October 10, 2005
The Purpose of Life
Someone asked me recently if the purpose of life was the pursuit of knowledge or the pursuit of happiness. It struck me as a strange question, mostly because I couldn't understand how the person had come up with those two possible answers as the only options for answering such an eternal question. It also struck me that the pursuit of happiness was much more likely to be the purpose of life than the pursuit of knowledge -- the latter of which, at best, seems to be a means of finding out what the purpose of life is, not an ends in of itself. Which led me to another thought: while few people purport to know the purpose of life, most people can do a reasonably good job of telling you which of two possibilities is more likely to be the purpose of life. For example, is the purpose of life more likely to be "finding true love" or "winning as many video games as possible"? Is it more likely to be "living an ethical life" or "tasting the tap water in as many cities as possible"? Is it more likely to be "discovering an important scientific breakthrough for society" or "achieving relative immortality through the creation of well-known pieces of art"? The answer might differ from person to person, but you might be able to get closer to an answer for yourself via a series of pairwise comparisons of various possibilities.
Posted by Lonne at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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