The purpose of life
In a nutshell: What, if any, is the purpose/goal a human would strive towards, in living his/her life?
My own answer to the above question would simply be happiness.
Happiness here covers a broad variety of emotions and mental states including all sorts of satisfactory, comfortable feelings from peacefulness to orgasms.
The reason I endorse this view is that humans in general (excluding people with unusual mental disorders, etc.), act in ways which could be logically dissected to demonstrate that the real purpose which lies behind them is the attainment of some form of happiness.
For a really simple example, somebody would act in a manner which pleases their boss, because they want to get a promotion, which they subsequently want because it improves their social status, which they subsequently want because it makes others look up to them, which they subsequently want because admiration makes them feel happy.
This just underlines how happiness lies at the root of our actions. What do you think?
My own answer to the above question would simply be happiness.
Happiness here covers a broad variety of emotions and mental states including all sorts of satisfactory, comfortable feelings from peacefulness to orgasms.
The reason I endorse this view is that humans in general (excluding people with unusual mental disorders, etc.), act in ways which could be logically dissected to demonstrate that the real purpose which lies behind them is the attainment of some form of happiness.
For a really simple example, somebody would act in a manner which pleases their boss, because they want to get a promotion, which they subsequently want because it improves their social status, which they subsequently want because it makes others look up to them, which they subsequently want because admiration makes them feel happy.
This just underlines how happiness lies at the root of our actions. What do you think?
Comments (66)
For example, I don't really think about happiness but about comfort, relaxation, and entertainment (in the sense of leisurely preoccupation). It's more about avoiding stress, boredom, and pain than about anything as positive as joy.
Developing virtue and character - that's the only thing worth striving for. Of course that requires you engage in a multitude of other actions and behaviours.
Why do you think developing virtue and character is something worth striving for?
Sure yeah,that could be the purpose of someone's life at some particular moment.But note that these desires change all the time.
For an example you might desire now to eat an ice cream and then later desire to read Wittgenstein.
So the result of denoting these desires as the purpose of life is that you'd end up with an ever changing set of candidates for the purpose of life,which thus makes it harder to pin down a single purpose.
The natural question now is,do you think there is some unifying property that all of these human desires share?If so,then this property could easily be named the goal everyone strives towards.
Is it to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior? I hope not, because I totally failed to do that.
How about helping to create a community pottery studio? That's a good purpose.
The sense in which I used the word ''happiness'' is described in paragraph three of the OP and it includes relaxation, comfort, etc. that you refer to.
As for people not considering happiness as an option they strive towards, this is of course what appears to be true on the surface, but then, once logically broken down, their actions could be reduced to the search for happiness (see the example in the last paragraph of the OP).
Virtue is the only thing which is under your control. If we are to judge the excellence of a human being, then it must be judged on a scale where all responsibility falls on the person, and where external circumstances cannot intervene to favour some and not others.
Virtue is eternal. It will be with you today, and tomorrow and your whole life. Everything can be taken away from you... your children, your success, what people think of you... tomorrow you could end up in prison, and in chains. But the only thing that no dictator, no oppressor, and no circumstance can ever steal from you is your virtue. The fact that you can always refuse to engage in immorality, and persevere through strength of character to teach your fellow human beings and to care for them through your own example, just like Socrates, that is man's ultimate good. A tyrant may kill you, torture you and break your body - but he cannot take away your will unless you give it to him.
Virtue is Goodness itself for man, as man is defined by his freedom of choice, and the only real choice that man has, that is not conditioned by external circumstances, is virtue. Think about what makes people moral - taking care of others, loving others, having a good character. This is all virtue. And think about what makes people bad... bringing misery to others, using others for your own selfish reasons, and a multitude of other phenomena which characterise situations ranging from people having promiscuous sex, to people abusing others for financial gain.
