Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Not all heroes wear capes.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

This fight is for everything.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

In my day, never was longer.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Everybody saw this coming.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life

by | 161 Comments

This post is in: 

This is an open thread. But it has a purpose, which is to answer the ultimate question: What is the meaning of life?

I think it’s the connections you make with others, which are ultimately meaningless, as is life itself. That sounds harsher than I intend but is pretty much accurate.

But! Hopefully you have a better answer! Anyhoo — discuss!

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    What is the meaning of life?

    According to Cole it is doing his bidding and answering your emails after he gets locked out of his own site.

  5. 5.

    Liberal With Attitude

    To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

  16. 16.

    Chris

    Also, as long as I’m repeating pop culture quotes about the meaning of life… this is actually a really good one.

    “It’s like nothing I do means anything.”
    “It doesn’t.”
    “Doesn’t what?”
    “Mean anything. In the greater scheme, in the big picture, nothing we do matters. There’s no grand plan, no big win.”
    “You seem kind of chipper about that.”
    “Well, I guess I kind of worked it out. If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. Cause that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought so long for redemption, for a reward, finally, just to beat the other guy. But I never got it.”
    “Now you do?”
    “Not all of it. All I want to do is help. I want to help because I don’t think people should suffer as they do, because if there’s no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.”

  19. 19.

    cokane

    There isn’t a meaning to life. Words have meaning, but actual things don’t. It’s akin to asking “what’s the meaning of my dog?”

  20. 20.

    schrodinger's cat

    According to the Gita, the purpose of life is to escape the endless circle of life and death. You do that by being a निष्काम कर्मयोगी* (nishkam karmayogi), that was Krishna’s advice to Arjuna.

    Loose Translation :One who performs actions without expecting any rewards for it.

  30. 30.

    jl

    I never knew Cracker held the keys to highway for this miserable lefty blog.

    About the new site, seems same as the old site with a slightly different format, and so big effing deal. But I always look at it through an old fashioned ‘puter.

    What I like about it is the categories at the top of the posts. Is that new or did I just not notice it before?
    Anyway, now that I notice it, I’d like a contest between the front posters to put as many categories as possible at the top of their posts. The first one who can fill up two pages of scrolling with just BS categories before the text starts, wins.

    Other than that there are indefinable something or others I just don’t like about the new blog, and I expect Cole to get those fixed asap, or I will be hugely pissed off.

  33. 33.

    Chris

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Indeed.

    @redshirt:

    I was going to say “atheism.” Not that I’m preaching for that viewpoint, but I think it’s one of the more beautiful expressions of it ever put out, and a nice rebuttal to the whole “but if there’s no god then nothing has meaning and you can’t have morals” drumbeat the religious righters are so fond of.

  35. 35.

    Mike in NC

    Just getting the first ads from JEBzzz Super PAC here. Promising that tax cuts will result in “explosive job growth”.

    Simply amazed that no other GOP asshole ever came up with that idea before.

  37. 37.

    benw

    I think it’s the connections you make with others, which are ultimately meaningless, as is life itself.

    I suppose it depends on how you assign meaning. If by “ultimate meaning” you’re referring to some kind of universal or eternal scale, then yeah, we all have a Total Perspective Vortex problem. But the Vortex is supposed to teach us that having a universal perspective is madness. So I try to define meaning locally. Within my local sphere of influence, if I can have a positive effect on those around me, my life has meaning.

  42. 42.

    srv

    At the 1998 commencement for Andrews University, a school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Carson also dismissed the notion that aliens were somehow involved in the construction of the pyramids.

    “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”

    He can have Iowa and Egypt.

  43. 43.

    sdhays

    I just want to say that, bumps and hiccups aside, I have noticed that since the redesign went live, this site loads significantly faster for me on my phone and in my desktop browser. It’s much appreciated! :-)

  45. 45.

    Felonius Monk

    @srv: Maybe we can rename the Pyramids — call them Carson Silos. I’m sure that will please the Pharaohs.

  50. 50.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Bertrand Russell’s page a Stanford:

    Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

    I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.

    With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

    Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

    This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. (1967, 3–4)

    Sounds pretty good to me.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    Cervantes

    @Politically Lost:

    Suffer as life is nasty, brutish, and short

    When Hobbes in Leviathan said that “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he was talking about living without government. What he thus justified was government — more specifically, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil.

