Matter

[mockney piers]

Does anything matter?

Really?

[silverfox]

Depends what you mean by matter.

[Loz]

Hard Friday night in the pub, MP?

[maxxi]

Whassamatter you? (hey!)

Gotta no respect (hey!)

usw......

[DJKillaQueen]

no.....nothing really matters.....

[StraferJack]

Matter to you? Or to the Big Wide Picture.

If it's the latter why would you care, but if it's the former then pretty much everything should matter do varying degrees.

(albeit in a modern video game way where you can take multiple hits before dying so it can FEEL like it doesn't matter - but ultimately it does)

[mockney piers]

I guess the corollary to the 'is there a god' thread is that if there isn't then there is no meaning to anything.

The intellectual part of me is capable of being ok with that, the emotional one gets why we need 'something more' especially when awaiting the impending and untimely loss of family and friends.

I 'get' that we imbue our lives and our relationships with meaning by their very nature, but I guess without some sort of still centre by which to measure everything else from, and given the intrinsically fleeting nature of our existence, it's all, well, meaningless, it doesn't matter.

Or does it, does it matter if some historian rifles through my life or if somehow I leave some sort of legacy...I dunno, no answer to this thread anymore than there is for its freakish sister thread.

[DJKillaQueen]

This is something I struggled with when my mother died. My mother believed wholeheartedly in GOD, afterlife, reincarnation, but had a very difficult life, half of it wrecked by poor health and arthritis. I in turn want to belive there is something bigger than all of us but it just doesn't make sense when you lose someone who mattered so much to you. Almost three years on from that I still don't have an answer.....but I do feel the gap, every single day. I think if you have nothing to live for then nothing really matters. If however you have plenty to live for and esp if you have children then many things matter, for them, if nothing else.

[Marmora Man]

What matters is that you replicate your selfish gene. That is the point of your "being". However, human kind has evolved to a point where we can worry about what matters - you seem to be describing an angst that, historically, has led to the formulation of religions. As an atheist I'd say it doesn't matter that I'll die, it doesn't matter that there is no god (small g) and, frankly, it doesn't matter if no one remembers me in 100 years time.

Just enjoy the now, revel in your family and friends, eat good food, drink good wine, take long walks in the country, be awed by nature and avoid philosophy.

[mockney piers]

This one I don't get, that the gene replication 'matters' is imbuing meaning. Surely it doesn't matter whether or not my gene is passed on.

Suggesting that there is import in the continuation of life or that there is some significance in pursuing life's imperatives is falling into the same trap, perhaps minus the angst.

It still suggests 'design'.

Not sure really what I'm getting at, I'm not trying to rehash the god thread, I guess I'm just wondering whether our footprints, our echoes, our ripples....well...matter.

[mockney piers]

And I'm absolutely with you on the good fare, family, friendship and....booze... (damn, alliteration failure) thing.

[StraferJack]

Flagons?

[Senor Chevalier]

As replicants what "matters" is proliferation of our selfish genes. We are just vehicles. The fact that we have consciousness is incidental to our selfish genes. In fact they've stuffed up along the way in letting us get as complex as we are as we can now step back and question whether such gene replication matters. In other words the hosts are disobeying the instruction manual, defying animal urges, navel gazing and concluding that gene replication may not matter.

Or something like that.

[maxxi]

SC: As replicants what "matters" is proliferation of our selfish genes.

But this carries a responsibility for the raising and educating (small e) of offspring/replicants which can detract from discovering whether there is or should be meaning. A natural submission to the accepted primary function of all life.

MP: I guess the corollary to the 'is there a god' thread is that if there isn't then there is no meaning to anything.

Correction: No known meaning - as the great philosopher Rumsfeld once said:

? [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns ? the ones we don't know we don't know. ?

Had to wiki the exact quote but as an atheist I find the argument "If not God, then what?" can and should be countered with "I don't know... yet. But I am curious still and have not stopped looking."

[Loz]

mockney piers Wrote:

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> Not sure really what I'm getting at, I'm not trying to rehash the god thread, I guess I'm just

> wondering whether our footprints, our echoes, our ripples....well...matter.

