To be or not to be?

Question

That is the question.

Answer 1

Pretty simple really. You are a long LONG time dead, and it is inevitable. So you might just as well enjoy the ride while you're here!

Cowboy Code rule # 24
"Makin' it in life is a lot like bustin' broncs. Your gonna get thrown a lot. The simple secret is to keep gettin' back on.

Answer 2

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.


To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 3

To be: Continuing existence.
Not to be: End of existence

Existence is the question. More accurately, what does it mean to exist? Physical existence is fairly easy to grasp. The elements of which we are made continue to exist after we die. The existence of our Life force is a diferent matter.

If one can adequately define life, or rather the essence of life, then we can approach the subject more aggresively. In terms of the life energy that we are a part of while in a 'living' state, we can say that we exist in the sense of being aware of our state of being. In that frame of thought, can a rock be said to exist if it is unaware of its being?
So, in that statement lies yet another point, the point of Awareness. If we agree that awareness is a characteristic of the living, then any object that is not living can be said not to exist, at least to itself.
So is existence a construct of being observed? This begs the question, "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound"?
A man stranded on an island by himself with no other animal life around could be said not to exist to the rest of the world. We can argue that he does exist simply by the fact that his existence is affirmed because he is affecting his environment by way of his survival. He consumes, he excretes, he aspirates, and physically interacts with his environment. Would his actions be considered legitimately real if noone else witnesses this? Does he truly exist?
In the end all of this is simply a Schroedinger's cat argument. No answer can completely resolve the full range of perspectives involved. But it does make for an interesting mental exercise.

Answer 4

So true...and in more than simply the physical. To be happy, innocent, creative, soul-realized...these are promoted by later Maslow's pyramid of values, i.e. including spiritual wisdom as one of man's highest qualities.

"Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet, makes the case,
as do Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, in "Light Is a Living Spirit," Jonathan Murro in "The Path of Virtue," and Free and Wilcock in "The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?".
Http://www.coasttocoastam.com radio has guests who speak to this, generally.

cheers,

j.

Answer 5

Dub me dancer son.

Answer 6

To invent, or copy?

Answer 7

NOT to be, because eventually....we won't be...