And the last point if you're still not convinced... Do you have an alternative? Everything else is corruptible and perishable. What will you replace virtue with? Pleasure? And what will you do if by some change of circumstances that pleasure is taken away from you? Despair and be miserable? What if your circumstances condemn you to never experience an orgasm again... will you despair? Virtue is inner strength - nothing can take it away. If I tell you invest your money in X but in 10 years you'll lose it, what will you do? Invest it? Of course not. So if virtue isn't the answer, then certainly nothing else is even worth trying to strive for, because everything else is most certainly a losing investment. With virtue at least there's a chance, at minimum!
What does it mean to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour? :)
You exclude the very real possibility that happiness and dedication to its attainment is itself a mental illness, then? You certainly seem to be claiming that what 'humans in general' do is by definition the most rational and true expression of their purpose.
As C. S. Lewis once observed, it could be a great mistake to assume that God (and here you may substitute whatever principle you wish from Mother Nature to the selfish gene and back again) intends us to be happy. Happiness is, after all, nothing but a delusional state which denies reality and in its worst expressions (where it reaches near cultic status) actively seeks to hide reality from us all. It is no more than a permanent state of denial which seems to be a pretty poor thing to be considered the purpose or meaning of life! And that's before you even start to consider the narcissism, egoism and selfishness it tends to engender!
That's because of the definition of happiness you have adopted. If you look at Aristotle's for example - eudaimonia in Greek - and study Ancient Greek culture you'll see for yourself a completely different way to think and perceive what happiness is.
This is not the Greek view at all. You have to take yourself out of the modern consciousness - the modern way of seeing and feeling the world. You have to abandon the glasses you are seeing everything through, and take a new pair - learn to see the world as the Greeks did. Then you will understand what they meant, and then you may not want to change the glasses back ;)
[quote=hunter]
In a nutshell: What, if any, is the purpose/goal a human would strive towards, in living his/her life?
My own answer to the above question would simply be happiness.
Happiness here covers a broad variety of emotions and mental states including all sorts of satisfactory, comfortable feelings from peacefulness to orgasms.
This just underlines how happiness lies at the root of our actions. What do you think?
[/quote]
I think you nailed. It's a "simple" idea, but so much falls out from this simple commitment. I say "commitment" because some find their happiness in the idea that their lives are about something more profound than happiness. But, yeah, I say that we pursue pleasure and avoid pain, with both understood to include sophisticated, "spiritualized" pleasure and pain.
Speaking of accomplishment, that is exactly what Heidegger thought was the essence of action. To do is to accomplish (by means of tool-usage).
Coming from a psychological perspective, most people at most times of their lives are not critically aware of how fear and death constitute an integral part of action. Anxiety, a form of fear, is what motivates us to do many of our actions - if you do not eat, you will die, if you do not drink, you will die, if you do not get a job, you will die, if you do not pray to God, you will go the Hell, etc.
So I think people like to believe that happiness is the purpose of life. But I think this is a pipe dream that nevertheless hoodwinks people into a false sense of security.
[quote=darth]
So I think people like to believe that happiness is the purpose of life. But I think this is a pipe dream that nevertheless hoodwinks people into a false sense of security.
[/quote]
I don't know. Thinking that the point is to be happy doesn't mean expecting or demanding to always be happy. It's just the attitude that suffering is toll one pays. Also, why seek for a sense of security? I'd call this an aspect of happiness, feeling safe. So even the desire to believe that life is about the pursuit of happiness looks itself like the pursuit of happiness. I'd even conjecture that we tend to tolerate painful "truths" only as tools for the restoration of peace. Homoestasis, return to the creative play. That seems to be the game.
If there is nothing you strive towards in living your life, then what stops you killing yourself?
Well I didn't quite say that. When making bread, I strive to make the best bread I can, when decorating the hall, I strive to make a good job of it. What i don't do is strive to make my life something other than my life. My goals are inside my life, not about my life. Death is the 'goal' that one cannot help reaching eventually, but I have no inclination whatever to strive to hasten it.
