Is life absurd

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Mysterio448
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Mysterio448 »

Rubenjameshg wrote:Absurdity is a subjective judgement that a rational observer can make. I have concluded life is absurd.
Absurdity is not a subjective judgement. Absurdity is an objective assessment based on the rules of logic. By what logic is life absurd? The question in the OP is not "Is life unhappy?" or "Is life unpleasant?" but "Is life absurd?" Do you say life is absurd because it is difficult or painful or uneventful? Would life make any more sense if it were easy, pleasant, and exciting? Why would life necessarily be those things? By the same token, why wouldn't life be those things. The thing is, life constantly fluctuates among different possibilities. Sometimes life can be pleasurable, sometimes painful. Sometimes life can be exciting, sometimes boring. For life to be only one to the exclusion of the other would be arbitrary and partial, and thus more cosmically absurd than a life that is a mixed bag.
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Misty
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Misty »

Weight wrote:Is life absurd? Why or why not? Is there meaning to life? How can we create meaning if there is none to begin with? I am doing a study on Albert Camus and would like to hear your views on the subject and know if life is absurd or not. Thanks.

Sometimes life is absurd and sometimes it is not absurd. Albert Camus and dualism of absurd. He is an interesting person, who died young but lived more than most people - what a life!

Life seems absurd because we spend so much time building knowing our blocks will be knocked down. But we build anyway or we would die of boredom. Each person will have to decide if their life is absurd or not. You know one mans trash is another mans treasure.
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Kateb
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Kateb »

we can never obtain a meaning for life. because if we find a purpose of life, we will look for a goal for that purpose! for example if we believe in life after death, we will ask: what's the purpose of going to hell and heaven? and if somebody answer this question, we will ask: what's the purpose of that? and...
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Kieferavery_1998
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Kieferavery_1998 »

The absurdity of life is something that can be found and defined in numerous ways. A person's life can only be defined as "absurd" if they chose to label it as so themselves. Depending on their religious beliefs or their own experiences only an individual is deemed just in defining what their life is. Whether it would be absurd or not. If a person truly believes that life on earth is nothing more than a test to confirm or deny their entitlement to heaven, then life for them is not in fact absurd because they know their purpose in life. These people seem to know that they must live a life without sin in order to pass on to their heaven. Although this theory only applies to those who truly believe that a sinless life is what brings their "fulfilled" life to an end and brings them to the ultimate goal.
If a person does not believe in a higher power or an ultimate controller go the universe, then they know that they can in fact do as they wish without any substantial repercussions. They live life as they chose without an ultimate goal, they have no reason to live and believe that with the end of their human life comes the bitter end. This is where someone might find life to be "absurd" if a person does not truly find a meaning to life. Absurdism is in the eye of the beholder and that truly is the paradox of it all, if the person who lived a sinless life dies and learns that it was all for nothing. Was their life absurd? Or was it worth it because they lived a clean and sinless existence? What if the atheist dies and learns that there was in fact a hell? Was their life useless because they didn't take advantage of the opportunity that they had?
Absurdism is ultimately something that can only be defined by a person who believes or disbelieves in life purpose. A person has the ability to disregard absurdity if they so chose or if they truly believe in a purpose. There are those who are condemned in believing there is not purpose in life because they cannot simply believe in the religious or scientific explanations for life's meaning. Absurdity is in the eye of life's beholder.
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Ranvier
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Ranvier »

Asking "IF" there is a meaning to life, while clinging to life is absurd. Acting without a purpose is illogical and absurd. Since humanity hasn't found the purpose yet, therefore life is still absurd.
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Rr6
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Rr6 »

Humans can be absurd much of the time. Humans can destroy humanity and seem destined to do so. imho

How much more absurd can we get?

r6
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Simplyhuman
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Simplyhuman »

To the OP: The simple answer is yes.

The longer answer is:
Some aspect of anything humans experience can be interpreted as absurd or not. The same goes for whether or not anything has meaning. Is life itself absurd? Probably, if you sit and think about it for too long. But you're already stuck in it.

So, you can wallow in the meaningless thought that we are here till we simply die and view it as absurd... Or you can find a way that gives life some meaning that resonates with you and shed the thought that it's absurd.

To view life as absurd and meaningless is a very logical way of looking at it. Also, to view it as meaningful is a logical argument. One cannot view life through the eyes of a peer. It truly depends on the individual.

