What Gives Life Meaning?
Friday, January 15 • 05:34 AM
We create a correlation between almost everything all
the time. We ascribe emotion to almost everything - a
primitive form of altruism. Every attachment to
emotion we create is rooted in our experience.
Because our experiences are heavily influenced by
society and our environments, we have similar
attachments. This similarity allows us to relate,
communicate, and understand each other. Why we have
these attachments is also left to the biologists,
psychologists, and other philosophers (at least for
now). What we know is our minds take experiences
(based on and influenced by environment and society)
and create attachments to emotion. Likewise our minds
also ascribe meaning with emotion. This can help to
explain what gives life meaning.
When we break life down to the very basic even primitive form, meaning comes in the form of survival. To simply be alive gives meaning to life. I would argue that at the moment of birth our only meaning of life, is to be alive. That is our only goal, that is all that we know. However, as we live this changes and throughout our lives what gives life meaning changes. We take our first experience, being alive, attach it to a positive emotion and that emotion gives us meaning. Perhaps as we grow in those first few hours, the second need we have is physical attachment. As we experience being close to someone we attach that experience also to a positive emotion which expands our life’s meaning. From that point onward, we attach emotions to experience and dependent on how strong those emotions and experiences are determines what gives life meaning.
Everything that we know comes from our experiences. Experiences are attached to emotions. Some experiences and emotions are stronger or weaker than others. The strength is all based on other experiences/emotions. It is a very complex web of cause and effect with a little bit of chance thrown in. Because we all have different experiences, what gives us meaning varies. Because our experiences are similar we have similar meanings. It should then be no surprise that people take what they consider to be the most important aspect in their life - let’s say religion - and in similar social circles have similar beliefs.
Ultimately meaning is dependent on experience which is dependent on environmental and social affects. What gives life meaning is different for each person. Luckily for us we have the capacity to influence our own experiences and the aftereffects and in that way we have the ability to influence what gives life meaning. With this knowledge we can move forward confident that we give our own life meaning - or at least we’re capable of giving our own life meaning if we only exercise that ability.
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When we break life down to the very basic even primitive form, meaning comes in the form of survival. To simply be alive gives meaning to life. I would argue that at the moment of birth our only meaning of life, is to be alive. That is our only goal, that is all that we know. However, as we live this changes and throughout our lives what gives life meaning changes. We take our first experience, being alive, attach it to a positive emotion and that emotion gives us meaning. Perhaps as we grow in those first few hours, the second need we have is physical attachment. As we experience being close to someone we attach that experience also to a positive emotion which expands our life’s meaning. From that point onward, we attach emotions to experience and dependent on how strong those emotions and experiences are determines what gives life meaning.
Everything that we know comes from our experiences. Experiences are attached to emotions. Some experiences and emotions are stronger or weaker than others. The strength is all based on other experiences/emotions. It is a very complex web of cause and effect with a little bit of chance thrown in. Because we all have different experiences, what gives us meaning varies. Because our experiences are similar we have similar meanings. It should then be no surprise that people take what they consider to be the most important aspect in their life - let’s say religion - and in similar social circles have similar beliefs.
Ultimately meaning is dependent on experience which is dependent on environmental and social affects. What gives life meaning is different for each person. Luckily for us we have the capacity to influence our own experiences and the aftereffects and in that way we have the ability to influence what gives life meaning. With this knowledge we can move forward confident that we give our own life meaning - or at least we’re capable of giving our own life meaning if we only exercise that ability.
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