Humans strive-for-nothing. We are constantly turning our boredom into pleasure and entertainment goals and ensuring our survival (in whatever economic/cultural context that manifests). We are doing, to do, to do. Survival and boredom are the limits of our actions, and the prime motivator behind almost all else in human affairs.
Epicurus might say we should strive for art, relations with close friends, and philosophizing with friends.
Epictetus and Seneca might say we should strive for the Stoic virtues which would be (according to Stoics) living in accordance with Natural Reason and would (as a by-product) lead to a "happier" life
Schopenhauer would say that we should strive for non-willing being by experiencing aesthetic experiences, choosing compassionate acts which are motivated towards helping the other person a, and most importantly, ascetic contemplation and renunciation of one's willing nature.
Camus/Nietzsche might say that we should live our life as if at every moment we were to do an action again, it would be something we would choose over and over again. Life has much suffering, but we can make it a tragic-comedy of the absurd by our self-awareness of the situation.
schopenhauer1 (I) would say that we should be willing to look at boredom straight on, the striving-for-nothing core of our being, understand its implications- we are doing to keep alive and not feel existential boredom. It is all instrumental. Every action of maintenance, every action of survival, every action of entertainment. It is ok to bitch, it is good to rebel against the situation. Contra amor fati, one can feel jaded, bitter, slighted, and the like. Most philosophies, want you to subdue these feelings- as long as you somehow find something in the moment that can entertain you for that day, you may forget the instrumentality, but it always comes back. No one wants to think that while they are immersed in a moment of "flow" (being on the surface of things), or a day of entertainment (social relations/games/revelry/media/substances and the like).
Only in modern society - very important.
Even if that was the case, it ain't going back any time soon. There can be an argument that we were too preoccupied with survival lifestyle where the paramount need was to understand how to live immersed in a particular natural setting in a tribal context. Thus, the instrumentality that was always there was just never realized. Perhaps that could be the way it was "meant to be" in terms of the setting for our original evolutionary needs, but for contingent reasons of much of humanity's cultural lifestyle shift to agriculture and thus civilization, we can thus realize this.
I meant to tell you that this framework through which you see the world - this framework through which you look at, feel and perceive the world, namely "turning our boredom into pleasure and entertainment, ensuring survival", this is a modern framework. Your way of experiencing the world is therefore alien to most people who have lived until today. They didn't feel this way about the world, they didn't think about it in these terms, they didn't relate to it through these categories. It's the difference between an anxious person looking at a spider, and one who has no fear looking at the same spider. The two experiences are completely alien from each other, and very often the one having no fear can't understand the one being anxious, and the one being anxious can't understand the one having no fear.
The point I was getting at is that the human psyche's stability during episodes of trauma is primarily held together by hope. Hope for a better future, hope for a happy future. People will delude themselves their entire lives, believing that if they just run a mile a day, or go Paleo, or convert to such-and-such religion, or meditate three times a day, or get organized with their ergonomic crap, that then they will finally be happy. It's never quite accomplished, though.
I just explained how this shift of framework can happen. This is a tacit agreement, but with explanation. Why would you then proceed to elaborate as if I did not address this in my last post?
No - you described a change in material conditions, and not a change in consciousness, which is what I am referring to. There is a change in consciousness that occurred between modernity and before, which is not economic but spiritual in nature. I disagree for example that the Ancients were too preoccupied with their survival. That was important - surely - but it wasn't the main thing that drove them. You're still looking at the Ancients from your modern consciousness - they would not have felt like you would. Furthermore the experience of boredom was rare - boredom requires a stronger separation of self and world than was available to the Ancient consciousness. For example, Epicurus sitting in his garden, he didn't seem to be bored, and yet most of his time was leisure, ie doing nothing. Epicurean writings on boredom are extremely rare. People just didn't have that trouble as much. You try doing that today, and you will get bored. Not because the activity is boring but because your consciousness has changed. This is a spiritual change that has occurred, independently of the material changes, and I argue that this spiritual change is negative.
