How do you personally make time for gaming?

[Opa Opa]

Well I'm glad to have that clarified.

even though I don't 100% agree with you.

[AppleQueso]

Honestly all of this is veering way too close to some darker thoughts that've been floating around my head lately so I really probably shouldn't be reading this thread.

Got nothing better to do though

[Exhuminator]

It is easier, perhaps, to recognize that "meaning something" is subjective at best and nigh impossible at worst...and to just do what one wants instead.

The nihilistic mindset says that doing something and doing nothing are both without purpose. Thus if one wishes to seek meaningful purpose in one's life, that is no less logical an existence than one who is seeking no meaningful purpose. For either to decry the other is hypocritical from a true nihilistic standpoint, because ultimately they are means to the same deathly end. Be the president of the USA or be a welfare recipient, both are equally meaningless.

The problem I have with this outlook is one of experience. Even if our lives are finite blips in the ether, the experiences our lives give us during that time should not be disregarded so easily as nihilism advocates. While "meaning" may be subjective in its intent, if one replaces "meaning" with "experience" that changes the formula.

In that regard, a man who spends his life doing nothing but playing video games has had less of an experienced life, versus a man who traveled the world, had a partner and children, and left behind a body of work for others to enjoy. Upon his death bed the inexperienced man cannot objectively say that his life was just as enjoyable as the experienced man, because the inexperienced man did not experience the same things as the experienced man in which to contrast his own life against. The inexperienced man may say that it was all meaningless anyway. But he cannot know for sure if he has robbed himself of truer living joys, because he purposefully avoided other experiences thinking the joys of his youth were of equal or greater value as more complex joys available in adulthood. It's as simple as saying, "Eating apples is meaningless" without ever having ate an apple. You cannot objectively say eating an apple is meaningless, when you've only philosophized about the experience of eating an apple to begin with.

I don't want this to appear as if I'm attacking MrPopo's life decisions. I am not. He's a cool guy and I respect him. I do not think anyone here is better than anyone else, nor one philosophy necessarily more logical than another. I am only explaining my own personal outlook on the matter, and a small bit about my own issues with nihilism.

[dsheinem]

This guy gets it.

I should add that just because I can explain your view doesn't mean I hold to it in totality. There are elements that I concur with, but it leans a bit too close to hedonism (at the expense of the social good) for my liking...

[dsheinem]

You can't just sub out "meaning" and "experience". Totally different animals.

[Exhuminator]

You can't just sub out "meaning" and "experience". Totally different animals.

That's why I took meaning out of the equation and started talking about experience instead.

[dsheinem]

You can't just sub out "meaning" and "experience". Totally different animals.

That's why I took meaning out of the equation and started talking about experience instead.

Right...but you did so as a way to critique a philosophy of meaning.

[Exhuminator]

Right...but you did so as a way to critique a philosophy of meaning.

Stop being hung up on semantics and look at the bigger picture I painted bud.

[dsheinem]

semantics is meaning

[Blu]

Hey you two, this is what you both sound like right now:



Meaning. Existence. Purpose. Semantics.