As a whole, I find it absurd to a degree. Live, work, pay, and die hoping you've left enough knowledge and preparation to hand to your children, so they can do the same. The cycle is a bit pointless once you step back and analyze it. However, there are things I enjoy doing here on this planet. So I go do those things because the joy is interpreted as meaningful. That joy makes the absurd tolerable and temporarily fill the gap between spaces of meaninglessness.

So yes. It is absurd, but not completely meaningless.
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Ranvier
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Ranvier »

Rr6 wrote:Humans can be absurd much of the time. Humans can destroy humanity and seem destined to do so. imho

How much more absurd can we get?

r6
I don't know r6...I just don't know. Sometimes I think that there was a some kind of mix up and I was just born in a wrong century. :cry:
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Rr6
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Re: Is life absurd

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Ranvier wrote: I don't know r6...I just don't know. Sometimes I think that there was a some kind of mix up and I was just born in a wrong century. :cry:
Yes, it could get more absurd. We could not only have crazy president in US voted in, we could have crazy VP, crazy republican congress etc........

I think Trump only got in with 27% of the electorate so that system is partly crazy in of itself.

Humanity is evolving ass-backwards into the future, bumping their rumps into hard events.

If humans were wise they would be going mind forward into the future anticipating the needs and problems and then be ahead of the came instead of waiting til we go ass-backwards off the game board.

r6
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Lark_Truth
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Lark_Truth »

Life is absurd, but that - of course - is what makes things interesting. In the world there is a spider that looks like poop just to escape predators. Absurd? Yes! But very cool as well.
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Papus79
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Papus79 »

I'd say more stressful than absurd.

Absurdity as far as I'm understanding it here takes faith in certain nihilistic precepts. If you don't have faith in those precepts - such as if you're truly agnostic or, further down this rabbit hole, stuck in a sort of non-materialist limbo where you sense that the 'supernatural' in certain respects is clearly real but equally incoherent in its expressions (as if it's pushed out like weather patterns), you get the impression that there's a lot more that needs to be done to understand and do right by the world you live in. Additionally you do wonder, if it's looking more likely that you won't cease to exist when you die, what your duties are to yourself to make the best go of your future trajectory (the closest thing I've come to as a universal atheist/theist/agnostic answer to life is cultivate integrity - its your best bet). You'll easily feel like what you do in this life matters, but you'll also quite easily sense that there are are no guarantees because so much of what you do and the consequences of luck are data buried way too deep to find quite often. That and, if something is watching over you, you're just barely allowed to catch a glimmer of that reality but without much to call clear guidance.

If there is something actually sentient overseeing all of this, rather than just vast and sleeping, it clearly doesn't have us here for comfort.
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Ranvier
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Ranvier »

In that respect i agree with you Papus79. We can deliberate the existence of "God" all we want, from atheist/theist/agnostic point of view. The fact remains that we and the Universe are here somehow and "it" came to existence as we understand such existence. However, from Quantum Mechanics we know that even the mere observation changes the outcome (effect) of reality, not mentioning actual intervention of "God" to change our reality.
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Papus79
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Papus79 »

The word God also tends to muddy the waters, particularly when so many people in the west think Zeus (or Zeus in a chastity belt) in the throne room of heaven casting lightning bolts at his enemies. If there's something there its true nature likely has very little resemblance to the ideas we've draped on in the last few thousand years.
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Ranvier
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Ranvier »

How about Genesis of Domain as the description of God, simply to imply the force that created our Universe. Our human mind is still unable to comprehend much simpler concepts, such as mass, energy, or infinity. This is not because we're not smart but because we're bound by the gravity of our thoughts. We make our subjective religious inferences as a single color describing our reality, where we need other colors including science to paint a complete picture that can be appreciated fully. Religion operates in the abstract domain of morality, good vs evil, or the soul. Whereas science operates in the domain of seemingly precise logic of measurable units, probability, or even certainty to some people but in it's own abstract form of perception. I wish that people could finally accept that these are all just different points of view on the same reality.
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Papus79
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Re: Is life absurd

Post by Papus79 »

At a minimum I think science and philosophies of science are dealing with the grand objective whereas religion, mystic philosophy, etc. are dealing with the grand subjective. At a minimum our dealing with the dissonance between external facts vs. evolutionary impetus and wiring forces us to accept both on our own terms.
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