h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Quite. A lot of youth culture is focussed on fitting in and being for all intents and purposes exactly the same as your friends. Depends whcih group in fact. For example.

Your island doesn't really exist, but neither do circles. There is no such thing as a perfect circle, right? So technically they don't exist, except in our minds as a concept. Your island's the same way, it exists as a concept now that you've thought of it, but it isn't actually there per say. I think the meaning of life is a personal thing. I mean, the meaning of life for me probably isn't the same as the meaning of life for you. Everybody's different, so how bogus would it be to have us all have the same meaning?

I've never got the perfect circle thingy. I mean, say you took a really, really wide marker pen, and carefully drew a circle. A perfect circle would be somewhere within the thick line which you've drawn, if you see what I mean.
And besides that, the circle which you'd end up with is as close to physically perfect as you can translate the image in your brain; so what's the difference?

Perfect is boring. If something is flawless, it just isn't interesting. "yeah, right that is just as it's supposed to be. Now I've seen it, let's move on'.
Imperfection is better. We get excited about it...

Does a 'perfect' anything even exist? Yes, I agree perfect would be boring.

az

Do you mean perfect objectively, or subjectively?
The difference being, that if something is without a flaw as we can see, it is perfect. There might be a flaw, but we have no way of knowing that. Objectively perfect is that there is no flaw, nore will there ever be one. This might be possible, but I can't tell the difference between this and something subjectively perfect...

Really I think that things can only be 'subjectively perfect'. As you said yourself, how can we know that there isn't a flaw somewhere?

az

Just so no one (as if) gets worried about my imminent death...
My fascistic and naughty parents have pioneered an evil scheme to ban me from the internet for a while. So, so long until then. Tune in, link up, drop out.

OK, how can we know if there's a flaw... Question is, is that relevant?
Given that we cannot tell between something being perfect and something being imperfect, but we can't tell (right now).
Even if we can't tell it is perfect (we have no way of being certain), something can in fact be perfect. The same goes for the opposite: even though we think it is perfect, it might turn out later (or not) that it isn't.
Here we are not talking about perception, but state. The fact that our perception doesn't allow us to determine between different states, doesn't mean those different states do not exist.

Seems logical enough, but let's see what you make of it...

having wandered through life for seventy years I have discovered to my great pleasure that life has absolutely no meaning at all. None whatsoever. zilch. pointless....but GREAT FUN

Ah, another existentialist, of a sort.

I would say that existentialism was centered more around the tenet that there is no human nature. Or we have to make our own one, at least. It is possible to believe that life has no meaning and not be an existentialist.

Are you studying existentialism? I saw existentialism everywhere when I was studying it, much like the Communist witch-hunt in America only with existentialists and more sympathy for the hunted.

I wish. No, my tutors stick rigidly to the syllabus and exam technique, deflecting all protests with a well-aimed insult. B*st*rds.

A short lecture Jean-Paul Sartre gave was "Existentialism and Humanism", it's about sixty pages. If you're interested, read that, unless you have already. It was meant to be a lecture to back-up what he'd already said so if you find yourself shaking your head at the lack of satisfactory arguments, that's because they're all in Being and Nothingness.

Or try Kierkegaard.

Perhaps "to just live" can be a sufficient answer.

I do have one question as well:
Why is knowing all that important? Or is this wondering just something to have fun with and to do something when you are bored?

Philosophy was considered being suppressed as a bourgeois activity in many Communist countries, because as Aldegard says, it was "just something to have fun with and to do something when you are bored?" -- not strictly essential.

But philosophy has come up with many useful things in the past, hasn't it? I can't think of any specific examples off hand, but many things start off as philosophy and then spin off into their own realm once they are verified, often physics or neurochemistry. Methinks.

I quite agree. Ironic, that from Hegelian philosphy Communism was sprung which later would try to suppress it.

Philosophers are also multi-discipline, and doing philosophy, if nothing else, trains the mind for other, perhaps more practically inclined subjects.

Just to give you somethimg I saw when I didn't know what to do in my life:"Phylosophers are those who don't know what it is between earth and sky and their doings are something compared to slaping one common and a really good time having load and snowball of shit."

The meaning of life is survive and within this survival do your best (be the fittest (physically, emotionally and mentally) you can be) and as a result of this status be happy and don't take anything for granted around you. Finding a soul mate would be nice too....but I am starting to think this does not exist.

42? What you on about. I mean I am sure some people get to 42 and figure it out but I am sure there are many who don't and what about the ones who don't even make it to 42.