Life: An Experimental Experience and Drama?
I would like to feel that life has a clear purpose. I am speaking personally but also in general. There is so much unpredictability. Often, it seems to be about searching for solutions to difficulties and finding meaning, without clear pathways. So that leads me to wonder whether life can be viewed as an experiment. Do you think this is a fair approach to life?
Edit: I edited my title because I am not suggesting that we are part of an experiment but that we can experiment to find and create our own meaningful realities.
Edit: I edited my title because I am not suggesting that we are part of an experiment but that we can experiment to find and create our own meaningful realities.
Comments (32)
Your question about whether life can be viewed as an experiment is very interesting, since there is a lot to think about! With any experiment, what we are trying to learn from it is the most important part of it, so it is important to ask what kind of result you are looking for.
To me, life is about learning from our experiences and our ability to think, and we can't always predict what we'll learn in the future, so it is less predictable than a typical experiment in my opinion.
What (& whose) conjecture – explanatory hypothesis – is being tested by deducing a 'life-experiment'?
Or do you mean 'living one's life such that one's experiences are grand (high stakes?) experiments'?
Maybe I'm missing something ... :chin:
Who is the subject of the the experiment; who is the experimenter? You? Us? God? Benevolent (or not) overlords?
God made the World in six days flat
On the seventh he said, I'll rest
So he let the thing into orbit swing
To give it a dry run test
A billion years went by
Then he took a look at the whirling blob
His spirits fell as he shrugged
Oh well, it was only a six-day job. Rhymes for the Irreverent-Chad Mitchell
My opinion: Life is not an experiment. It is a largely unscripted experience of very mixed quality.
I certainly wasn't implying that our lives are an experiment from any divine higher power. I had quite a bad yesterday and even got knocked down by a bicycle on the road. Fortunately, apart from a few aches and pains, I am fine but was feeling a bit shaken up and miserable.
I think me asking that specific question about can life be viewed as an experiment was probably a reaction to being on my phone and there just seem to be so many people creating threads about God and religion. Even people who are opposed to the ones who are creating the religious ones are busy creating debates about theology. It sometimes feels like it is the centre of the whole agenda of philosophy.
I am not a nihilist but don't feel that we are part of some kind of grand design. It just feels like we have to find meanings and not give up. I had also been reading the thread on reasons for living and that seems to be about finding solid, logical reasons for carrying on life. I believe that there aren't any clear answers to that thread question but at the same time, I do believe, personally, that life is worth living and that we need to make the best of it. So, I am really saying that we can create our destiny through our own experimentation.
I feel a bit like Bart Simpson. As I know that you like music, one band which I would recommend is The Dream Syndicate. They have made quite a few good albums but the one which I have been enjoying recently is, 'How did I find myself here?' Perhaps it would have been a better thread question than the one I asked.
As I just said to Bitter Crank, I certainly don't believe that we are in an actual experiment. I am really speaking of how we can experiment to give life meaning. So, I am editing my title to prevent my question being misinterpreted. I don't believe if in some kind of grand design, so I am more into consideration of how we experiment to create our own reality, or even our own personal little utopia, rather than looking for some ultimate transcendent reality.
But I do see it as being many different experiments rather than just one. I think the reason why I even wrote the thread is because I feel that lockdown restrictions have turned my life upside down and so many other people's lives. It feels like the world we knew and the lives we have made have collapsed, so I was just thinking about how it is all like an experimental drama.
Oh no! Were you walking or were you on a bike yourself? Did you get hurt--scraped up, lacerated...? Getting run over by a bicycle is not as bad (and probably not as final) as getting run over by a bus, but I dread it myself.
Quoting Jack Cummins
We are certainly advised to find meaning (or make it up). Whenever I try to do this, I end up with results that I do not find personally compelling. Life pushes us forward and we go on OR it doesn't, and we are not here anymore. Life's insistent perpetuation seems to work across the spectrum of all species.
Life is its best reason for carrying on. Reasons for living that we devise are after-the-fact. If they help, good. If not, OK. Life keeps pushing on. If life depended on good reasons, we would not be here.
