Good morning folks,
I will be working in Ottawa today.
This is a 10 minute Philosophy Pulp on the Meaning of Life. I apologize now.
Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí is a Czech book that translates to English as either Your dog with the man's name, she weighs not so much? or perhaps more accepted and better known, The Incredible Lightness of Being.
The book disguises itself as a tale of intertwined lovers and art and cultural change with a backdrop of Communist Prague. And there is a dog who's best friend is a pig.
But the book is also an examination of the nature of life and its 'lightness', passing through and experiencing life and its wonders one time.. Life 1.0 Light as appose to the Nietzscheism of time is merely a loop and everything has been done, and will continue to be done and it matters not what you do since you and I will just do it all again. Life Redeux 2.0 Heavy.
I should start again. Several minutes of flight time typing wasted. Damn.
A few evenings ago the subject matter turned to immortality. Not on purpose mind you, it just ended up there with the premise of what was presented as an inevitability of computer development evolution, the virtual environment to serve as an eternal hamster wheel for your transferred consciousness.
Yes, copy your thoughts and memory into a suitable clockwork box and let it run forever.
And then yesterday on Facebook my brother John sent a link to 10 questions that identify your philosophy. He claims to be a Skeptic. I doubt that he is.
Back to Life and its meaning.
In German there is a term, Einmal ist Keinmal, Once is never enough, and the Pythagoreans (defenders of their oh-so-fancy theorem of calculating angled tile cuts) had the concept of Eternal Recurrence and yes, Indian Philosophy also embraces Reincarnation. No doubt to keep it all interesting their chefs came up with spicy food. I can only assume that these are philosophies created in the image of our want. Very few want to die, life is a blast, and so it is no doubt that through the ages many have conjured up ways where we get to stay.
I prefer a evolved view of life, that we pursue the model of getting this right, but not a 'we' as in you and I stuck on a hamster wheel, but we humans. Flesh and blood, laughter, tears, pain, pleasure, logic, beauty, ugliness, art and filth. That my and your descendants or theirs or theirs may eventually get it right. I guess you could say a version of Neoplatonism where the at the top of the abstract class food chain is a pure good, a pure morality where that morality is defined as that utilitarian concept of that which results in the greatest overall happiness. That the goal of life, the meaning of life is to pursue that reaching of oneness with the the pure form good,the pure morality. Okay, maybe that was platonism (lower case p) merged with utilitarianism.
Conveniently I am also unlikely to be stoned or shunned for that philosophy since it is somewhat compatible with Judeo-Christian beliefs, merely substitute the individual goal of binding with God for the group pursuit of attaining pure utilitarian good.
But if we just come up with a way of perpetuating our own consciousness and the have 'life' without the stuff that makes it so damned interesting, what becomes of that pursuit? What then is the meaning of life?
Sounds like a hell to me, a permanent vegetative state.
No thanks.
Have a great day.