The depressing, and yet rather liberating, truth is that in the bigger picture, no, it doesn't. If you consider that a single human life, in comparison with the size and age of the universe or even the earth, is fleeting and irrelevant. That used to concern me, but now I just find that a release. There is no pressure to leave a legacy - just enjoy your life for yourself.

I am the product of a single given sperm meeting a single given egg. Any number of factors in the life of my parents (which may have meant they may never had met), plus the pure maths of the millions of sperm also around at the moment of my conception means that the odds against me ever existing are just too massive to even put a number to. Just being born means that I won the life lottery. I should spend the prize wisely.

So, in the wider scheme of things, no, our lives don't mean one jot. But personally, you got amazingly lucky just to get the chance to exist, so enjoy the ride as much as you can.

[StraferJack]

you got amazingly lucky just to get the chance to exist, so enjoy the ride as much as you can

I'd just expand this to say the chance to exist right now in late 20th/early 21st century is, percentage wise, especially lucky. I wouldn't choose any other time (although I would quite like to visit some other periods obviously)

[Jeremy]

mockney piers Wrote:

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> It still suggests 'design'.

I'd say it actually suggests evolution more strongly. Any species without strong instincts for survival and procreation wouldn't last long! It's pure natural selection.

The lack of a higher purpose or afterlife doesn't mean that your actions don't matter, it just helps you to focus on the things that matter to you during your short time.

Perhaps in this age of environmental concern (amongst other things), our legacy is more important than ever?

[MissNoodlesHats]

This thread seems to be struggling with 2 things; If there is no god does it matter? and if I die should I leave some legacy or will I be of any significance?

In the present some kind of morality (hopefully) should guide you as to why all the things you do, little decisions you make , matter. They are all cause and effect.

The 2nd question is an internal one , its one of ego and best left for you to battle with. I would suggest its linked to the first question and in order to be at peace with that one you need to get through the 2nd question.....I suspect.

[mockney piers]

Morality was definitely part of the implication of my original question though hadn't really been picked up on until now.

Thanks for the Rummy quote though, always a pleasure.

I quite agree Loz, I guess just in the light of other people's tragedies (I used to be ok with my own demise, though would like to delay it as long as I can now with dependants) I was having a good old ponder.

And Jeremy, I think you misunderstand me. I'm not some creationist here, you can take it as a given that I think evolution is an existing phenomenon, I'm having a pop at the semantics of the language used.

What gets me is that, just as creationists coopt the language of science to gain legitimacy in the modern word, ironically scientific rationalists seem to struggle to describe their world view without resorting to the language of the spiritual.

As above , definitions of evolution are littered with the term 'purpose', 'matter', 'imperative' etc. Dna itself cannot have a purpose (except in the purely utilitarian sense of the word) and cares not whether or not it replicates. But as a paradigm for continuance in one form or another it's clearly a successful one, but then no more so than, say stars who replicate themselves, are born, die and pass on their dna to make increasingly complex versions of themselves, yet noone accuses them of fulfilling a purpose or having an imperative.

Anyway, I'm rambling. In the cold light of a monday morning at the office I can of course see that there is definitely no meaning in anything, especially bad coffee and uncomfortable swivel chairs!!

[maxxi]

There is only one thing in life worse than an uncomfortable swivel chair and that is an uncomfortable chair that doesn't swivel.

[Loz]

I was just watching Russell Howard on TV and he had a quick clip of this bloke. Put a few things into perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciYk-UwqFKA

(Oi, Admin - how come embedding doesn't work anymore?)

[Senor Chevalier]

Yeah, all well and good him being chipper in a promotional DVD but have you seen the stealth footage of him totally losing it when he once got to Sainsbos and found that someone with arms and legs had taken the last NANL space?

[Ridgley]

If I pass away and I don't enter the purley gates, will mean I am fucked:(

[StraferJack]

Anyone who passes through the purley gates, or any other part of purley way is doomed anyway. There is no salvation in that part of Croydon

[Brendan]

Hell I can deal with but if I die and go to Croydon I?m cracking skulls!