Life--whether it intended to do so or not--gave us an active inquiring intelligence. We WILL look for meaning. And we will find it or we will make it up. We want meaning, and we also want to be happy -- whatever 'happy' means. (I have even fewer clues about how to be happy than how to find the meaning of life.) Do stuff that makes you happy. Maybe that will help you find meaning. Even if it doesn't, it's better to be happy than be miserable.
local time: 1:41 p.m. February. 6, 2021
I was crossing the road when I got knocked over in the High Street when I got knocked over by a bike. It was probably because I had a mask on, as I had just come out of the supermarket, and this was obscuring my vision and the bike was going really fastly. At least, the man on the bike did get off the bike and asked me if I was okay. A few years ago I got knocked to the ground by a car and hurt my leg and the car didn't even stop and the driver must have seen that he had knocked me down.
But, I will have to be careful that it isn't a bus next time. I was shaken up though yesterday and earlier I had gone for a walk by the river and wandering along without being able to go inside any buildings had made me feel like some kind of vagrant. So, it was really in this frame of mind that I wrote this thread. It was my little drama and it does seem that life is full of so many dramas for reflection.
I do think that what we experienced in life affects the whole way we think and form our ideas. Perhaps, the people who have the most difficult time in life are the ones who become the most philosophical. I am not sure that all the individuals who gravitate towards philosophy are always doing so because they have been having a hard time. However, I do think that suffering is a reason why many people do begin asking questions.
I definitely have found that I probably would not have taken the interest in philosophy if I had not struggled so much as a teenager. I think my whole religious background that got me reading and thinking about philosophy in the first place. But I do read philosophy when I am happy too because it has become such a central interest. But I do think that the whole experience of suffering can be a starting point for deep thinking and that many people don't begin to think deeply because they don't feel the need.
Absolutely. The pragmatist philosopher, William James, thought there was a connection between behavior and emotion. He posited that fear could be amplified by danger-avoiding behavior. Are we running because we are afraid or are we afraid because we are running? (He wasn't claiming that going out for a run won't make someone fearful--not in itself, anyway.) Some very fearful people reinforce their fears by behaving in excessively cautious ways. The cautious behavior validates their fears.
"voluntary laughing" or "joyful dancing" can improve mood. Breathing deeply helps bring about relaxation.
Experience shapes cognition, too. Shopping in a supermarket (without getting hit by a bicycle when departing) presumably has a subtle, at least slight effect on our thinking, positive or negative. Driving on a crowded highway would too. Work tasks (a huge variety), household tasks, recreational tasks -- all sorts of things are likely to affect our thinking. Performing a difficult task successfully is likely to strengthen our sense of confidence; exercising executive agency is likely to strengthen our sense of personal 'efficacy', the belief that we can actually accomplish goals. (The reverse would be true too.).
Glad you are OK; better that way.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I get it. There are so many public areas that are devoid of life under the various Covid-19 cautions.
You know what's shitty? creating energy that wants to be aware, is aware and willing to give everything up to become more aware and never allowing it to reach outside.
I think that you are new to the forum, so I hope that you find some interesting discussions. I am in favour of awareness of the moment and I am interested in the whole process of transformation.
I have read a fair amount in the area of transpersonal psychology. So, my whole understanding of experience is about wishing to pursue higher states of consciousness, although that doesn't mean that we can necessarily sidestep some of the hardest learning experiences.
I think that the whole way in which we process our experience enables us to create pathways in our thinking and enable us to move away from being passive victims. I do believe that state of mind does affect what experience we have on a subconscious level. I had got into a negative state of mind prior to my experience of getting knocked down by the bicycle. Strangely, I had been in a most atrocious mood on the day when I got knocked down by a car. I did see both experiences more as a wake up call, and last night and today I was trying to focus in a more positive way and I think this did work as by this afternoon I was feeling far more upbeat.
I do try to incorporate various techniques to help cope with experience, including mindfulness and some meditation. I also believe that cognitive behavioral therapy techniques are helpful. I did undertake some personal psychotherapy as part of art therapy training but I found that it made me more depressed. Some people seem to find psychotherapy extremely helpful and I guess that a certain amount can release unexpressed emotions. However, it is focusing on the past mainly, whereas cognitive behavioral therapy is concerned with the past. It is probably about getting the right balance and people vary in their needs.
Of course, you are right to say that performing tasks does help too. I think that writing and engaging on this forum is a good practice for expression, critical thinking and for raising self esteem, rather than thinking alone.
That element is what makes Dostoevsky so fascinating as an observer of feedback loops. We keep writing the narrative of our demise too well.
Over the years I have had a series of running and biking accidents (starting in 1983). These resulted in broken bones, painful muscle injuries, and wrecked bikes. One of these crashes could easily have been fatal. The common theme in all of these accidents was being in a distracted foul mood--so foul that I was not thinking straight or even paying attention. These were clearly my fault.
