Elisa's Blog
Friday, December 02, 2005
 
Hmm....when the holiday season comes, I tend to wax philosophical.

Yesterday I was reading a book, when it suddenly occured to me, you know the age old question: "Why are we here?", "What is our purpose in life?", etc. etc. that has been answered, throughout the ages, depending on religion, country and culture, with various and sundry answers such as:

A: "To do what God's will is." (religious fanaticism approach)
B: "To experience life's pleasures." (hedonistic approach)
C: "Who knows?" (clueless approach)

D: "Who cares? Figure it out for yourself!" (existentialist approach)
E: "It doesn't matter." (nihilistic approach)
F: "Whomever dies with the most toys wins." (80's approach)
G: "To help the needy and underpriviledged." (liberal, peace-corps granola approach)
H: "To become immortal via win the Nobel prize/write the niftiest play/invent the coolest microchip." (delusions of grandeur approach)
I: "To be happy." (illusionary approach)
J: "To spread our genes." (scientific approach)

K: "To spread our memes." (sociological approach)
L: "Life is short and the question complicated." (sophistic approach)

etc. etc. etc?

Well, you know what comes next, right? I get to inflict upon the unfortunate reader my answer of the moment. Cool huh? (Blogger privilege. Are you jealous? ;P).

Yesterday I thought: "Perhaps the whole point in life is to bring to this world children that are truly loved, and nothing more."

(And the cool thing is, they don't even have to be your own children)

Comments:
Nice summary. Your answer, let's call it M, could possibly be an amalgam of J and K.

Maybe the point is being able to ask the age old questions themselves.

Perhaps this would fall under sundry answers C, D, and E: a clueless, existentially nihilistic approach, although without the indifference or ambivalence. How's that for sophism? :)
 
:) Me like! ;)
 
I'm so glad you didn't say "Happy". Sometimes loving them doesn't make them happy in the moment. For instance when I told my college freshman daughter this weekend that if she didn't have the ability to pay her own cell phone bill by the end of January, the phone would come home. Hopefully she will begin looking for a job and quit sleeping her life away between classes.
 
:) Heh. Yep.

Ilya: Though my comment (call it M ;)) does have some elements of J and K, the point I wanted to make was not so much the bringing the children to the world (someone else can easily do it for you, in fact, so it is not a necessary life mission, you know), but to make sure that the kids that are in the world are loved: in the truest, most devoted, and pure sense of the word. How else can we expect to make the future of the world we live in better?
 
Elisa: I wholeheartedly agree that all children should be raised with the utmost love and devotion by whomever their caregiver(s) may be. I'd love (not used in its purest sense :-) to live in a world where this is the case already. You know, even in that world, there is no guarantee that the kids who grew up being loved will have the capability to love, although the odds are much in their favor. This brings me to my next point.

Forgive me for being a stickler here; I hate to take the discussion away from love and children, but to your original thought, this leaves all those said people who aren't suited for giving love, whether by circumstance or just their personality. For the ones that are just incapable or inept at loving, whether or not they can reproduce, what is their purpose or mission in life?

Taking a step back, this would at least imply that there is no one purpose for all individuals alike.

Wrapping back around, I'd like to tie this to another post of yours. There was the question of the supposed One who can love all, in the truest, most devoted, and pure sense of the word. Except if He decides he doesn't like us, what then? I guess some people feel that way about their kids, too. What a shame.
 
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