What truly gives our lives meaning

Forums: Philosophy, Science, Religion, Atheism, Hedonism
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I always need a pleasure signal sent to my brain in order to perceive good meaning, love, joy, happiness, and inspiration towards my family, goals/dreams, and this life/universe. Thoughts alone without my good moods will not cut it at all for me. Without my good moods, then I could think all that I want that my family and whatnot still mean everything to me and still bring me love, joy, happiness, and inspiration. But this just simply isn't true. I am having nothing more than just an intellectual mental state which is a dead, bland, and lifeless mental state. Almost like being a lifeless intellectual machine.

But the moment the pleasure signal gets sent to my brain and I experience a good mood is the moment everything comes alive to me and has profound beauty, life, powerful surging energy, love, joy, happiness, inspiration, and good meaning. Therefore, it is actually our moods alone that give our lives good or bad meaning. Not our way of thinking that so many people are falsely convinced of. The moral version of good and bad is a thought version of good and bad. If you think that your life has good or bad meaning, then that is supposed to somehow give good or bad meaning to your life.

However, there is a hidden unknown version of good and bad which is the feeling/emotional non-moral (mood) version of good and bad that is completely independent of our way of thinking. If you are in a good mood, then your life has good meaning regardless of what you think otherwise. Same thing applies for being in a bad mood. This mood version of good and bad is the new version of good and bad. It is the only thing that gives good and bad meaning to our lives. It is a new version of good and bad that scientists have yet to discover.

We see what happens with animals in the lab. The moment they get the pleasure signal and experience a good mood, they gain interest in their goals, activities, and mates. But when they are depressed and/or anhedonic in which they no longer have their good moods, they lose interest and give up on their goals, mates, and pursuits. Therefore, this clearly says here that the moment they got the pleasure signal is the moment these animals perceived good meaning. But the moment they lost that signal is the moment where their lives became meaningless.

Therefore, this same concept also applies to us as human beings even though we are currently fooling and deluding ourselves into thinking that our lives can still have good or bad meaning regardless of what mood we are in. We live in a pressured moral society that blinds and pressures us from who we really are--pleasure seeking and pain avoiding animals. It is an unnatural lifestyle imposed upon us that has us all fooled into thinking that this unnatural lifestyle that restricts pleasure seeking has good meaning. We are just making wiser choices and whatnot. But that is not us having good meaning in our lives without our good moods.

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@MozartLink,

Thank you Moz but I wonder if you might summarize the above in a few words for the Average Clod (me)

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@MozartLink,

a really good corned beef sammich where the corned beef is thinly sliced and retains a little fatty tissue and is cooked in a beef au jus.
Itd have to be served on thick cut rye with a side of slaw.

That would give my life more meaning.

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@MozartLink,

hi,
to me,
meaning refers to extreme purpose when purpose alone won't cut it.
(when in immense pain, for example).

while purpose caters the mind, the heart needs something too.

so you need to mix in some pleasure as well, just to appease the heart into cooperation.

in my case, neglecting the intellect, to pour it on, to the heart.

is a recipe for immediate trauma, since my heart is effectively disconcerned, of any practical consequences to its action, it cannot care less about anything not "in the present moment" etc.

therefore, i choose to give my mental system most of my attention and care.

the explosive nature of the heart, seems to attract more of our care, but because of it's inability to think ahead, it demands non stop feeding
(as soon as the sensation passes, it needs additional trigger,since it has no memory to binge on the past neither)

so i assume we need a balance.

we need emotional excitement,to give purpose a "flavor"
without a good mood, purpose is tasteless and therefore, it's presence undetectable.

but without purpose, pure flavor on it's own, will only last in the present.

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@MozartLink,

Insignificant mortals, who are as leaves are,
and now flourish and grow warm with life,
and feed on what the ground gives,
but then again fade away and are dead.What's The Significance Of Life? Who Are We?

Is human life mostly a dream, from which we never really awake, as some thinkers claim? Are we submerged by our feelings, by our loves and hates, by our ideas of good, bad, beautiful, awful? Are we incapable of knowing beyond those ideas and feelings?ove gives meaning to our lives – as do friendship, or art or faith in God. These are factors of true happiness, of inner peace, of feelings of harmony, allowing meaning to our existence.

But there is the other side. There is the cruelty of life, the pain, the evil, not to talk of death. They are the hidden tigers, ambushed and ready to attack the imprudent, to use an image present in the Buddhist Scriptures.

Is between these pendulums - the positive, the one that gives happiness and meaning, and the negative - that our lives are lived. And when we meditate about all that, we arrive at a diverse and disagreeing set of thoughts about the meaning and purpose of life.What is the purpose of life? I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.,and the peace of God.

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@think rethink,

Hi,
I failed to stress, that meaning is only necessary to enable the mind, to "tolerate" the intolerable.

(It's possibly called meaning, to say,
this wrong, means right, because of these reasons)

When not aware about stuff going wrong in your life (when drunk from alcohol, sex, attention, power, great food, travel),
Being alive is justified by the joy of it.

We had celebrities and rich committing suecide from emptiness too,
But boredom and loneliness etc, is no fun at all, and there are much less meaningful excuses available up there, then to poverty for example

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@MozartLink,

Quote:

However, there is a hidden unknown version of good and bad which is the feeling/emotional non-moral (mood) version of good and bad that is completely independent of our way of thinking. If you are in a good mood, then your life has good meaning regardless of what you think otherwise. Same thing applies for being in a bad mood. This mood version of good and bad is the new version of good and bad. It is the only thing that gives good and bad meaning to our lives. It is a new version of good and bad that scientists have yet to discover.

So what makes you FEEL good, actually IS good. Imagine sadists fully embracing this philosophy(*shudders*)

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@MozartLink,

Two cups of java in the a.m.

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Dictionaries.

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@FBM,

Esp OneLook.com

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@MozartLink,

Drugs

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To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

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@McGentrix,

Nice. I almost posted that. Smile

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Yeah, except that should be ". . . deh lahmentations of dair vimmen."

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@MozartLink,

In addition to drugs:

The love of others and the love we have to give.

Moments of transcendence.

Drugs can help the latter but not so much the former.

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@McGentrix,

McGentrix wrote:

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Well, I have been looking for a new pastime in my weekends lately... Might give that one a try in the wee afternoon, jist before it's time to hit the local pub.

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What truly gives our lives meaning

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