You've got to remember here that the point of the question is not to compare humans by means of some morality contest that judges their ''excellence''. The point is to discover what general purpose lies behind the decisions and actions of an ordinary human being.
Now while it may be true that virtue is a fantastic way of measuring someone's moral '' excellence'', this by no means implies that attaining this moral excellence is a motivation behind general human behaviour.
For an example, a perfectly ordinary human being may don a mask, arm himself with a machine gun and subsequently rob a bank. What role then, would your theory of humans ''striving towards virtue'' play in explaining what motivated this guy to rob a bank?
I think your mistake lies in confusing what should (should in the moral sense) be the general purpose behind human actions with what actually is the general purpose behind human actions.
Quoting Agustino
Finally, this isn't entirely true. There are lots of external circumstances which could take away your virtue.
Remember that virtue is merely a notion dealt with by a certain portion of our brain. If some external factor, say a car accident, were to damage this part of the brain, our capability of even understanding what virtue is, would disappear along with it.
Quoting Barry Etheridge
I agree that my OP statement excludes the possibility of happiness being a mental illness, but since you've said nothing to show that it is a mental illness in the medical sense, I'll just ignore that for the moment.
I certainly said nothing of the sort quoted above. All I said was that happiness is what humans in general strive towards. At no point did I conclude that this is "the most rational and true expression of their purpose''.
In other words I was merely stating an empirical fact about human behaviour without evaluating the rationality and truth of this fact.
Quoting Barry Etheridge
You seem to be speaking with reference to a rather narrow interpretation of what happiness is.
While it may be true that happiness at times appears along side narcissism,etc this, by no means implies that there are no other forms that it could take.
Forget not my friend, that the feeling a human gets by giving a piece of bread to a beggar on a street corner belongs too, under the umbrella of happiness.
It is the purpose, whether someone is actually fulfilling it (or is aware it is the purpose, or wants to fulfil it) is a different story.
Quoting hunterkf5732
Such as?
Quoting hunterkf5732
Yes, and you would disappear along with the virtue in that case - you would take it with you. It's similar for example to the woman who tries to be chaste until marriage but is raped before she gets married. Does that mean the virtue of chastity was taken away from her? Absolutely not, because virtue has less to do with physical aspects and more to do with her character (what her will is directed towards) which remains the same.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Oh, well I agree that there is no final resting place. I like the metaphor of just learning to fall off of the horse less often. The "horse" is a general sense of well-being and flow. Falling off is trauma. Life-philosophy or wisdom writing helps keep us on the horse and get back on when we fall off. And even this statement (life philosophy's self-consciousness) can contribute. We can think of our worldview and/or our "ego ideal" as software to be judged by its effectiveness.
Well then you aren't answering the question posted in the OP.
Quoting Agustino
I gave the example of the car accident literally one line below.
Quoting Agustino
You seem to be overlooking the fact that character is formed by physical aspects in the first place. For an example, someone born in a well to do, educated family would quickly acquire this ''character'' you expect, owing to the influence he receives via these external factors of education,family traditions,etc.
On the other hand, someone who happened to be unlucky enough to be born the son of a thief may acquire a contrary form of character via the external, physical aspects of watching and learning what his dad does. Would you really then blame the thief's son for not having the ''character'' you expect?
Aaaand you didn't answer my bank robber example.
The criminal is either mistaken about his purpose, or he thinks that robbing a bank is a means to achieve it. Purpose in my framework, which is Aristotelian, is objective. Whether X or Y knows their purpose is a different story. Purpose is not that which they choose and act based on.
Quoting hunterkf5732
Yes background plays a role in moral development. The thief's son is still to blame for the wrongs that he does, but this is to a smaller extent due to his unfortunate background influence. This doesn't change the fact that he has control over his character - if he wanted to, he could change. The only thing is he doesn't want to.