  52. 52.

    LeonS

    @cokane: Hear hear. I think asking for meaning in life can be arrogant. You won a lottery with odds that make a state lottery look like a sure thing by having a planet with any life at all, coming into existence on it, and being a creature that evolved a functioning consciousness on top of all that… and that isn’t enough? Now we need meaning too? Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cervantes: I managed to leave out a word: Thank you so much for putting me back in that seminar with Minoo Adenwalla.

    Flashbacks to an undergraduate degree in government. “Political Thought: From Hobbes to Marx”

  61. 61.

    Tommy Young

    @NotMax: Yes. Huge Coen Brother’s fan, and I know they are not involved directly, but had to start watching last year. I though last year was flat out wonderful. This year, not so much. I just can’t seem to “get into it.”

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    I thought that the meaning of life is that people don’t wear enough hats.

    I have had better days.

  69. 69.

    Cervantes

    @redshirt:

    No one’s comments are uniformly sublime or uniformly atrocious. I just meant that yours are quite recognizable.

    I’m out. Have a good evening.

  71. 71.

    Tommy Young

    In a very real desire to talk about anything other than a web site …..

    My favorite new show of the year, by far, is American Horror Story. Anybody else watching? When I read Lady Gaga was going to be on everybody figured, since the show is set in a hotel, she would be like a lounge singer. You could argue she is actually the main character and she has not sung a single note. I might only know a few songs by her, but almost hard to be online and not know something about her and I kind of like she is a flipping free spirit and does whatever she wants.

    And I’d say she has an acting career in front of her if she wants it because I find her acting pretty good and there is something about her, can’t put my finger on it, but she is almost hypnotizing on screen.

    Oh and if I had a check for a few thousand dollars in my hand and was heading to LA, I’d rather stay in the turn of the century Art Deco hotel more than a super modern one. The set for the hotel in the show is stunning.

    Anybody else watching it?

  72. 72.

    groucho48

    “The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
    ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @Tommy Young

    It’s lacking the charm of last season and just a tad over the top with camera gimmickry, but still very watchable.

    Am especially impressed with Jean Smart (Mama Gerhardt), who would never have expected to play a villainous dramatic role so ably.

  76. 76.

    Cervantes

    @Suzanne:

    I have had better days.

    That’s good, in a way. (Imagine not having had any.)

    Anyhow, the sun will come out, tomorrow …

  77. 77.

    Mike J

    @Sarah, Proud and Tall:

    Can someone tell me where they left the keys to the blog?

    There’s a big bowl by the front door everyone is putting their keys in. If you aren’t careful, at the end of the night you could wind up posting at Breitbart.

  79. 79.

    Tommy Young

    @NotMax: Lacking the charm is I think a good way to put it. There are parts of it I like. I also can handle a story that builds slowly and doesn’t try to run 100 MPH every second so I am not giving up on it. I am just a huge Coen Brother’s fan and IMHO it is so ambitious to attempt a 10 episode TV show, then another one that can play to how they make movies. The quirky characters. Amazing dialog. Interesting if not totally off-the-wall story. I think it would be close to impossible to pull off, but they are sure doing a pretty good job and glad they are trying if nothing else.

  87. 87.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I don’t mind a short, bald man. The little ones are usually packing in the pants department and baldness means they don’t shed on the carpet. It’s all good.

  92. 92.

    Elie

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    ” the longing for love, the giving of love, nurturance of any spark of creativity, the search for knowledge, and as importantly wisdom and empathy for the suffering and life force of all creatures and mankind.”

    I tweaked your thoughts to express mine.

    I truly believe that no energy, no love, no matter what form — is ever lost from the universe

  94. 94.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @dmsilev: I knew I was going to be late with the obvious answer.

    Scotch and sport sex is as good as any. Of course I’m still babbling 2 threads down, so what do I know.

  97. 97.

    Tommy Young

    @Sarah, Proud and Tall: Hi right back at yeah. You should be able to get in now. Worse case, and I don’t recall your role within WordPress, do you have the black WordPress bar across the top of the page? If you can’t get in at the /wp-admin try the toolbar.

