Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

Why do we exist? (I attempt an answer)

Yesterday I got this message from someone. Just curious, perhaps it would be an idea to make a topic with the title: Why do we exist? I am convinced that we have no free will at all and life seems so useless...(to me). Since I enjoy challenges, I said that I'd attempt a blog post on this subject, though I don't have any firm answer to the question.  So here goes. I'll be sort of rambling in my response, given that quite a few different ideas have been meandering through my brain as I thought about the message at various…
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Posted inMeaning of life Reality

Sam Harris praises reason as the only game in town for strangers to play

Near the end of Sam Harris' conversation with André Duqum, which I've written about here and here, Harris praised reason in a way that deeply resonated with me. One reason I liked the praise of reason is that it's a vitally important human capacity that too often is taken for granted. It's the foundation of every well-functioning society and organization, from the smallest to the largest. Yet too often we only notice the importance of reason when it's missing. As in religious dogma. As in political posturing. As in pronouncements of authoritarians. As in attempts to ban books and decry…
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Posted inMeaning of life Miscellaneous

Great speech on speaking the truth about ourselves

This evening I was all set to write about a different subject. Then while eating dinner, I watched an episode of a streaming series that I've become addicted to. I'm on season 4 of the seven seasons, having belatedly discovered this show. Which is going to remain nameless, because I don't enjoy having plot twists revealed in a series that I'm watching, and I don't want to run the risk that I'll do the same to someone else.  Good actors with good scripts can convey messages about life that are deeply moving. I was hoping to be able to share…
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Posted inMeaning of life

Reflecting on life is different from directly experiencing life

As much as I've enjoyed exploring various approaches to religion, mysticism, philosophy, and spirituality during most of my 74 years of living (hey, I learned to read at a young age, and even comic books contain implicit philosophy), sometimes I feel that it's time to end my searching and simply attend to the life that's easy to find, because it's right in front of me. Recently I got back to Question Everything, the book of essays from the New York Times philosophy series. The first essay I read was both philosophical and anti-philosophical, Phillip S. Garrity's "Gratitude: In Sickness and…
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Posted inMeaning of life

We make our own purpose, not God, not the universe

Without a purpose, life is barely worth living. That's one sign of depression: when nothing seems to matter and our existence seems meaningless. But where does purpose come from? Religious people typically say "God." They believe that God has a plan for us and we just need to let it unfold, trusting in the Almighty. People who strongly embrace a particular culture or nationality may feel that their purpose is to live in accord with the tenets of their society. And as Joseph Carter says in an essay I read today in Question Everything: Essays from the New York Times…
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Posted inMeaning of life

Is it necessary to make our life into a narrative, a story?

As I noted a few days ago in "Are you endurant or transient? Me, I feel like I'm a bit of both", there was more to say about this distinction between people who feel a sense of continuity about themselves during their lifetime (endurants) and people who feel that they're being constituted anew as their life unfolds (transients). Part of that additional saying relates to what Galen Strawson, whose book ("Things That Bother Me") is where I'm getting these ideas, calls a narrative approach to one's life. Meaning, we not only recall events in our life, but make a story out…
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Posted inAtheism Meaning of life

“It had to be” — a great four-word secular philosophy

At my age, 74, it gets more common to have worries pop up in my life that are different from younger person concerns. Health problems, for example. They occur at any age, but when you're young, things that are wrong with you tend to get better. However, the older we get, the more likely we have to deal with chronic problems, things that aren't going to go away.  Best we can do is manage them so they're annoyances, not major obstacles to living an enjoyable life. I find that when I have a doctor appointment scheduled where I'm not sure…
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Posted inMeaning of life

“Soul,” the animated movie, has good lessons for living

Tonight my wife and I watched "Soul" while we ate our usual vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner: Trader Joe's Breaded Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast With Gravy, mashed potatoes, salad, homemade apple pie with wholewheat crust. That's a soulful meal for us. No animals were harmed in its making. Well, our dog begged while we were eating, and she didn't get anything, so I guess we hurt Mooka's feelings. She'll recover. Soul had arrived as a DVD from Netflix months ago. We rarely watch DVDs now that we've escaped the clutches of oh-so-slow CenturyLink DSL and embraced Space X's Starlink satellite internet. But it…
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Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m a human being having a human experience. How about you?