What is the term in your ''framework'' then, that represents what people choose and act based on?
Say this term is "X''.
Then here's my OP question rephrased in your terminology: What is the X which most people have in their life?
Motive.
It depends from culture to culture and from person to person. Do you want the motive in today's world? Or 100 years ago, or when?
If today, then that motive most likely is pursuit of an abstract ideal of freedom and pleasure. Most people seek pleasure, but with the underlying assumption that pleasure is always to be found in what they think will be pleasurable (hence the ideal of freedom - one has the freedom to decide what is pleasureable and what isn't). In other words they presuppose that what will be most pleasurable is not given necessarily by the structure of reality.
It is possible to agree about the pleasure, but think that what is most pleasureable follows necessarily from the structure of reality, in which case what is most pleasurable will be most pleasureable regardless of what someone thinks about it.
I'm striving for Eudaimonia, but not necessarily Aristotle's version. The research I've done suggests there are many systems that promise Eudaimonia. Each of the ancient schools of philosophy suggested that theirs was that best way to pursue that goal.
Seems to me that one of the failings of modern philosophy, is that no one in the profession spends much time thinking about how to live the best life possible.
The rest - striving for authenticity or pleasure - comes afterward.
Well then, what do you think is the most common goal that people are interested in?
Could you now find some common goal that lies behind the things you name?
I think Kierkegaard was a bit wrong on this. Faith without virtue is not faith. One cannot claim to have faith while cheating on their wife for example, regardless of how much they profess to be praying to God and loving God, etc.
I have to guess even more for that, but probably something like time management would be a good candidate--especially with respect to how much time people spend at work versus doing things they enjoy outside of work, including hobbies, spending time with loved ones, etc.
(I'm not sure why we're trying to guess what a lot of people would have in common for goals, though.)
I'll just skip to the chase; the mystery common goal behind all of these things you name is, happiness.
Look hard enough at the motivations that make people do these things they do, and you'll see that these motivations are all just happiness in disguise.
Eg: people yearn for money because this will bring them happiness in the forms of cars,houses,girls,etc,etc.
Desires fall into six broad categories: vitality (perpetual life with perfect health), beauty, strength, wealth, fame and power. These desires drive us relentlessly. We are helpless against them. Our quest for happiness comes to us naturally. According to our desires we drift to different places in the creation.
We are not fully aware of all the desires contained our mind; the degree varying from person to person. The less a person is aware of the self, more he obeys spontaneous surges of desires. Such an act defies some other desire. As we travel through life we attach our desires to different aspects. A child receiving life sustaining help from its mother attaches the meaning of happiness with her. When the child happens to defy her wish for some temptation, the child feels remorse. This instills a new desire for punishing the self. New car can take unreasonably larger proportion of meaning of happiness for a while. This can make us refuse to lend it to a close friend, violating the friendship, and causing the feeling of guilt, which makes us feel less worthy of happiness. We can call this character or self esteem, which decides which direction we go from here in life.
I believe to work on untangling our mind with diligence reduces the amount of pains we would receive in the future. To me, this is the control we have on our affairs. This gives us the purpose of life, since purpose presupposes control over the involved affairs. Other than that, the pursuing of our desires is forced upon us by nature. In cooperation with nature we should keep pursuing our desires with all our heart, avoiding generation of new conflicts in our heart.
One only has to observe a baby growing into adulthood and then into old age. Creating, experimenting, learning. Everyone dies it individually and in groups continuously and never-ending. Evolution.
TRUTH may be reworked by happiness fanatics as just another way of achieving happiness. However, note that TRUTH can be painful e.g. the truth that there's no objective purpose in life is, to say the least, disappointing. Therefore, TRUTH deserves its own category re the purpose of life.