I didn't find a solution, apart from not riding for maybe... 15 years. (I don't drive.) I'm in a much better state of mind now. I wish I knew what cured me so I could put in a bottle, but whatever it was is a mystery.
Around 4 years ago I got a new bike and have been happily riding again to do errands and just for fun. I don't get lost in angry ruminating while riding any more, and I pay attention.
2/6/21 - 9:00 p.m.
2/6/21 - 9:04 p.m.
No, I don't think life has a meaning or purpose, outside of what we give it. More and more I'm drawn to the idea of life - experience - this thing here and now, is a dream, similar to what Schopenhauer said. That's a bit misleading in that life is not the type of dream one wakes up from. But from the "perspective" of the universe, a person dying is akin to when waking up from a dream, we "kill" the characters in the dream.
Is this in anyway helpful in thinking about meaning and purpose? Well, do dreams have a purpose or meaning? The only answer that makes sense to me is that it is we who seek to interpret and give meaning to a dream, not the dream itself. So in this regard, life is on a similar footing. Is it an experiment as well? Sure. I don't see what prevents you from treating it as such.
Yes, concentration is a good thing, especially for driving or riding a bike. I don't drive and have never tried to learn, partly because I don't think my eyesight is perfect enough and because I am a daydreamer. I haven't ever had a bicycle because my dad was going to buy me one for my seventh birthday and my mum asked me if I would prefer a record player, so I became a child DJ instead of a cyclist, and I have never got round to having a bicycle. But I don't know how people manage it on busy roads.
But being in the a positive frame of mind affects everything. I don't believe in false positivity, but if I find that I am going into a negative spiral, I try to work with it rather than let it go too far. In usual circumstances, if I am getting negative at home I go out to a cafe or somewhere. It usually helps but sometimes feeling negative is not that easy to solve. Probably one of the reasons I have so many CDs is that I have gone out buying them as an antidote for feeling miserable and I think it often works for me. Of course, meeting others is helpful but I need to be in the right frame of mind for that. The worse thing was being in the right frame of mind at work, where concentration was needed, but the only solution I have found for this is coffee.
It is brave of you to ride a bike after your accident. After some accident it is easy to become avoidant of similar situations. I even thought on Friday that I would not go to the river in Wandsworth again but that is not the real issue. It is more about being careful when crossing roads. This was told to me endlessly as a child and perhaps with all the rules and regulations about preventing Covid_19, it is easy to become careless in other basic ways.
But the whole question of maintaining the right state of consciousness: mood and concentration, does seem central to all else in life.
I do think that meaning is something we find for ourselves. It all seems like being in a labyrinth at times. I have felt as if I am in a dream on many occasions, especially waking up to a shutdown world during the last year.
You ask if dreams have purpose and I think they do. I would say that they are a way of unlocking the more hidden aspects of ourselves. I know that many just regard them almost like the recycle bin of our waking consciousness. But I side more with the psychoanalyst perspective here because I have found that the more attention I pay to dreams the more potential they have for understanding the self.
I once kept a dream journal for six months and I found that by recording them I could find themes which emerged and seemed to develop. The only reason I did not keep up the daily journal was because it was hard work having to write down the dreams before I forgot them.
I think that Freud's perspective on dreams was limited, because he placed too much emphasis on sexuality. Of course, it is important but it is not the only aspect of life which is important. I prefer the whole way in which Jung saw dreams as conveying mythic truth. It is worth understanding the symbolic dimensions, but that is not just in the way that some dream interpretations books offer generalised statements. Symbols have different values and meanings for each person.
Getting back to your idea that life has no meaning, perhaps it is worth you consider the way in which our lives can be considered as mythological quests. Also, I think that it is worth paying attention to dreams. Perhaps that dream journaling is something we could all be doing in the void of lockdown restrictions, as a means of increasing self knowledge and creativity.
Given how infrequently one remembers them, I've managed to retain some memories of them by will, though I've heard that writing them down helps. In so far as they suggest things you should do or they reflect anxieties or whatever else, yeah they can have that meaning. But it's similar to life, in the sense that we provide meaning to them, not so much the dream itself.
I'm skeptical of psychoanalysis of any variety. They (Freud, Jung, etc.) do have some interesting things to say, but I think they fall way short of someone like William James. It doesn't seem to lead anywhere, outside of staying within an arbitrary framework and people keep guessing if X may mean fear, anxiety or repression.
