Backlinks: meaning.
The purpose of life
To decide what to do. Deliberately. Intentionally. That’s the biggest quest of life.
There’s no clear or final answer, it’s open to debate and different points of view!
I care about freedom! But I don’t care if our life is predetermined, or if there’s a free will. They are irrelevant to me as long as I “feel” free to choose anything I want.
The question that bothers me a lot and what made me create this page in the first place is:
-A- should we live our life without a purpose, without a bigger goal in life, just enjoying life moment by moment,
-B- or should we intentionally choose or find a life goal and follow that?
Or maybe -C- hybrid option: choose smaller goals and follow them, and just live without any purpose in between?
To want, to need… Such a fine line…
We need the things high up in the pyramid of needs: air, water, food, sleep.
All the other things, we don’t “need”, we just “want”.
We want to buy expensive shoes to feel premium and cool, even if much cheaper ones do the same thing and look just as nice.
We want the latest iPhone, because we are tricked that it’s cooler than what we have.
We want the most expensive TV just to show out neighbours that we can afford it, even if we barely watch TV.
We want a specific car because we want to impress people on the street.
We think we need things like that and more, but they require financial effort and we almost always have to sacrifice something else to get them. But we get depressed when we can’t afford things we want, because we are fooled to think we “need” them.
Pro purpose
The dangerous approach of living Without Purpose, by Thomas Oppong:
https://huffpost.com/entry/the-dangerous-approach-of-living-without-purpose_b_594d2cc0e4b0326c0a8d07b1
> Living “on purpose” means you live intentionally.
> Clarity of purpose challenges you to do better and commit to actions that get you closer to the one thing you really want in life. With clarity, you can pull together resources, ideas and people for a common cause. Without it, there is wasted effort and even chaos.
There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
– Napoleon Hill
Knowing your why is an important first step in figuring out how to achieve the goals that excite you and create a life you enjoy living (versus merely surviving!).
Indeed, only when you know your ‘why’ will you find the courage to take the risks needed to get ahead, stay motivated when the chips are down, and move your life onto an entirely new, more challenging, and more rewarding trajectory.
– Margie Warrell
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Against purpose
The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
– Frank Herbert, Dune
Katsumoto: The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life. [With his dying breath] Perfect… They are all… perfect…
– The Last Samurai Movie
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Other quotes
Good Karma - Note to Self
“What is my purpose in life?” I asked the void.
“What if I told you that you fulfilled it when you took an extra hour to talk to a kid about his life?” said the voice.
“Or when you paid for that young couple in the restaurant? Or when you saved that dog in traffic? Or when you tied your father’s shoes for him?”
“Your problem is that you equate your purpose with goal-based achievement. The Universe isn’t interested in your achievements… just your heart. When you choose to act out of kindness, compassion and love, you are already aligned with your true purpose.”“No Need To Look Any Further!”
– Author Unknown
https://motivateus.com/quote-of-the-day/good-karma-and-kindness
Q: “Conan, what is good in life?”
Conan: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.”
– Conan, from the movie “Conan the Barbarian”
Articles & videos
Why ‘finding your purpose’ matters and four ways to find yours
By Nilufar Ahmed, published April 26 2023
https://theconversation.com/why-finding-your-purpose-matters-and-four-ways-to-find-yours-203298
Embracing the whole you: You are more than your job
https://fastcompany.com/90651651/embracing-the-whole-you-you-are-more-than-your-job
Life is not linear, and neither should your career path be, says this engineer, who went from writing code to writing fiction
Many of us believe there’s a gulf between the humanist and the scientific. If you pursue one path surely you can’t pursue the other? Or at least do so well. This is a view that’s landed in a time of hyper-specialization: we train ourselves to do one thing well, calcifying our neural structures toward optimizing one grand ole goal. Except, growing up in Kolkata, India, I knew that my favorite Bengali writers all had day jobs. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who helped bridge Sanskrit influences with Victorian ones, wrote fourteen novels and collections of poems. He also wrote a series of essays on science and worked for most of his life as a tax collector.
Perhaps human beings are not simply a sum of objective functions, a series of small puzzles that will one day be solved, ultimately leading to mapping the whole of us. Darwin had this other idea. He’d struggled to explain why a peacock carries its exuberant plume when its pageantry also acts as an impediment against predators. He offered a parallel theory to natural selection: sometimes we’re attracted to beauty for its own sake, even when that beauty is the source of great inconvenience
Life with purpose
By Philip Ball, edited by Sally Davies
https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life
Biologists balk at any talk of ‘goals’ or ‘intentions’ - but a bold new research agenda has put agency back on the table
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Genes don’t fully specify behavioural outcomes in any given situation. Genes can imbue dispositions or tendencies, but it’s (often) impossible to predict precisely what an organism will do even when it’s mapped down to the last cell and gene. If all behaviour were hardwired, individual organisms could never find creative solutions to novel problems, such as the ability of New Caledonian crows to shape and use improvised tools to obtain food.
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This reveals a crucial dimension of agency: the ability to make choices in response to new and unforeseen circumstances. When a hare is being pursued by a wolf, there’s no meaningful way to predict how it will dart and switch this way and that, nor whether its gambits will suffice to elude the predator, who responds accordingly. Both hare and wolf are exercising their agency.
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If we break down agency into its constituents, we can see how it might arise even in the absence of a mind that ‘thinks’, at least in the traditional sense. Agency stems from two ingredients: first, an ability to produce different responses to identical (or equivalent) stimuli, and second, to select between them in a goal-directed way. Neither of these capacities is unique to humans, nor to brains in general.
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An organism that reacts differently in seemingly identical situations stands a better chance of outwitting predators. Cockroaches, for example, run away when they detect air movements, moving in more or less the opposite direction to the airflow – but at a seemingly random angle. Fruit flies show some random variation in their turning movements when they fly, even in the absence of any stimulus; presumably that’s because it’s useful to broaden your options without being dependent on some signal to do so. Such unpredictability is even enshrined in an aphorism known as the Harvard Law of Animal Behaviour: ‘Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, the animal behaves as it damned well pleases’
