I'm not sure if this is necessarily appropriate for the debate forum, since it isn't completely a debate, but I think it has the potential to become one...

I've been thinking a lot lately, the source of which being a whole host of changes in my life that caused me to have musings about things I ordinarily wouldn't have time to mull around in my head. One of which being significant enough to throw on this forum for you all to join in on. I will reveal it to you slowly... because that is ultimately the point.

So, one thing I will say before I begin, I've come to change my belief of what is to come after we die, as well as the significance of a god or gods. Do you want to know what that is? What my belief is?

If you didn't care before, you probably do now... The fact that I brought up something to question to begin with without revealing to you the answer will plant a seed in your mind that will grow... and you will theorize about it. The fact that you don't know the answer the question gives this situation the potential to turn into something more meaningful than the actual answer could ever hope to be.

How can something be more meaningful than the answer to the meaning of life?

or more importantly...

Why does the meaning of life have to be an answer?

A man walks down the street at night. It's cold and damp, probably somewhere around three in the morning. He's stumbling, his clothes are ragged and torn. He's mumbling to himself, saying things that if heard by you or I would be indistinguishable.

"Red, Moon, Seven, Pond, Peak..."

He stops to look around, and sees something in front of him, shadowed by the darkness of the night.

What do we know about this man? How is this relevant to what I'm talking about?

Well well... Curiosity killed the cat. Did you know?
Of course... and Ignorance is bliss.

Those sayings feel so juvenile don't they? You've been hearing them since you were a child, just as I have. Probably some punk little kid told it to you when you asked them a question. They told it to you without actually understanding how profound of a statement it really is.

They both mean the same thing, and it's an obvious truth that I feel like I should have fully realized ages ago but I'm just now beginning to fully grasp.

Questioning things, searching for the answers, and finding the answer will ultimately lead to unhappiness at best, and misery at worst. That's why the most intelligent people in the world are also the most unhappy, and why all the idiots are happy.

Which brings up a question... and it's a serious one that may be deceiving as well.

Who do you know who is happy?

Nobody is happy. We're all just trying to grasp the answers to the questions we ask, but finally finding the answer is always so disappointing we feel discontent and unhappy. It's a cycle we cannot escape from because it is our nature.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

I simply do not get how on earth you can make the statement that nobody is happy. Nobody. As in none of the 6.7 billion people living on this earth. On what grounds have you reached that conclusion? And even if you have any reasonable explanation, it is still false. I am happy. Right now, and generally. I just finished preparing for a big presentation I have tomorrow on male dominance in the English language, I just rewarded myself with an awesome mango and apple smoothie, and I am going to watch the TV show Shark, which I enjoy.
I know several people who I am convinced would describe themselves as happy. How can you say they are not? If they feel happy, surely they must be, as happiness is just that. A feeling.

Same goes for finding answers. I simply agree that it is disappointing. I enjoy the process of finding answers, and I am often intrigued by them when I finally find them. Any anyway, answers doesn't have to be grand and interesting to be enjoyable. Yesterday night I read an article referencing to the scarlet pimpernel. So I thought, who is the scarlet pimpernel? For some reason I wanted to know that, even though it has very little relevance to my life, and the answer would most likely not affect me in any way at all. Still, I went to wikipedia and read the article on the scarlet pimpernel. It wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't even very interesting, but I went to sleep content, knowing I had found my irrelevant answer.

Some of your points I agree upon, but not on happiness. I know happy people.

Bah, you both completely missed the point.

It isnt really about happiness. Only a fraction of it is. The actual meaning of what i said is actually optimistic. In saying nobody is truly happy, im actually saying nobody is an idiot, which everyone believes otherwise, that we are in a world filled with idiots.

Im saying that often, how happy you are is in direct corrilation with how smart you are. I was too vague though, i shouldnt have worded it that way, especially since it was the last thing i said.

Happyness, like everything, is relitive. I think a word to more accurately describe what im getting at is not happiness, but instead content.

Nobody is happy OR content. Maybe you are today, maybe tomorrow, but like every emotion it will fade. Not to say you wont be happy some of the time, or maybe a lot of it, at some point you wont.

But that isnt really the point.

The answers to the big questions. The important ones we all think about. Ask yourself, do you really want the answer? Will knowing make you feel happy? Content? Maybe at first, but once deminishing returns kicks in, you'll know exactly what i mean.

What drives us isn't knowledge, what drives us is the question, the search for it, the time between. Once you know the thrill is done, the potential is gone.

Well, I'll disagree again, then.

I don't think how happy you are is directly correlated to how smart you are, but rather directly correlated to your living conditions, which are usually totally independent of intelligence, as they are more often a result of where you were born.

But I still don't get your happiness/content idea. Yes, it's relative, and yes, the emotion might fade, but why does that mean that nobody is happy or content? If I am content today, and content tomorrow, then am I not content? What does it matter that I might not be content some time in the future? Couldn't you use the exact same argument the other way around? that nobody is really discontent or sad, because it is just an emotion that will fade.

But apparently that isn't really the point.

