Quote:
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Originally Posted by punkworld
I don't think there is any particular thing which makes life worth living for me. My personal life philosophy is a mixture of Stoicism, Epicureanism and radical subjectivism.
There is no objective reality or truth that we have access to, therefore we are forced to make all our decisions and judgements based on (empirical) experience, rationality and intuitions. Rationality helps us to combine experience and intuitions into a coherent whole. This coherent whole is necessarily entirely subjective, but at the same time it's the whole of reality as we can possibly understand it, and therefore it is, for all practical purposes, truth.
If our subjective reality is all we have, and thereby all there is as far as we are concerned, then the thing to do would seem to be to control it in the best way possible, to experience life in the most rewarding, painless way we can experience it. This can be achieved by always keeping a certain level of detachment from the physical aspects of life, while at the same time cherishing the achievable pleasures of life, especially the ones that provide us with longlasting feelings of joy, beauty or fascination. Things like leading a temperate, dignified life, fully recognising the beauty of nature, attaining knowledge of the world, seeing different cultures and environments and appreciating the great works of literature and art seem like the best ways to achieve this to me.
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'Reality is
but a serotonin-induced hallucination" - Terence McKenna
I don't know how many times I'll have to repeat that on this board.
I enjoy the pains of life that come with the pleasures and do not take great measures to avoid things causing those pains. Much of the learning I or anyone else has done has been via some sort of pain through tough experiences. I even like the pain to help me achieve my less achievable goals that require the time, effort, and sacrifice that easier goals come without.
"Knowing", as best I can, that we can never have any real truth or true wisdom beyond what we observe or can infer from observation helps fill me with the wonder and curiousity of other possibilities. I think its exciting, at the same time as being frustrating.
The only thing that can be known with any reasonable degree of certainty is that we exist.
Cogito ergo sum