  103. 103.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Tommy Young:

    I’m the resident crazy lady. I post about music and rant a bit every now and then and tell stories about the time I caught Truman Capote giving Gore Vidal a blowjob on the Staten Island Ferry. I’m in the contact authors thing … (checks contact authors thing) Yep. Cole will vouch for me.

    do you have the black WordPress bar across the top of the page? If you can’t get in at the /wp-admin try the toolbar.

    I’m 92, dear. You may have to do this in words of one syllable. I don’t have a black wordpress bar, unfortunately, and the rest of that sentence made me need a drink very badly. I used to click on a link on the sidebar that said (I may be paraphrasing here) “log into blog to post stuff here”. That seems to be missing.

  104. 104.

    CaseyL

    I don’t think life has a meaning beyond the living of it. Maybe there’s some “meaningfulness” in accepting one’s mortality, which is easier in theory than practice.

    As Peale said, purpose is simpler.

    I missed most of the excitement when all the Front Pagers except Betty C. were unable to post. This redesign is turning out to be a lot of fun; we never know what’s going to happen next! Maybe posts by our front pagers’ critters! It’s time The Voice of the Chickens was heard across the land!

  112. 112.

    srv

    Wondering whether Trump’s Jeb/Swastika tweet is an attempt to troll Daddy out. Then Trump can bring up dear old Prescott.

    Perhaps Sarah could chime in with her Harriman pals?

  122. 122.

    srv

    Ruh-roh:

    Prescott Bush was politically active on social issues. He was involved with the American Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first national capital campaign of Planned Parenthood in 1947.

    Pro-nazi AND pro-baby killer!

  129. 129.

    srv

    Hawaiian neo-Confederates?

    Native Hawaiians could soon have their own government, independent of the United States. Today, polls open for a 30-day voting period during which Native Hawaiians will have the opportunity to elect delegates who will create that government. The delegates will then meet for eight weeks this winter to draft a constitution that—if ratified by the people—will guide them toward self-governance, deciding everything from the structure to how it will interact with folks in Washington, D.C. The 122,000+ Native Hawaiians registered with the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission are currently the only indigenous group in the U.S. that lacks an independent political structure.

  131. 131.

    Tommy Young

    @BillinGlendaleCA: @NotMax:

    Yeah I figured through the years I had to link to one at least a few times. I got over the “short” thing many, many years ago. The only time I even think if it is when I am in someplace like World Market and I have to ask somebody for help to get something from the top shelf. Oh that and I have never bought a pair of pants/jeans that I didn’t have to have altered. That actually kind of sucks.

    Other than that I rarely if ever even think about it.

  134. 134.

    redshirt

    @Tommy Young:

    Yeah I figured through the years I had to link to one at least a few times. I got over the “short” thing many, many years ago. The only time I even think if it is when I am in someplace like World Market and I have to ask somebody for help to get something from the top shelf. Oh that and I have never bought a pair of pants/jeans that I didn’t have to have altered. That actually kind of sucks.

    Other than that I rarely if ever even think about it.

    What is the World Market?

    It sounds big.

  135. 135.

    Tommy Young

    @redshirt: Hard to explain. Mostly household items like dishes. Also beer and wine. Lots of patio furniture. But they have this amazing dried food section where about half of what they sell isn’t even in English. Stuff in the rural area I can’t get anyplace else because I don’t have something like a Fresh Fields. About half of my food budget is spent there. Dozens of different rices. It is just flat out wonderful.

  137. 137.

    redshirt

    @Tommy Young:

    Hard to explain. Mostly household items like dishes. Also beer and wine. Lots of patio furniture. But they have this amazing dried food section where about half of what they sell isn’t even in English. Stuff in the rural area I can’t get anyplace else because I don’t have something like a Fresh Fields. About half of my food budget is spent there. Dozens of different rices. It is just flat out wonderful.

    That sounds wonderful. I would so love to have a reliable source of hot peppers of all types.

  138. 138.

    eemom

    I have never bought a pair of pants/jeans that I didn’t have to have altered.

    You mean they don’t have Petite sizes for guys? That sucks.

