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Finding Lasting Meaning and Purpose

Sitaram

Sitaram

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How do we find lasting meaning in a world where nothing lasts?


What role may art or fiction play in our search for meaning?


I must leave for work soon, this Monday morning. The above thought came to mind.

(a few minutes left)...

The alembic, which distills the essense as gradual droplets, filling a flask, Gideon's dew upon the fleece, moisture on a web, diaphanous, a flash of brilliance from a ray of sunlight chancing by....

Such distillations collect from year to year. Wish them into oceans.

The Vedic imagery of churning the ocean of milk for nectar, churned by deities and demons alike.

The alembic is the reverse, to fill an ocean of nectar, drop by drop.

As droplets? Pieces of straw and string that birds weave into nests.

Socrates loom with warp and woof and shuttle as image of dialectic.

The churning of the ocean is serendipity and synchronicity of the subconscious; meaning where none was meant.

The loom is intentionality design and craft.

Where loom meets mist, where tapestry caparisons the crashing waves.

Venus is born in the sea foam on the shore.
 
Sitaram said:
How do we find lasting meaning in a world where nothing lasts?
.
Click to expand...

Sitaram,
That's a very big question, but I'll try a short shot at it.

First of all, I'm not even sure what 'lasting meaning' means, and I'm not sure that 'nothng lasts.' In my view, people last. So my answer may be off the mark for your intent. But here it is.

I do believe that, by living my beliefs, I affect people I interact with in some way, hopefully for the better, and that my beliefs and actions will therefore have impact beyond my own life through their own lives, whether or not I myself am remembered. For the present I am satisfied that my four children will be affecting the lives of people in the generation after theirs and, in whatever way, something of who and what I have been is already on the way to being felt that far ahead.

The purpose and meaning in my own life are simply to live my life in the best way that I know how, and the rest will take care of itself.

If you notice the word 'best' in that last sentence, and ask me what that means and how I know what it means, as you might well, I can only say that veers off into a topic not discussed on this forum.

And now please feel free to drag this thread back on topic if you think I missed the point.

Peder
 
Our writings may become a virtual person. A corporation is a legal fiction on a piece of paper with a seal, which has the status of person in civil law.

I am an illegal fiction, unsealed, but civil.
 
Not cryptic at all. The collected dialogues are a virtual Plato. They are my only means to access Plato, and Socrates.

My own writings are a virtual version of me. My words may live on after I am gone. A Corporate entity is a person with rights, under the law.

Seek and you shall find. Ask and you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened. Nothing mystical or cryptic about that.
 
Sitaram said:
How do we find lasting meaning in a world where nothing lasts?
Click to expand...

This is a loaded question. It assumes nothing lasts. How is it, then, that I have read the Odyssey, or Sappho's poems, or Sumerian documents 5,000 years old?

And why does meaning have to be lasting?
 
Bang!

Here is my loaded answer.

I too once thought as you, of lasting posterity.

Then I felt that our sun would end one day in a supernova.

Then I learned that our sun is too small for supernova.

Then I though of technology planning an escape, a Noah's ark of genetic labs, piloted by immortal cyborgs, in search of fresh world.

Then, I read Isaac Asimov's "The Final Problem" about the thermodynamic heat death of the entire universe.

Sitaram - Eternal Be His Memory
 
Oh. You're not talking about meaning, you're talking about immortality. You wish you could leave a lasting memory. Good luck.
 
Is immortality anything more than lasting memory....

But, I would settle for a thousand years...

Take a look at the battlefield dialog between Gaukos and Diomedes in the Iliad, about generations of people as leaves...


"The loved that ended yesterday in Texas began 4,000 years ago in Egypt" - Tom Wolfe "Look Homeward Angel"
 
I think it is all relative. In the context of the lifespan of the universe, sure nothing lasts, in the context of human civilization, some things are eternal, in the context of the lifespan of a housefly, just about everything lasts forever. I am but a mere human, so lasting meaning for me is similar to what Peder said, to have positive impact on people around me, to send my genes into the future through my children, and hopefully, through my creativity, education and work, to leave something tangible in the world that will also impact future generations in a positive way.
 
My guess is that you mean Asmiov's story "The Last Question," which I recommend to everybody.
 
Yes, thats it... I am stealing moments to type hurredly from memory.

The Last Question

I am nothing without google, ms word spellchecker, and the leisure to repent
 
Sitaram said:
Not cryptic at all. The collected dialogues are a virtual Plato. They are my only means to access Plato, and Socrates.

My own writings are a virtual version of me. My words may live on after I am gone. A Corporate entity is a person with rights, under the law.

Seek and you shall find. Ask and you shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened. Nothing mystical or cryptic about that.
Click to expand...

Sitaram,
Evidently I read your original post differently when I saw the phrase

I am an illegal fiction
Click to expand...

