Meaning. Ah, I mean, Death.
From Telkoth.net
well, as usual an "interesting" topic came up, and it distracted us from the actual topic at hand. We were supposed to be talking about death... you know: ignoring any pain that may or may not be associated with dying, should we fear death, should people live forever, etc, etc. Today we assumed that there wasn't an after-life - that death was final, and absolute, and oblivion, however when we talked about living forever the assumptions there were allowed some blurring...
anyway, the problem came in in that there was also the question of: given that death is final, is life meaningless. Philosophy Circle turned into a big debate on what meaning was, and does a rock sitting somewhere have meaning - do you need a sentient observer to have meaning. Bla, bla. Stephen started drawing this long vine thing that grew from one of the overview's bulleted point's bullet. I recommended some leaves and flowers and things once the page around the text was full, and it really turned out to be quite pretty, which has about as much to do with death as the argument around us at the time had to do with death, so I didn't feel so bad.
I think the problem was that we had one very opinionated new fellow who found that he had a long-time-comer's support arguing against a guy who was only moderately skilled at expressing his ideas. Well, and in all fairness, lots of the "long-time-comers" like to throw around all words and terminology, which is too bad, because this circle of philosophers is not supposed to assume any sort of philosophy class attendance.
On a good note, I was reminded again about existentialism. I learned about it first in high school, and loved it then, and mostly forgot about it until tonight when someone brought it up, and then I remembered how much I love it. And because I don't want to assume you remember existentialism, it mostly boils down to "do what you want - life only has the meanings you give it."
By the way, I loved Henry David Thoreau, or however you want to order all his names.
Anyway, I've got bed to think about. Outta' here.