During my religious believing days -- well, 35 years actually -- I'd frequently hear people talk about "We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience." That quote came from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. So it isn't surprising that he'd have such a dualistic attitude, with our bodily existence as humans just being a step on the way toward a supernatural experience as a spiritual being. But early on in my churchless evolution, I realized that it makes no sense to view myself in that way. So if…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Hope is the secular equivalent of religious faith

I've finished Kieran Setiya's book, Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. As might be expected, Setiya doesn't conclude that's there some magical bit of philosophy that can be sprinkled over his first six chapter titles -- Infirmity, Loneliness, Grief, Failure, Injustice, Absurdiy -- and renders those manifestations of life's hardness harmless, or at least bearable. The best Setiya can come up with is Hope, the title of his concluding chapter. He warms up to that topic in the Absurdity chapter. Thus the existentialists were wrong: reason may dictate a total reaction to the world, and that…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Unconditional friendship explains a lot in politics and religion

I'm continuing to enjoy Kieran Setiya's book, "Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way." Every chapter offers up fresh insights into issues that only a skilled philosopher who is dedicated to making philosophy a practical guide for everyday life could come up with. In the Loneliness chapter, Setiya speaks about friendship. As he did in other chapters, Setiya starts with Aristotle, then picks apart Aristotle's perspective, showing where it is lacking. As you can read below, Setiya disagrees with Aristotle's contention that when a friend loses the qualities that make him or her lovable, the friend…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Don’t protest that something should not be, or it is for the best

I've read a lot of books in my seven decades or so of avid reading. What I've learned is that sometimes a book is worth reading for a single memorable thought that sticks in the mind long after the rest of the book has been forgotten. I feel this happening with a sentence that keeps popping up in my psyche several days after I came across it in "Life is Hard," by Kieran Setiya, a philosopher who teaches at MIT. I've boldfaced the sentence below, placing it in the context of where it appears in Setiya's book. Here it is…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

My new favorite book: “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way”

I've read countless (more or less) religious, spiritual, mystical, philosophical, and self-help books that basically take an optimistic approach to life. Yes, life is difficult, as the Buddha said. But those books say that it's possible to turn suffering into well- being through a myriad of suggested ways, many of them contradictory. Believe in God. Meditate. Find your true self. Flow with whatever happens. Have a positive attitude. Nothing wrong with all that. Except when it is. Yesterday Amazon delivered into my eagerly awaiting hands a book that Sam Harris recommended on Twitter: "Life is Hard," by Kieran Setiya, a…
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Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris answers “What makes life worth living?”

I came across a tweet by Sam Harris that was a (mildly) animated GIF with Harris' narrated words scrolling at the bottom.  He asks a good question. Whether you think his answer is New Age bullshit, ancient spiritual wisdom, or something in-between is another good question. What makes life worth living? This is an important question, probably the most important question, because if we don't know, then we can't prioritize what we actually value. We tend to live as if we've answered this question for ourselves. But most of the time we're just doing one thing after the next, following…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

“May I be free of fear” — my addition to loving kindness meditation

For quite a while, maybe five years, I've been repeating a form of loving kindness meditation that I learned from listening to Tamara Levitt's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. It starts like this. Then "I" is replaced by "you," someone I care about (usually my wife), followed by "all" replacing "you." May I be happy.May I be safe.May I be healthy.May I be at peace. Recently I've added a fifth sentiment. May I be free of fear. When I do the "all" thing, previously I envisioned the entire world, as if I was floating in space and casting…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

What do you find inspiring about Ukrainians?

I'm curious. While I realize that most of the people who visit this blog aren't as obsessed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine as I am -- I check my Twitter feed for recent news about Ukraine many times a day -- likely everybody is at least somewhat familiar with how bravely the Ukrainian people are fighting against this unprovoked war by Vladimir Putin. So I'm interested in learning how you feel about what's happening in Ukraine. Note, feel. I stress that word because while I do a lot of thinking about Ukraine, all those thoughts aren't nearly as important…
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Posted inFree will Meaning of life

Free will is part of the human mind, not the universe

Free will as people almost always understand it is an illusion. There's little or no doubt about that, as I noted in a recent post.  Here's an idea that is well worth pondering. I've enjoyed doing just that as I go to sleep, letting my mind wrap itself around an intriguing notion. So far as we know, we humans are the only entity in the universe that doesn't exist in full accord with determinism -- causes and effects operating in a lawful, orderly manner. Oh, but what about randomness? Sure, randomness is real. Every programmer knows about random number generators.…
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Posted inBuddhism Meaning of life

U.G. Krishnamurti and Zen have quite a bit in common

As noted a few days ago, I'm taking another look at U.G. Krishnamurti through his book, "Mind Is a Myth." I read a few pages every morning, along with a Zen book by Shunryu Suzuki I'm re-reading, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" -- the title of which shows that Krishnamurti and Zen aren't totally in sync.  But there's definitely some commonalities.  They both can be outrageous.They both aren't afraid to defy conventional ways of thinking.They both focus on the physical world.They both have no interest in supernatural fantasies.They both advise to live in the present moment. Zen, at least in its…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

Always trying to improve yourself is foolish

This morning I meditated, as I always do. Via my iPhone I also listened to a Buddhist speak about Buddhist teachings, as I sometimes do.  What surprised me, sort of, is that afterwards I felt somewhat worse. It was as if trying to improve myself led to me feeling like I'd temporarily gone backward on the improvement front.  As soon as I went back to simply living my life -- having lunch, going grocery shopping, listening to CNN and MSNBC as I drove around in my car -- my mood improved. For quite a while I've been toying with the…
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