, decided what the hell.”

ARC-CO: Thanks for the book recommendation! I was searching for the next one to digest. Got any more suggestions (in the sense of science backed OR any book that rocked your world, its effect being that you cannot go back to look at subject X with virgin eyes anymore). PM me if too long. Thanks!

ZEPPELIN: What led you there (belief in absolutes)? My path in life is the exact contrary. The more I mature, the less I see absolutes. Everytime I tried to believe in absolutes, reality and Murphys law popped my balloon, forcing me to acknowledge a wider view of things. I have to admit that Bart Kosko in his book <i>Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic</i> probably killed my needs for absolutes and at the same time heightened my belief that the Tao, by considering the gray zones of life, is far more adapted than absolutes. Thats my mileage. Yours may differ. Who are your influences?

As for Dawkins, I have yet to see someone come up with a better explanation (read: that makes logical and scientific sense) of the story of life on this planet. As for philosophy and God concept, many things lead me to believe he is a virus of the Human Mind (no link to Brodie`s Virus of the Mind book, have not read it yet). Dawkins describes the process of life nicely in the next metaphor:

(Talking about the first Replicator Molecule). “It was exceedingly improbable. In the lifetime of man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible. That is why you will never win a big prize on the football pools. But in our human estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years. If you filled in pools coupons every week for a hundred million years you would very likely win several jackpots. Actually, a molecule that makes copies of itself is not as difficult to imagine as it seems at first, and it only had to arise once.

ISCARIOT: Why not? Like Bart Kosko said, we could be as litterate (and not knowing what we do) as ants walking on the pages of a calculus book…

Obviously ideals, ideas, and beliefs are more important than life, at least to me. What man on this forum would rather live as a coward than die a hero?

Iscariot: I think I already answered you by saying we are essentially biological machines. I know we are hardwired for certain behaviors etc. My love of breasts for example. :wink:

So biologically coded(DNA) or coded with ones and zeros makes little difference. :wink:

Dan: The funny thing is I haven’t read the book yet!!! But I think I got the whole idea with his presentation. I should read it! As for other books…try “The Dragons of Eden Theories on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” By Carl Sagen. Fantastic read. This next one is sci-fi…try Calculating GOD by Robert J. Sawyer. He puts some good evidence down that there is a GOD of some kind. Or at least and intelligence behind creation. :slight_smile:

Mage: Exactly. Choice…free will. What you do is important. How many time do you hear of people who started with nothing and made great progress or sucess!

Zep: I have trouble believeing in absolutes. Life has subtleties that you will miss with a black and white or binary view or reality. That doesn’t mean that there are no absolutes!!! :wink:

Huck: “I’d rather be dead and cool than alive and uncool.” Harely in Harley Davidson and the Marlbro Man. :wink:

Everyone knows that the “Meaning” of life is 42. This is indisputable and generally accepted by the un-lobotomized as true. There was however a well-known and respected Harvard University Professor Named Delbert Filbert Jr. who did not believe so but he was wrong.

Delbert also perished in the tragic “Petrie dish riots” of '01 so his nonsense no longer needs to be tolerated.

As far as iscariots comments, I would say that those are all societal/sociological causes/effects and do not reflect any insight to nor act as a relevant answer to the question “what is the meaning of life”.

Unless you believe that “Life” means nothing more than what each segment/culture in society thinks is important to itself and in that case than iscariots 90% number would be transient in nature as to “who” is answering the question (e.g. WE would be the insignificant 90% to SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE).

Of course, you can never discount Beer and Dirty Sex.

Mmmmm…Dirty Sex…

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy”

~ Douglas Adams

It’s not what you take to the happy hunting ground, it’s what you leave behind that matters.