Blog 4: The Big 5

The more I study philosophy, the more I am beginning to learn that I will not be finding a direct answer to all of my questions. The deeper I dig the more questions that I come up with. I really like the way the Problems from Philosophy by James Rachels breaks down the meaning of life into concepts. That’s what this post is going to be about. Some will be from her and others will be from my other sources.
The first concept that I want to discuss is happiness. I am the type of person that likes direct answers and happiness is as far from direct as any other concept in philosophy. What does it mean to be happy? Something that makes me happy may have little or no effect on someone else’s happiness in that same situation. From most of the research I have done it seems like a person’s happiness level really doesn’t increase or decrease dramatically based on the events in their life. If a person is a generally happy person and they get hit by a bus and become paralyzed, then they will be upset or depressed for a little while and end up back at their original level of happiness. Likewise if someone is generally unhappy then even if they hit the lotto he or she will be above the normal level of happiness for a limited time, before coming back down to their normal level of happiness. There is so much more to explore in happiness, but this is only blog post four and I don’t want to write my whole paper out right here.
Concept number two talks about the religious aspect. The book brings up the misconceptions about how religion sometimes is looked at as the meaning of life. One of them is the reason that our lives are meaningful. One example given is that our lives are meaningful because “we are the object of God’s love.” He goes on to give the example that the majority of us having people who love us (family, friends). He says if we feel that our lives are meaningless despite having these people around us, people that love us, how is the addition of someone else’s love for us supposed to help. I found that to be a pretty powerful argument for that particular point, and there were some points that he shows religion having a positive effect on the meaningfulness of life. I can’t wait to get more in depth and learn more about this argument as well.
The next concept is the meaning of particular lives. I have a lot more reading and research to do on this concept, but the main point of this concept states that each of us has a reason for being here. Whether it is to satisfy a personal relationship with family, personal accomplishments, such as graduating from college, or just being contributing to the well being of other people we all have something that we can contribute here on earth. Not everyone is going to be Bill Gates or Kobe Bryant, but you can live a life consistent with the talents that you were given.
Another great meaning of life concept that people hate talking about and always get nervous about is death. I love this concept because it gives more of a direct look at a particular life, and when it is done the meaning that is left behind. One argument says that after we die there will be no pain. We will not be unhappy, upset or otherwise, therefore dying isn’t a bad thing, it is nothing. The other argument says that when we die we have no one that will care for us and we have no one to care after.
Then there is the concept of the significance that our lives carry. Looking at it from a universe point of view our lives are insignificant, but from a humanistic point of view our lives have a lot of meaning. This is basically the “indifferent universe” concept. It isn’t too far from tying in with death so I will probably look at those two concepts as one when my final paper comes around to see where it takes me.
The last concept is the point of view. This really ties into my Youtube.com video that I have showing down below. Everyone has their own outlook on what their own personal meaning of life is. One of my personal favorites was this guy saying that his meaning of life was staying alive and avoiding death. So is that it? Avoiding death is what he feels he is living his life for, does the fact that I believe in God, or internal happiness make him wrong. Can he have a meaningful life if most of his time is spent paranoid that someone is going to break in to his house and kill him? It doesn’t seem like that is a meaningful life to me, but that is another argument that I am going to have to pursue in my final paper. Thanks for checking out my blog today leave some positive feedback or constructive criticism and I will try to do better next time!

Rachels, James. Problems From Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.