Member Skype #28 Warmup – Stories, Meaning & Purpose
This is the Warmup thread for Member Skype Call #28, which is focused on stories, meaning, and purpose.
This discussion topic is an excellent suggestion from Russell: An open session for canvassing the way we view ourselves and the world around us.
For information about MSC 27, see the following post:
My own skeptical approach to the stories we are given can be ‘exciting’ at first, but often I hear from people that they eventually find it tiring, jading, even ‘depressing’.
After all, our lives are built upon stories, which are repeated to us over and over from the moment we enter the world.
We evolved from bacteria. We live on a giant spinning ball. Our experts have discovered lots of extinct, gigantic lizard-birds, buried just beneath the surface. Our sun is a giant ball of gas, and the only reason why there is life on earth is because this rock happens to sit in the ‘goldilocks zone’^, and thanks to the wonders of technology, now humans are living longer and healthier lives…
^Trolololol. These guys are pro trolls.
Okay, so we snap out of that nonsense. We turn to ‘independent researchers’, even the ‘truth movement’ for new explanations, for better answers to the eternal question: ‘why?’…
Now we learn that the pyramids are actually thousands upon thousands of years older than we are being told, and they were built by an advanced civilisation, possibly from outer space, and the ancient Mayans had a calendar, predicting the future, and thanks to the internet, now we are going to take down teh evil elites by exposing muh pizzagates, and we had better do it soon, because nuclear war could break out in the blink of an eye…
Okay, so now we learn that this is all complete and utter nonsense, too.
Great.
Just great.
Where does that leave us? What are we to make of this thing we call ‘reality’? How do we give meaning to our everyday lives? Why do we even bother?
Well hopefully at least one other person will join me on Sunday, and we can bounce some ideas off of each other.
I for one am optimistic about my own personal future, and cannot remember being less concerned about the state of the world, than I feel at this very moment.
In fact, I have been slowly hinting at some of my own explanations regarding what might be ‘going on’ for some time now.
See for example:
MSC #06 – Higher Intelligence? (4-Feb-2018)
And if my own interpretation of reality is a fair one, then I have absolutely nothing to fear from any body or any thing.
I wish I could say that, according to my interpretation, nobody else has anything to fear, either — but this is not necessarily the case…
In any event, what is your interpretation of what is going on here? What stories give your life meaning? Do we even need stories to lead purposeful existences?
How much weight do we give our own memories? Should we spend any time at all reflecting on our own narratives, the visions we have of the story arcs of our lives?
So many questions, so little time…
See you on Sunday (Australia time), friends 🙂