As for your amazingly deep and thought out questions: no one knows. We don't know the answers to the "big questions", so there is no way of knowing whether we'd be happy with them or not. If the answer to what happens after life is "you go to a place full of beautiful women, chocolate chip cookies (from god's own recipe) and lemon ice cream," then I'd be happy to know that. Don't you think the doubt as to what happens makes many discontent and unhappy as well. Many people turn on the deathbed, just in case there is a heaven.

What drives us isn't knowledge in itself, that's right. What drives us is a desire for knowledge. There's no general answer as to how that knowledge affects us once we've acquired it.
I think you're thinking way too two-dimensional.

I'm happy you silly boy. You need to take your angst medication.

:L

I think you have some very interesting points and I don't necessarily disagree with them. If you think too much it will make you unhappy. I thought about death for a while, and then I couldn't sleep. Then I came through that stage and thought, "If it's inevitable and there's nothing that I can do about it, why worry? It won't change anything." Then I started thinking about happiness and what it actually means to be happy. I am happy if I am not currently in pain and there is little prospect of pain occuring in the near future. Pain is temporary, so in that knowledge I can maintain a cheery optimism even whilst it is occuring.

I find happiness in my own powerlessness. When there is nothing that I can do there is no benefit from letting it get to me. I then take this one stage further with determinist physicalist principles by which I philosophise that I have no free will and that what appears to be my consciousness is essentially just along for the ride. In this manner I make my self (two words deliberately) powerless in all situations, thus rendering me genericly happy.

It's all in the cognition.

Just because nobody has found the true answers to big questions, doesn't mean they shouldn't be pondered, even if you can't know for sure.

I am happier now than I ever was before I had my intellectual awakening.

Before 9th grade, I got by just pretending I was smart. I really didn't know shit. Any time I met someone that really was smart, I would try my best to make them appear and feel stupid, just so I could look smart in comparison.

Now I find joy in simple things. Any time I ride my bike to somewhere new, any time I watch a new movie, or find a new hobby, or look at something in a new or different way, I get happier.

Now, Instead of always comparing my intelligence to others and thinking of myself as smarter, I look for people who are smarter, and I see what they can teach me.

When you ask "What is the meaning of life", you aren't asking a very good question. It's like asking "What is the flavor of envy" or "Why does the sadness eat toenails". Just because a sentence is grammatically correct doesn't make it a valid question.

There is no universal standard of purpose. Only intelligent beings can give something purpose. Purpose is imposed, not inherent. A can opener only has a purpose when there are humans to know its purpose. A squirrel doesn't have a purpose, it just happens to be there. It depends on things, and things depend on it, but since there is no universal standard by which to give it purpose, you can't accurately ask what its purpose is. It's just like you can't accurately ask "What is the flavor of envy", because envy simply doesn't fit into that sentence: it's not something that would have a flavor.

Ahhh, good morning stickpage.

It's nice to see I've gotten so many insightful and well thought out answers. Let me rephrase myself to avoid looking like an idiot. Last night for some reason I couldn't put a sentence together well.

I would like to respond to everything all of you have said, but hell, you all have said quite a bit... and I read it all. I don't think I can unless I start a novel.

I will admit, my outlook on the happiness thing wasn't right. Happiness is really what you make of it. Alive, I don't think living conditions are correlated with happiness though. Happiness is a tricky thing though... and not really worth debating about it's source.. but if you feel that it is, write a thread. It was sort of an afterthought in my original post, that's why I said it wasn't really the point.

Nevertheless, the source of happiness and what it correlates with seems like a good debate unto itself... Anyone want to hop on that?

Anyway, back to the main point that most of you have addressed now. I wasn't actually asking the meaning of life, because as you guys know, there is really no known answer and it isn't really worth trying to logically probe for an answer. There are already plenty of threads of people just asking the meaning vaguely. And ash I completely understand what you are getting at with purpose being a creation of mankind and that it exists only to us.

What I'm asking is not, "what is the meaning of life?" but instead, "Is the most fulfilling thing in life the search for answers we are not yet aware of?"

Yes, it feels good knowing the answer to a question. I do it all day at work, someone will ask me something and if I know it, I'll feel good that I know it, and if I don't, I find comfort in the fact that I can.

Some questions, the important ones that mean something more than mere trivialities are the questions that hold the most potential. The potential that those questions have are far greater than any real answer because in knowing the answer, suddenly the mystery is gone and the drive to solve it is void.

It isn't the answers that drive us, it's the questions. Take away the questions and there is no more drive. If the is in fact that case, I hope we never learn the truth for certain things. Good thing we are far from all the answers, and a lot of the answers bring more questions.

Why am I so big on questions? Well...

Go through a day and count in conversation how many questions you are asked or you yourself ask. I think if you did, it would be mind blowing how overwhelmingly large that number is.

Edit: I feel like I've been losing my mind as of late.

I think one of the most fulfilling things in life is the acheival of goals that you have been pursuing. If one of your goals is to answer a particular question then that will make you feel temporarily fulfilled.