If you read my previous post on other place I asked about dating and most responses sounded like it was nice. Yes, I’m aware that relationships are not only good times (I’ve seen my mother being tired of her partner and scared of my father) but when you have literally NOTHING in your life you can’t help to idolising the things you never had…
I don’t think that’s weird, but it’s definitely sad
When I wrote “I wonder whether all species or even just one actually have a (shared) purpose? As humans couldn’t we all just try to find our own?” I was trying to say that I don’t see a species or all species as obviously having a purpose. Basically stating that what you said in the following quote is not a given to me.
And that I see species very similarly to the way you see life here:
If it comes up again it might be best to use the same definition for ‘life’ I personally like the one from Wikipedia: Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not.
A species is only one possible configuration of life that produces similar copies of itself. What would give a species its purpose of thriving as a whole? If you ask me it just does, just like simpler systems also try to find a balance.
I’ve just realized that I made an error assuming that an individual having a purpose and their species having a purpose would be mutually exclusive. Though I do find the possibility of a species wide purpose for one to fulfill slightly constraining though I suppose it can be pretty permissive.
I think we pretty much agree here.
Whether or not we have free will is something have not been able to decide for myself but it seems unlikely that it would require us to be able to control the reactions in our brains. Unless you really want to I would rather not open that whole new can of worms. Anyway I think there’s nothing stopping whatever we are from being what we seem to want.
The personal desire seems impossible to answer. I’m also not sure how a bee could find its own individual purpose and I find likely that it is incapable of comprehending it. But could a beekeeper or even the bee’s environment assign it an individual purpose (maybe less applicable to a bee than other species but I hope I’m making myself clear).
Thank you very much, it’s nice to hear that. :)
I’m very much enjoying this back and forth so far.
Edit: Fixed formatting lol