Sounds like hedonism to me. "Happiness" is something even Aristotle said as the ultimate good (as translated from "eudaimonia"), but he talked about it as excellence of character, as arete, as cultivating virtues. A far cry from Jeremy Bentham and the unfortunate belief that you seem to hold -- but which is quite common in modern times, especially in the West and especially in the United States. Maybe not explicitly, but tacitly -- people are living the answers to the question of "What is the purpose of my life?" and by the looks of it it's exactly as you describe: comfort, sex, distraction, entertainment, material goods, commodities, abundance of food, comfortable furniture and cloths, fancy cars, lots of money, etc.
To me that's a sad state of affairs.
I prefer Aristotle and Nietzsche, actually. Not the "will to live" but the "will to power," and "happiness" is therefore "whatever augments the feeling of power." Note that this does NOT often correspond to pleasure or even the will to live -- people go through much pain in fact.
Purpose is important to think about, and is often dismissed as a philosophical question. But it's one of the more important ones in our times. It also flushes out this underlying view of human nature which is at it's heart quite nihilistic, and very narrow indeed.
To view "happiness" as sitting on a big sofa eating Bonbons and watching a huge HD plasma TV is kind of pathetic, wouldn't you say?
The ancient Greek philosophies on life were wide and varied. But assuming you are referring to the Stoic tradition, this is not at all a charitable interpretation of it. Contrary to encouraging apathy and laziness as a life philosophy, the Stoics taught forbearance and emotional mastery, self-knowledge and determination, and fortitude -- to endure those circumstances which lie outside an individual's control. Actually, if you take a look at the writings of some of the great Stoic philosophers, they sort of encourage taking life by the horns and living a fulfilled life. Determinism, for the Stoics, did not entail, nor suppose as a logical consequence, indifference.
Consider:
"Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good." - Marcus Aurelius
"Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced into our possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at... Begin to live at once, and count each separate day as a separate life." - Seneca the Younger
"How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates." - Epictetus
Well, the answer to this question is best given from a utilitarian moral perspective, keeping in mind its hedonistic principle that happiness has intrinsic value.
I'm not quite sure of this so you might want to crosscheck what I'm about to say. I believe the great utilitarian John Stuart Mill drew a distinction between higher pleasures and lower pleasures; note that pleasure is about happiness.
As is evident, in terms of hedonic value there is no difference between higher pleasures and lower pleasures for both constitute pleasure and therfore are states of happiness. So, inferring the obvious, the distinction between the two must be based on a nonhedonic value; in other words, happiness is not the be all and end all of what is valuable.
Yes, there's happiness associated with both higher pleasures and lower pleasures but John Stuart Mill recommended a preference for the former that doesn't seem to be based on happiness. Quite odd, if you ask me.
This is a recognition that neither happiness nor pleasure is accurately reducible to a linear hierarchy of value. Mill made a roughly dichotomous distinction between individual bodily pleasures and intellectual moral ones, but it’s fair to say that even the supposedly ‘lower’ pleasure derived from eating can be a complex, multi-dimensional structure of relations inclusive of all five senses, timing, atmosphere, as well as social values and potential.
Personally, I think the idea that happiness is potentially a maximum sustainable state in an individual or entity is false and misleading, and contributes to more suffering than happiness, overall. Mill’s understanding of utilitarianism and happiness was, after all, a more broadly universal aim than an individual one.
Do you mean the pleasure of having sex is the same as the pleasure of saving a person's life and if given a choice between them, you'd not have a preference?
I’m not sure how you got that from what I’ve written. That’s not what I mean at all.
The question of whether life serves a purpose is the same as if the universe serves a purpose. To something outside of itself, no it does not. And human beings can't decide what purpose is.
Sorry. My bad. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. :smile:
No problem.
Do we control our emotions and decisions ? or is our whole life based on instinctive reactions and emotions , only the perception of control , but in fact all our emotional states are instinctive to ensure the survival of the species . Even our ability to self destruct and create wars are based in some primeval emotion meant to help us survive in a harsh world . So what is Happiness ?
In other simulations children are a different thing; our godliness, is the beauty of our childbirth.