# What is this life anyway?



## Depersonalized (Feb 11, 2005)

Any ideas? :lol:


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## gimpy34 (Aug 10, 2004)

Uhhhhh. I don't know. George Harrison wrote a good song about it appropriately titled "What is Life?" Maybe you can find some answers there.


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## shadowness (Sep 12, 2004)

whatever this life is...

i would like it to sort itself out because everytime i try to sort it out something worse happens!

 :roll:


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## falling_free (Nov 3, 2004)

whatever you want it too be, but it tends to be a bitch a lot too so , i dunno

its a ride , its all a crazy ride and we gotta ride the mfer out


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## sebastian (Aug 11, 2004)

A less than challenging board game.


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## JAG (Aug 31, 2004)

Life is life.


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## dreamcatcher (Sep 23, 2004)

*lifes a b*tch and then you die*

i suppose it just is.......what you make of it


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## Depersonalized (Feb 11, 2005)

I don't know what to believe anymore, trying to find an answer to this question usually results in a panic attack(for me).


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## Scattered (Mar 8, 2005)

I agree. Life is just life. Life is the experience of being alive. Anything else is just another layer of complication added to it by humans. I guess this could either be extremely liberating or terrifying. All of your fears are false. But all of your hopes, dreams, or ideas that you layer upon the simple act of living are also false, in a way. They only exist subjectively within yourself. There is no objective virtue or morality behind what we impose on raw physical reality.


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## Monkeydust (Jan 12, 2005)

I recommend reading a few existentialist novels for good measure.

I just read Camus' _The Outsider_, that made me feel a little better.

I suppose it depends, ultimately, on your willingness to embrace the apparent meaninglessness of life.


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## Axel19 (Aug 11, 2004)

For a person, life is a series of mental states, some good and some bad. Try and work towards the good ones.
Life is neither good or bad, it is indifferent. Good and bad mental states exist in all of us, and it might make sense to say that if your good mental states out weighed your bad ones, then your life was good and vice versa, although this is not necessarily the case. 
As for life being 'meaningless', this is a misapplication of the word. Life does not have a meaning in the same way that we say a binary code on a screen 'has a meaning'. It's like time; people always say 'time is weird', but that's only when they try and draw a parallel between time and distance. Time and distance are two totally different things, and to try and draw a parallel between distance (something we have absolute control over) and time (something we have no control over) casues all sorts of confusion.
So to try and say life has a meaning (or doesn't) causes all sorts of confusion, because we can not apply language in this way. 
It's like when a child keeps saying 'why' even after you've answered his question. He's messing around with language.
Don't read Camus, read Wittgenstein.


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2005)

Fall in love.

Find a cause.

Explore a talent.

Express a passion.

If you find something that makes the hours of YOUR day important to you, that's meaning. To spend energy looking for anything beyond that is usually an excuse to avoid the potential pain from any of the above.

:wink:


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2005)

life is beautiful, you guys have too many demons floating around in your heads


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## Martinelv (Aug 10, 2004)

There is no 'purpose' to life, no great cosmic purpose, other than what we make for ourselves. Love, art, passion, despair, football, children, a decent crack habit...

Yeah, don't read Camus, especially not 'The Plague'. Read Spinoza.


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## Axel19 (Aug 11, 2004)

Spinoza=pantheism.
Martin's a pantheist now.


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## Guest (Mar 29, 2005)

Life has two paths. One is thinking for yourself and the other is being brainwashed. You think for yourself by finding your own interpretations and your own joys in life. You look to yourself to find meaning in things and you use nature, art, society, emotion to find meaning and interpret the many aspects of life.

You can do this or you can let politics, religion, work, government instill all of it's philosophies into you and speak for you. All of the above are man made philosophies that make you believe they are the truth and the right way in life.

I choose to let myself speak for me and not have religion, career, politics and govt. do the work for me. That's just me though. What would you do?


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## Scattered (Mar 8, 2005)

Some would say to spend the hours of the day lost in experience of a love, hobby, or passion is a way of ignoring the pain caused by the indifference of the universe. You can shut out ultimate questions and doubts for a while through life, but I would think one day you're going to have to address them in some manner. How are you going to answer them?

For those who are capable with truly living with uncertainty and extreme doubt, I wish I could be you. For those who use religion, and who never stray from that religious path or ever doubt your faith, I also wish I could be you.


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## Brainsilence02 (Jan 29, 2005)

Depending on the current prespective.

Life for us humans is our perception of the world.

In another way it's the things we feel, the things we do (and don't), and the things we are (this is most people say the meaning of life).


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## = n (Nov 17, 2004)

Life is what happens whilst youre alive.

Not to besmirch thousands of years of philosophy but its kind of a silly question really, though i suppose in a DP/R forum called 'thats life' its kind of inevitable that someone would ask it. Its a question i asked myself a thousand times as a teenager.

What is life? It can no doubt be defined scientifically although that may not be what Depersonalized is wondering about.

From my own experience i would definately add (to paraphrase someone), life is what happens when youre not paying attention.

Life is simply the time that we exist, a brief glimmer from a distant window into an expanse without measure.

Sometimes it is difficult not to feel that even the most accomplished individuals on earth are just poor bedraggled creatures clinging desperately to existence, huddled together on the surface of a hot sphere hurtling through the unimaginable depths of a cold unfeeling universe.

For some reason i often get this feeling when i read Shakespeare (but then its King Lear and Macbeth so..)

On the other hand, there is dancing and music, delicious food and wine, the scent of a summer breeze and the perfect vague things i dream though have yet to experience, poetry, exploration of the world and the measureless variety of the human experience, the joys of travel, possibly even love.

Plus everything else i havent mentioned. Positive and negative, Yin Yang. Thats life, if youre lucky.

To steal from Gandhi: Life would be a good idea.


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## Martinelv (Aug 10, 2004)

Yes, coz I read Spinoza I am an Pantheist. Thusly, thee are a Nazi because you read Wittgenstein. If anyone has read The Wind in the Willows, I dare say thay they are either a Rat, Mole, Toad or Badger. It's all making sense now ! :lol:


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## Axel19 (Aug 11, 2004)

> Thusly, thee are a Nazi because you read Wittgenstein


No, Heidegger was the nazi philosopher.


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## Guest (Apr 3, 2005)

Martin Heidegger, from first volume of his book on Nietzsche (early Heidegger as some say) he follows the path of Nietzsche but in the second volume of the book he turns back to his own philosophy which is called "Thinking" contrary to Willing. Early Heidegger to some extent paid his respect to Nazism but his idea of his Thinking has less to do with Nazism although once he said (meant to Nazism) "He got it wrong, but he was very close" (M.Heidegger)


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## Martinelv (Aug 10, 2004)

Yes sorry, you're right. I get them both confused with Heisenberg as well, who I think was, laterly at least, a nazi sympathiser.


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