Not that it doesn't have any uses, it does. But thinking in terms of mythological quests or heroic quests or something like that can be very misleading. But if it helps you understand yourself then whatever works is good in cases like these.
Some people find more meaningful in dreams than others. I have very vivid dreams and I am interested in lucid dreaming, although I probably don't follow the interest through fully because I am pursuing a number of interests in reading, and even the idea of self hypnosis. Sometimes, it just seems that there are not enough hours for all the inner work, and the whole quest for knowledge.
I think that there are many reasons to be sceptical of the psychoanalytic writers. Both Freud and Jung have many shortcomings, but I would say that my own past experiences is one in which Jung was almost my mentor. I discovered him while I was still at school and he gave me a whole structure of thinking and deconstructing over a period of time when I really needed it.
I have read some writing by William James, mainly 'The Varieties of Religious Experience,' and I did find it impressive. I am not sure that thinking about life in mythological ways solves all the questions. It is can have value but it does not answer all the big philosophy problems. It is just like one brick in a larger brick wall. Philosophy sometimes seems like building a wall, and sometimes all the bricks tumble down, and it is about starting over again and again.
However, one division which I see is the whole area of philosophy is between the philosophy required for living a meaningful life and the philosophy for answering the ultimate questions about reality. I am not sure that they can be divided clearly. However, one could say that the best way would be to answer the metaphysical and epistemological questions first, as a foundation for living. The problem is that this endeavor could go on and on, and on. In the meantime, we still have to live on the basis of rocky foundations. I am not saying that we should give up finding answers, but even if we think we have found them, they are not ones others will agree with necessarily, so it still seems like the most we can come up with a view that is like a personal mythological system.
That's sensible on the whole. And it is a curious tendency that many people tend to find some of these figures interesting at a certain age bracket.
One thing I don't agree with, or at least I don't see it as you do, is the topic of dividing philosophy between "meaningful life" and "ultimate questions". You don't think they can be clearly divided, I think they mostly can.
I don't see how speaking about how consciousness arises, asking if the world is ideal or speaking about the nature of identity has much to say about what makes a life good or not. In Classical Greece, you could argue that for them mathematics and ethical behavior could be incorporated into a whole system. But even then it was nebulous. I don't see how these issues connect at all today - apart from the fact that they are both human activities.
I would say that the main reason why I would say that the reason I see the whole question of how one should live as being related to the biggest questions is because it all seems to come down to what really matters. However, I will contradict myself in so far as to say, that I do believe that treating others fairly and well seems to be independent of the deeper questions. In particular, I would say that this stands independently of questions such as whether or not God exists or whether there is life after death.
So, I am probably asserting a basic humanist approach to moral values, which is a provisional philosophy while we are able to be more reserved in forming clearer ideas. But, I do believe that framing within systems is important. I am a pluralist and do believe that some questions are extremely difficult to find absolute answers for.
I edited my life :rofl: under duress :rofl:
Quoting Jack Cummins
Life, it seems, is half an experiment (as of now that is) because 1) all the data is available for collection and analysis but 2) the experimenter (our creator?) is nowhere to be found.
I think I am editing my life all the time. I am busy looking for data and the experimenter seems to be AWOL. Sometimes, it feels like life is all snakes and ladders, mazes and knots.
Well, AWOL is better than KIA.
One example can be found in The Idiot. One could say all the outcomes of Prince Myshkin result from his responses to fear.
He is unafraid of many kinds of judgement from others or anxious about his future in manner that provides the common background to interactions with those he meets. This quality charms those people and softens suspicion of his intentions. The Prince receives the benefit of those responses.
But when the Prince does become afraid that he will do the wrong thing, his attempts to protect himself against it only make it even worse than he feared.
His innocence leaves him helpless in situations that show how well-defended people rely on different kinds of violence.
I think life is exactly of the nature of an experiment in the way that conscious volition formulates choices that result in real consequences. I call it Experimental Consciousness. I think it perfectly augments Popper's brand of Scientific Realism.
I have only read a tiny amount of Popper, so I will try exploring him a bit further. Thanks for pointing me in his direction, because there are so many thinkers that it almost requires more than one lifetime to find the essential ones.
I will look out for Popper. I will just be so glad if libraries(and bookshops)open again because that is how I usually find books. I do download books but it so much better being able to look at the books. The absence of libraries is the aspect of life with lockdown that I moan and groan about more than anything else, because a whole year without them almost has just been terrible.