But no matter,
Regards
Peder
 
Peder, I am playing on the notion of a Corporation as a virtual person having rights, and me as a fiction which is not legal, having no rights in posterity, yet I remain civil.

There are lines of poems that immortally wound the soul. - Frost
 
In the world we seek our fate,

without compensation.

In another's love, we try to satiate,

with unrequieted desperation.

In God we look for purpose - meaning,

with confusion, doubt and strife.

On ourselves should we be leaning,

We are what there is in life.
 
Big Questions and Big Answers

I just realized that, whenever we say that something is a big question, what we really mean is that it is that it is a question which requires a big answer.

Someone recently asked me, "What is Zen?"; a small question requiring a big answer.

I suppose a question might be big in the sense of the large crowd of questioners asking it, clamoring for an answer.

Or big might be an ironic way to imply that there are no good answers.

A really good answer should make the question go away, in the sense that it is no longer a question in anyones mind, for all minds have been satisfied.

A good answer slays the question, like the fabled knight who slays the dragon. Dragons are always guarding treasures. Dragon questions guard hidden answers. The answer is both knight and booty. Questions are like dragons because we say, "I shall take a shot at answering that!"


I suppose eternal question can have only mortal answers.

In college, I wondered if the unanswerable question is the unmoved mover of the soul.

Language has an odd habit of saying what it doesnt really mean and meaning what it hesitates to say.

I was once seated in a waiting room so crowded that only one empty seat remained. Someone entered the room, approached the seat hesitantly, looked about and everyone and asked, "Is anybody sitting here?" Now, of course, all could plainly see that the seat is empty. After a while she stands up, announces "I shall be right back", and steps into the hall. A new person enters and approaches the now empty seat, but what do we all say? "Someone is sitting there!" Now, everyone can plainly see that no one is sitting there.

Rhetorical questons never wait around for an answer, for, being rhetorical, they are always on the move and flowing, like Heraclitus' river. We might all very well be seated around a large seminar table, but our leader says, "Let's move on to the next question." Naturally, we all remain seated.

Someone will complain, "This discussion isn't going anywhere! What is all this leading to?"

We are anxious to embark as knight errants on our quest for grails, holy or otherwise, and ready to battle any dragons we meet along the way.
 
I have a big question, Sitaram: why do you position yourself as a pedagogue? Is it in your nature or is it something you picked up at St. John's? My little brother went to St. John's and read the big books and discussed the little questions with the big answers and he suffers from a similar ailment.
 
Its a dirty job, but someone has to do it.


Of course the word pedagogue, in Greek, means a leader of children. I suppose, with some stretching, it might also be construed as a leader of the childish.



Sometimes we are mature and other times we are childish, as when we fall prey to jealosy and sibling rivalry.


Speaking of childhood, I was as I am even as a child. Childhood was a lonely time for me. In spite of the lonliness and ostracism, I am glad that I found the courage to be what I am, than to conform to something I am not simply for the sake of acceptance and the shallow, quid-pro-quo, soon forgotten friendship which was all that many had to offer.


Speaking of questions and answers: there are certain kinds of questions which are unique in that those who feel the need to ask them are, ipso facto, incapable of ever appreciating the answer. Or, perhaps it is simply the case that they were never sincerely interested in an answer in the first place, their question being a statement in disguise.


I am what I am. I have little choice. I like what I am. Or rather, I try to become more like that which I admire. I stand in judgment of no one. Those whom I admire, I read. Those whom I do not admire, I ignore. I do not feel the need to apologize for who and what I am and what I do, though perhaps merely saying this constitutes an ironic apology of sorts, which reminds me of Plato's Apology. What I am bothers some people. Jung speaks of the shadow, something which we perceive as outside of us, but which is really a projection of something inside. Life is too short for ad hominem, since each hominem is so short-lived, including this hominem, yours truly.

If anyone cares to join the Sitaram Fan Club, they shall receive a Sitaram Tee-Shirt and Coffee Mug. Supplies are limited. Allow six to eight weeks for delivery. (Nota: for the less perceptive, this is a joke. There is no fan club or commercial enterprise.)

Jorge Luis Borges has a story about a man who spends his life persecuting an Heresiarch (an heretical Bishop). Finally, he succeeds in getting the Heresiarch executed. After a few years, he dies, and learns in heaven that in the eyes of God, both the Heresiarch and his persecutor are organic parts of a much larger being, and both necessary.

Perhaps someone like me plays a useful role as well. Perhaps my role is to inspire the criticism of people such as you. These are great mysteries.


Thank you for your time and interest.
 
So you believe it is in your nature? That you are what you are.

But in fact you prefer to deflect and redirect rather than expose your own point of view. The position of such a defensive didact in Socratic dialogue is inside an empty cage.

Oh, yeah, BTW I'll join your fan club if you join my religion!

Novella's cult religion
 
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