Evolution and Specialness of Humanity

It destroys any external means of significance. It means you're free--you're free to create your own significance. It's a hard, weighty task. Are you up to it? It's easy for some people (like my youngest brother), but hard for others (like me). It destroys the external significance. It means you're free--you're free to create your own significance. Relationships, expressions, feelings--they mean only what we put into them.It's the difference between being born with a "silver spoon in your mouth", and being born with nothing, having to work for it all, and feeling a sense of meaning in what you've done, what you've created.Have you ever felt a sense of accomplishment from completing a hard, but ultimately "meaningless" task? It became meaningful because of the work you put into it, because of the importance you placed on it.Try to think of an example of this from your life, and post it here if you would. I'll try to do the same thing. I have a bad memory, so nothing's coming up at the moment. One makes one's purpose. We choose meaning. It means... you have a lot of work to do. Instead, you're busy trying to deny your responsibility. Take a step out from behind the curtain and see if you can create the meaning for yourself.You have lots of friends here who will support you if you want to try.
And a lot of people with experience in doing exactly the same thing. Give it a shot.Ben

I'd suggest that you read through one of the MANY atheist-morality threads. Choice is never constraint free.If your meaning involves robbing me at gunpoint, then your meaning also better involve you being locked up in jail. Otherwise, I would suggest that you chose your meaning without enough thought.

I have no idea what you're trying to show here. If that's what seems meaningful to you, so be it. What's your point?If you want to discuss how individual choice of meaning could possibly work in a society of people, then again I suggest you take your thoughts to an "atheistic morality" thread. The discussion here is about prophex. If you're suggesting that prophex choose a meaning like robbing others... then you you're missing what this young man is all about.I'm quite confident prophex has the ability to choose wisely. If I wasn't confident, I wouldn't recommend him to try and choose for himself. There's a lot of responsibility in making that choice, and not everybody is capable of it.Ben

iano,I see this thread as prophex's thread, about his issues. I don't see it as a place to discuss general theoretical issues having to do with atheistic morality or problems inherent in relativistic thinking. I'd retract what I was saying if I honestly thought there were problems with such thinking. But I don't see such problems, so we're not going to be able to resolve the issue easily. That's why I'm suggesting taking such levels of debate to another thread.If you want to simply ask a question, like "how am I defining wisely since I appear to be a relativist?"--that's actually relevant. If you want to hash out the whole relativist paradigm--please take it somewhere else. I'll be happy to hash it out with you there.Now, I use "wise" in a general sense. Breaking it down comes from analysis, so I'll do my best. In my thinking, the ability to choose your "meaning" wisely consists of:

• asking questions and getting some idea of other people's thoughts via discussion
• keeping an open mind
• having passion in the search
• having some understanding of the way socieities work
• having an understanding of cost / benefit analysis

An off-the-cuff list; I reserve the right to make clarifications or additions.I think prophex has exhibited all these qualities in this thread, to varying degrees. His willingness to discuss his thoughts in a public forum, and his drive to think about things gives me confidence he wouldn't choose a ridiculous, self-destructive "meaning" like robbing people. Whoever chooses such a meaninig is going to be hard pressed to fufill their meaning--unless, as I said, their meaning involves time behind bars.Again, if you want to go more in depth about relativistic meaning, let's do it somewhere appropriate, like another thread.Thanks!
BenAbE: remove cranky-sounding phrasing. That's carelessness on my part--sorry iano.This message has been edited by Ben, Wednesday, 2005/10/19 10:50 AM

Hi iano,Thanks for your reply. I thought you explained your points very clearly and succinctly. I hope I can provide a reply of similar quality. If you look at my list, everything is based on "informed decision making." I take informed decision-making to be absolute for anything operating rationally. And that was the premise of my proposal--choose for yourself what "meaning" you want.That is it. The meanings of "wisdom", "ridiculous", and "self-destructive" derive from that simple premise--make informed decisions. If you don't make informed decisions, I think you'll have a harder time finding "meaning". You'll more likely spend time in jail, paying child support, suffering some physical injury, or working at a job that doesn't give you "meaning" but you need in order to make ends meet. I was specifically trying to avoid addressing this issue at all. Yes, you and your Colt 45s are valid. Absolutely. However, given how our society works, unless jail time is part of your "meaning", then your choice of "meaning" is unlikely to lead you to what you want. In that way, it's a "bad decision." If you are choosing what gives you meaning, you shouldn't choose things that you can't accomplish. Cute.But seriously, here's an important point--no matter if you're a relativist or not, there's crime. No matter how you choose your own meaning, there are killers, there are thieves.The question is only, do you want to be one of them? And if so, why? Is it because of "meaning"? And is it something you really want to choose?Like I said above, in prophex's case, I don't think becoming a thief is going to be a good choice for "meaning." And it's not a good choice for me either. So I'm not a thief.Ben