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

So much time is wasted in our lives, as we try to understand just what it is we are here for. There are those who turn to religion, a noble cause, but not all embracing enough for some of us.
Then there are those who dedicate themselves to the manufacturing of small green peices of paper. It is questionalbe as to whether or not it qualifies as noble. Then there are the rest of us, who spend our lives asking the ultimate question. You say we can not face the truth, however the truth may not be obvious to most of us. We are then told to search within, but all we find there is disappointment. We are expecting something on a par with Walt Disney, and we see an empty playground with swings and slides.
So is the only sense in life for all of us, moving through it to the other side?. Death?. Life, a pause before death. If this is the truth, and it may be closer than anything else ever written on the subject, then why do we bother at all?
Is it healthy to be armed with this knowledge, that at the end of the rainbow, there is no pot of gold?
Isn't this the stuff that suicides are made of?
Can we not be fooled into believeing that the reason we are here at all, is to be purely selfish, but at the same time enrichen other human beings lives.
Yes, I agree, this sounds like something we might have expected from Mary Poppins, the spoonful of sugar syndrome.
But I have tested my theory, after a few hours of psycho-therapy, when I went out on the street and smiled and said hello to everyone I met.
Most of them ignored me, thinking I must be in need of a lot more therapy, but a few people responded. If I had achieved nothing more than making someone feel that warm fuzzy feeling, then I am content to disappear from the face of this earth right now.
Is it important to know why we are here, and what this means to us, or is it not better to move on from the idea that we are here for no other reason than to just be here, that there is no reason, except to work towards dealing with this mass "being here" symptom that we are all experiencing at the moment, and finding better ways of dealing with it than simply shrugging our shoulders and resigning ourselves to the fact.
I for one believe that Douglas Adams was promoting that concept, and I was the woman who begot the answer just before the Vogons attacked.

I get a deja vu feeling while reading your philosophical comments. I found a great deal of comfort in the writings of Richard Dawkins. In his book 'The Selfish Gene' he extends the concept of Darwinian evolution. My philosphy is now that we are here because we are here so we might as well enjoy it. This is a dangerous area for the mind and I am thankful for the words DONT PANIC which I have scrawled on the back of my organiser.

So you feel like the woman who came up with the Meaning of Life. I've felt like this too but I have to say I'm on medication. I empathise with what you say. I hope you reply to this. You see I felt like a lost soul when I thought like this and if the same is happening to you I might be able to help.

and, as the writings had suggested, there was a vast amount of emptiness and nothingness except, of course, dark matter. and, as the writings had suggested, it would remain itself for a timeless time. then suddenly, in the absence of a waiting period, there was and would be an immense explosion, also known as a bang, where dark matter gave rise to light matter and light matter, by chance, gave birth to grey matter. and it was never to be understood by the those possessing the grey matter, the nature of things.

and let us never forget the immortal words of socrates who said "i drank what?"

- enigmaniacs

Hi there enigmatics.

Very profound. You will be getting an entry on my home page in the philosopher's Hall of Fame

greetings mark rest and thank you. i will add a link to your homepage from mine. although, i must tell you that i used to spend a lot of time with conceptual thinking about life, the universe and everything until, one day, i found myself dangling from a psychological cliff just north of the depths of insanity.

i realize that one can never turn his or her abstract train of thought off. however, one can and must find a happy medium in which to exist.

what are your thoughts on this?

I think we are here because we are here. If I'm right then we might as well just enjoy what we have

i agree. and appreciate what is around us. you know earth is a beautiful planet once you get through the smog.

Another way of putting is that there is no answer to the qusetion about Life, The Universe and Everthing.

No answer? But of course there's an answer; the answer is 42. Okay, we don't know what it means yet (mayhaps Mr Adams knows?), but as a species we are working towards a more understandable translation of The Answer. Perhaps where we are going wrong is in trying to translate 42 into something we understand, instead of translating what we understand to align with 42.