As a Counter eg. "Improve the universe to the best of your abilities and understanding" Closely followed by "expand your abilities and understanding"
Not meant as a dig at any particular path or individual who holds these as their meanings of life; because I'm sure there are many who do. This is simply why these don't work for me.
Could one be any more rhetorical? There is an 'open to lip service' clause here because the only judges of whether you are doing these things are yourself and god. It's cerebral, it's vague, and when you don't actually do anything other than what you've always done, your butt is still covered.
-Well, I did learn how to make gravy from a package, so I guess that counts as expanding my abilities. If you can go through life WITHOUT expanding your knowledge of anything, then my hat is truly off to you. It would take serious effort. Even if the knowledge, like the gravy package was happenstance.
The significance is so user subjective that a life spent increasing your knowledge of the flavor of pixie sticks could be seen as equally meaningful next to one spent increasing your knowledge of what makes cars work or how to solve world hunger.
Improving the universe is another one to be filed under vague, subjective and dated. We do what we think is best, according to what we know at the time, and the rest goes under the oops, I'm really sorry category. To put this in a religion almost implies that deity sees shortsighted foibles regardless of their long term cost to be an acceptable part of human nature.
What anyone sees as improvement is subjective, and whether it's long term improvement remains to be seen.
So I guess I see "Improve the universe to the best of your abilities and understanding" Closely followed by "expand your abilities and understanding" to be an empowered version of 'Always do your best' but I'm so jaded on the concept of what an individuals 'best' is (Bush is doing his *best*), that it would take OCD as a religion to satisfy that criterion. Thus I don't see religion as addressing the meaning of life.
Are we here to suffer? Are we here as an accident? Are we here to make changes? Are we here to make as few changes as possible? Are we an animal and here to breed? Are we here as custodians of this planet? Are we an infestation of the planet, are we just a liminal species here till the next big thing shows up and laughs us and our gods back to the last ice age?
I leave philosophy in the hands of the philosophers, what is the meaning of life, and religion between an individual and their gods. With god, I ask; what is the meaning of our relationship.
Important Information about this Archive Board