  141. 141.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: Spousal Unit is five foot nine, but his limbs are proportionately short. Best-fitted suit he’s ever had came from a men’s store in an area that served a large Cambodian / Vietnamese immigrant population — they stocked garments designed for vertically challenged gentlemen, and the tailors doing alterations didn’t just hack off the hems & hope for the best.

    He doesn’t wear suits much — nor, I suspect, do you — but if the necessity arises, taking advice around the local version of Koreatown might be useful.

  142. 142.

    Anne Laurie

    As to the question at the top of the thread: Every being — animals, plants, significant rocks, bodies of water — strives.

    Everything is interconnected.

    Nothing can stay the same, but then again, nothing ever disappears completely.

    That’s the best I can do for a short explanation of my version of animism, which has served me well for going on sixty years…

  146. 146.

    Anne Laurie

    @WereBear: Nothing as striving as kittens! They insist on being interconnected, whether you like them in your knitting/laundry/kitchen or not. They change every day, and yet they are always exactly themselves…

  148. 148.

    Pseudonymous Bosch

    Posting late to the thread, but: I am an existentialist — which is to say that the meaning of life is in the living.

  151. 151.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @satby: I’ve got a lot of his stuff. He could write so clearly and persuasively. But he had his foibles, too, as we all do – he was a product of his times while at the same time he was timeless.

    Principia:

    From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1 + 1 = 2. […] The above proposition is occasionally useful.

    :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @srv: Prescott? Dude, George and Barbara Bush were active in Planned Parenthood. I’m pretty sure George’s conversion to womb-farmerism was 100% political expediency.

  153. 153.

    jake the antisoshul soshulist

    Meaning hell, we can’t even agree on a definition. Meaning would require that there would be something other than random cosmological events behind the universe. And I am not willing to look into that abyss, much less jump into it.

    Purpose, I agree with Kubrick that everyone has to find their own.

  155. 155.

    Cervantes

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The above proposition is occasionally useful.

    Similarly, when Willard Quine sent him a copy of his wonderful paper, “What There Is,” he confirmed in response that it dealt with “a somewhat important subject.”

    But he had his foibles, too, as we all do

    We were friends and worked together from time to time but I’d have to agree that he treated some of his intimates quite roughly. Alys, his first wife, in particular, was betrayed; and she later said, quite heart-breakingly, that she was “neither wise nor courageous enough to prevent this one disaster from shattering [her] capacity for happiness and [her] zest for life.”

    It is instructive to remember that we are all human, with all that being human entails.

  157. 157.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Cervantes: Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it.

    A friend in California sent me a little pamphlet that Bertie produced in the Pugwash days. It must have been quite something to be able to talk with him personally about issues of the day, philosophy, etc.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  159. 159.

    Yog-Sothoth

    @Suzanne:

    From The Meaning of Life:

    Exec #1: Item six on the agenda: “The Meaning of Life” Now uh, Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.

    Exec #2: Yeah, I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: People aren’t wearing enough hats. Two: Matter is energy. In the universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this “soul” does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.

    Exec #3: What was that about hats again?

    Exec #2: Oh, Uh… people aren’t wearing enough.

    Exec #1: Is this true?

    Exec #4: Certainly. Hat sales have increased but not pari passu, as our research…

    Exec #3: [Interrupting] “Not wearing enough”? enough for what purpose?

    Exec #5: Can I just ask, with reference to your second point, when you say souls don’t develop because people become distracted…

    [looking out window]

    Exec #5: Has anyone noticed that building there before?

  160. 160.

    lhradford

    There was a man, standing on a riverbank. A ferry came along. He got on the ferry. He met the captain and crew. They sailed across the river. When they got to the other side, the man got off the ferry. He looked around and the captain and crew had disappeared. The ferry disappeared. The river disappeared. He looked down and he was standing where he was when he started.

    Only, this time, he knew where he was.

    The riverbank is where you were before you were born. The river is the river of life. The ferry is the body you use to cross the river. The captain and crew are the teachers and people you meet along life’s journey. Getting to the other side of the river is when you die. The river and the people and the ferry disappear. You will be back to where you were before you were born.

    Only, this time, if the journey was successful, you will know where you are.

    The purpose of life is to gain the knowledge of where you are… where you have always been. (aka “enlightenment”)

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