Or, "the tide goes out, and reveals those who are skinny-dipping".
In this context, the crisis--brown-outs; natural disaster; political instability--will show who retains enough knowledge or hard-copy references and resources to survive.
I'd love to hear people compare their system76 laptop to a Macbook, but it's really hard to find recommendations that don't just grade their non-Macbook on a curve just because it's not one.
> Result: we are ruled by the Unstained Incompetent. The system selects for people whose primary skill is avoiding decisions. These are not the people who will reform the system. They are the people the system was designed to produce.
I'm choosing to translate "the system" here as the entrenched bureaucracy that has grown up in the Western world in the last century.
More patriotic leaders have emerged where elections remain meaningful, and those leaders are ruthlessly attacked by "the system".
> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one
Serious, non-troll question: why bother?
If there isn't any scope outside of the current perceived existence, and we're all so much "smart dirt", then the difference between kindness and malevolence seems moot.
Note: I do subscribe to an explicit meaning to life, so this is posed more to express bewilderment at the alternative than reveal any anxiety on my end.
I personally don't think belief in an afterlife should be necessary to believe it's worthwhile to not be shitty to people.
"What goes around comes around" suffices for me.
Call it "ethics", call it "maximizing outcomes for all involved stakeholders", call it "karma", "good business", or "kindness"...whatever you call it, I don't think it's difficult to find your own personal justification for it if you want to.
The universe is meaningless and the world is cursed. Sentient beings are the ones ascribing meaning to the meaningless, uncaring universe. You have only a short amount of time while you can do this. Once life is finished, you just become inert matter.
Curiously enough, I don't think this invites nihilism. The opposite, really. The difference between kindness and malevolence exists because we perceive a difference, and give meaning to actions - they are either kind or malevolent.
If we can give meaning to things, it is imperative that we do so, and act accordingly. It is out little defiance to the great enveloping cosmic nothing.
You seem to assume that you can only have a meaning to life if there is an afterlife.
Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.
You may ask "but what does it matter if we are all dirt". It matters to them, even if there is no godlike perspective above it all. To be honest, I'm not actually sure why having an afterlife or some super-being would create any more explicit meaning for an individual life.
One can make the argument that certain religious practices would help a person realize what OP is feeling all the time about morals, not just in front of their death bed.
Lots of replies here about after life, and just doing the right thing because you're supposed to or "empathy", yet there are a set of people like OP who only observe this when their life is put in front of them for review, maybe they do need religion?
How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
Right, but any identification of the Ultimate Purpose is going to be a very vague bad guess. I kind of like "to learn", but besides that I tend to keep returning to a string bag of mixed values that won't boil down to anything neat.
The reason I don't think Destiny can amount to more than a "very vague bad guess" as an intellectual matter is that such a solution would tamper with Free Will.
When friends and family and acquaintances think of your name after you are gone, will they miss you? Then congratulations, you probably lived a good life and contributed in positive ways to humanity.
I guess the question is: Do you want your time here to have impacted others in a positive way or not?
Short of engaging in equally authoritarian control-freakery? I don't see how.
I'm amused by one package author that I'll leave unnamed who has a list on his site enumerating political parties around the world at one end of the political spectrum and announcing that supporters of these parties are disinvited to use his work.
I'm all: "Dude, get over yourself. Parties ALL suck. Now, do good, and consider investing less time on posturing."
It’s a fine line and there must be a difference, otherwise there won’t be two words.
How the founders relate to adolf is beyond me. OTOH some would argue adolf was being patriotic (mostly these are on the conservative side of life), others say he was a nationalist (these tend to be left spinning), i just say adolf was an evil human being.
One possible distinction is found in that fact that Nationlism is a Procrustean mold to which all must conform, whereas Patriotism still respects individual expression and dissent.
In this context, the crisis--brown-outs; natural disaster; political instability--will show who retains enough knowledge or hard-copy references and resources to survive.
reply