In response to a previous thread, I think I have figured out the reason to live.

[lawtonfogle]

Basically, it could be 4 things, your religion, love, personal success, and making the world better.

Love could be broken into love for the special one, love for family, and love for friends. (by love, this involves love for and from).

But then this happens
religion = love for God (or if you are of a different religion, insert name)
personal success = love for self (this is not bad)
making the world a better place = general love for others


So then, it all can be condenced into one word, Love.

The reason to live, Love.

 

[lawtonfogle]

I do understand this is a very crude out line, but I am hoping to turn this into a paper.

 

[dr.p]

What about the people that just live because they're alive? The people that live for personal entertainment/fulfillment, as opposed to success? The people that don't know why they choose to live (yes, they exist ?

I have three classifications: Living for Self, Living for Something other than Self, Living for Nothing in Particular

Like a color table, however, these can and do blend together.

If you don't mind my asking, how did you form these classifications?

EDIT - Actually, I might add a 4th class -- Living for Every Reason.

 

[lawtonfogle]

What about the people that just live because they're alive? The people that live for personal entertainment/fulfillment, as opposed to success? The people that don't know why they choose to live (yes, they exist ?

I have three classifications: Living for Self, Living for Something other than Self, Living for Nothing in Particular

Like a color table, however, these can and do blend together.

If you don't mind my asking, how did you form these classifications?

EDIT - Actually, I might add a 4th class -- Living for Every Reason.

maybe living for fun would be living for self, (some consirder it a success to have fun). As for nothing in particular, could they be said to live just becuase they don't have a reason to die.

 

[dr.p]

maybe living for fun would be living for self, (some consirder it a success to have fun).

Could be, I guess. Maybe drug addicts / alcoholics would be a better example. Someone who's only purpose, day-in and day-out, is to get high. Which of your classifications do they fit in? I imagine Personal Success would be the closest, but you must admit they're only succeeding in bringing their life to an end more quickly.

As for nothing in particular, could they be said to live just becuase they don't have a reason to die.

Yes. Apathetic would probably be nearest.

 

[psychedelicist]

Don't just stop at "love". Now we gotta find out just why we feel love.

According to howstuffwork.com love is a survival instinct used to generate a bond between the two mates to ensure that they can successfully procreate and raise a new generation. The mechanism for this is a mixture of a few different chemicals. Oxytocin, which, according to the wikipedia article, does this:

• Inducing maternal behaviour – Sheep and rat females given oxytocin antagonists after giving birth do not exhibit typical maternal behavior such as grooming towards newborns. Conversely, virgin sheep females show maternal behavior towards foreign lambs upon cerebrospinal fluid infusion of oxytocin, which they would not do otherwise.
• Thought to induce pair bonding in people. Levels of oxytocin are found to be higher amongst people who claim to be falling in love. It is also thought to mediate other forms of pair bonding such as friendship and family relationships as given above. Reduction of sociophobic behavior was shown after treatment with oxytocin.
• Nasally administered oxytocin appears to generate trust in humans. In a 2005 study, it was shown that in a risky investment game, experimental subjects given the hormone displayed what the researchers deemed "the highest level of trust" twice as often as the control group who were given placebos. The same experiment with the subjects told that they were interacting with a computer showed no such reaction, leading to the conclusion that oxytocin was not merely affecting risk-aversion (Kosfeld 2005)

Oxytocin is the main chemical responsible but according to the article other neurotransmitters such as dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and testosterone and estrogen play a role in love as well.

So, looking one level deeper we find tha twe love in order to fulfill our evolutionary instinct to procreate and perpetuate the species. The question is, do we stop here, and chalk the reason to live up to fulfilling our instincts? Or can we look deeper and find a reason why we are given evolutionary instincts before?

 

[lawtonfogle]

Don't just stop at "love". Now we gotta find out just why we feel love.

According to howstuffwork.com love is a survival instinct used to generate a bond between the two mates to ensure that they can successfully procreate and raise a new generation. The mechanism for this is a mixture of a few different chemicals. Oxytocin, which, according to the wikipedia article, does this:

• Inducing maternal behaviour – Sheep and rat females given oxytocin antagonists after giving birth do not exhibit typical maternal behavior such as grooming towards newborns. Conversely, virgin sheep females show maternal behavior towards foreign lambs upon cerebrospinal fluid infusion of oxytocin, which they would not do otherwise.
• Thought to induce pair bonding in people. Levels of oxytocin are found to be higher amongst people who claim to be falling in love. It is also thought to mediate other forms of pair bonding such as friendship and family relationships as given above. Reduction of sociophobic behavior was shown after treatment with oxytocin.
• Nasally administered oxytocin appears to generate trust in humans. In a 2005 study, it was shown that in a risky investment game, experimental subjects given the hormone displayed what the researchers deemed "the highest level of trust" twice as often as the control group who were given placebos. The same experiment with the subjects told that they were interacting with a computer showed no such reaction, leading to the conclusion that oxytocin was not merely affecting risk-aversion (Kosfeld 2005)

Oxytocin is the main chemical responsible but according to the article other neurotransmitters such as dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and testosterone and estrogen play a role in love as well.

So, looking one level deeper we find tha twe love in order to fulfill our evolutionary instinct to procreate and perpetuate the species. The question is, do we stop here, and chalk the reason to live up to fulfilling our instincts? Or can we look deeper and find a reason why we are given evolutionary instincts before?

I have read that article. But love is something more than that, in my own opinion. I know what science says, and I don't disagree with it. But there are things that could make up love that we don't know about. It's like gravity, simple things that pulls one thing towards another on the surface, complicated thing the influences the flow of time and is one of the four fundamental forces on the deep level. Maybe we have yet to find it for love. I just believe there is something more to what we as humans feel, for the human is out evoling evolution. (we now change the environment to us instead of vice versa). Could this be messing with our sense to procreated. Also then, how could homosexuality fit in all of this?

 

[elman]

Basically, it could be 4 things, your religion, love, personal success, and making the world better.

Love could be broken into love for the special one, love for family, and love for friends. (by love, this involves love for and from).

But then this happens
religion = love for God (or if you are of a different religion, insert name)
personal success = love for self (this is not bad)
making the world a better place = general love for others


So then, it all can be condenced into one word, Love.

The reason to live, Love.

 

[Prometheus_ash]

I have read that article. But love is something more than that, in my own opinion. I know what science says, and I don't disagree with it. But there are things that could make up love that we don't know about. It's like gravity, simple things that pulls one thing towards another on the surface, complicated thing the influences the flow of time and is one of the four fundamental forces on the deep level. Maybe we have yet to find it for love. I just believe there is something more to what we as humans feel, for the human is out evoling evolution. (we now change the environment to us instead of vice versa). Could this be messing with our sense to procreated. Also then, how could homosexuality fit in all of this?

Homosexuality existed before humans had the ability to significantly manipulate their environments. It can be found to exist in animals in nature as well, suggesting that at least part of the reason people/animals that are homosexual are that way because of environmental and genetic factors.

Seocndly, I believe part of the point is that psychedelicist was making, is that love can be reduced to a chemical understanding of instinct, and if that is the case, it raises the question why you should place a higher emphasis on that chemical instinct over another.

All reasons one chooses to live are going to be subjective, because what matters to individuals changes from individual to individual and preference to preference. Reasons to live, must be inheriently subjective to the individual, and tailored to that individual.