I do what I do to increase My feelings of joy, rightness, and peace. I don't do what I don't do because I believe it will not lead to said increases or because there are hurdles in the way which I am not willing to push hard enough to knock over.
but thank goodness I don't do things to fulfill some faith or something. those seeking a "greater" purpose only serve to deflate what meaning can be given to the lives We lead.
I don't find the word 'meaning' very useful since it serves so many purposes in this context. I prefer to think about causality. What I do or don't do is governed by how I think my actions will effect myself and those people and things around me. I assess whether those potential impacts are good or bad according to what I think is good or bad. As to whether those effects actually matter, I think that depends on locality. For me it's a slam dunk that actions do matter when space and time locality are restricted to this planet and the near future (i.e. 1-2 generations from now). Actions I take can effect those near to me, but they can also act a distance of a few thousand miles. I'm part of a social structure and how I act is part of how that structure acts and that social structure has a significant impact on how generations evolve. Actions I take can effect the environment and by extension, the environment can effect things and people far from me. If I extend that and look at the implications of actions I take across vast tracts of
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...oh, and I don't think my actions would have less significant causality if they were the result of having faith. I don't think peoples acts are less or more important or have less or more meaning just because they have a different frame of reference to others.
Is it fair to ask this kind of a question, and not answer it yourself? :)
In the end I think that for me, it comes down to sustainable personal joy.
I have a lot of beliefs, which guide myself in achieving this. Some of these I probably don't even acknowledge, and some might not even be beneficial in the end.. But probably the most prominent of these beliefs, is valuing the sustainable joy of selected other people.
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I don't do what I don't do because I believe it will not lead to said increases or because there are hurdles in the way which I am not willing to push hard enough to knock over.
but thank goodness I don't do things to fulfill some faith or something. those seeking a "greater" purpose only serve to deflate what meaning can be given to the lives We lead.
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In the end I think that for me, it comes down to sustainable personal joy.
I have a lot of beliefs, which guide myself in achieving this. Some of these I probably don't even acknowledge, and some might not even be beneficial in the end.. But probably the most prominent of these beliefs, is valuing the sustainable joy of selected other people.
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