From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 10:05:35 -0700 (PDT)
To: red <rednax@tm.net.my>
Subject: Re: Don't ask why, thank you. [NOISE]
Message-ID: <326A5B27.75BD@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


red wrote:
> Why?  Date: 20th October 1996.
> The purpose of life,... is not to be found. I have been pursuing
> this thought and question to many of the people I have met in the past
> few weeks. Sad enough to report that I have found no answers or clues
> that if anyone ever know what it is or could be. One thing for sure is
> material and physical objects are close to replacing the purpose, the
> real purpose if there is one.

[remainder deleted]

You could ask yourself, as a technical matter of some importance, just
how you came to be thinking about purpose, or about it in the way that
you think about it, i.e., was the thought developed in you through
bombardment from "philosophical" sources, or did you actually develop it
independently?  Try to track that down and deconstruct it, and it will
help in getting a handle on the issues you want to look at.

On the other hand, you could try what I call the Consciousness
Experiment. Intelligent persons have argued (contrary to the notions of
certain religious philosophies and possibly even quantum physicists)
that there is no *free will*, since all *things* are fully predictable,
given sufficient detachment from the universe being studied, and
sufficient resources to analyze the motions of all particles, waves,
and/or other constructs.

In the Consciousness Experiment, you get up every day and attempt to do
something *good* for which you have absolutely no motivation, kinda like
a "Mother Teresa act" or whatever.  Use your imagination.  The goal is
to separate your "purely altruistic" (for sake of argument, whether this
is real or not) acts from your base acts, i.e., eating, sleeping, and
even loving (in the sense of attachment to particular persons as opposed
to living beings or "earth things" as a whole).

If you can stay focused on the goal, to "prove" that you truly are a
sentient being and not just a living-flesh motivation-driven automaton,
then eventually you will have an answer of sorts to your question, but
with your mind in a different frame of reference or perspective, I
believe you'll be somewhat amused at your original posting on this
topic, assuming you keep a copy around.