Eps 1383: what is the life
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
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Host
Ken Chavez
Podcast Content
Life is every aspect of existence that is a process that works, reacts, evaluates and develops through growth, reproduction and metabolism. Cells are compartments that contain biochemical processes. The influential cell theory, developed between 1837 and 1838, states that all living beings consist of cells and that cells are the fundamental unit of life.
A crucial difference between life and non-life is that life uses energy to develop the physical and conscious self unlike non-living things. Living beings need energy to maintain their internal organization and homeostasis and to evoke other phenomena related to life. Death is the permanent termination of biological processes that sustain an organism, such as the end of its life.
Scientists, technicians and others engaged in life research distinguish between living matter, inert matter and dead matter but no one can provide a comprehensive and concise definition of life itself. Life consists of individuals, living beings, and assignable groups of taxa. No entity is a self-contained thing, which means that the word functions only at the level of the entity, the individual organism, artificial intelligence, or life on this planet.
To my surprise, most of the people I talk to about the meaning of life tell me that they themselves do not believe that life has any meaning. Because most people are unaware of the many things about life with which we are connected, they experience life in an opaque way. The biological processes of life are something we can explain at a certain point, but there is no awareness of life as a human experience.
Most people who complain about the futility of their lives find it difficult to explain why they take the concept of meaning so seriously. What seems to provoke their irrelevance is a particular kind of discontent. The life of loved ones, as I have already mentioned, is perhaps the most elusive human encounter.
The purpose of life is to pursue human prosperity through communication, understanding and service. Many of the most important things in life are born of love, and we love things, others and ourselves.
We can give meaning to life by not waiting for it to give us meaning, just as millions of people have given meaning to their lives by giving meaning to their lives. We can turn our responsibility into a game or develop a smartphone app that rewards people for doing useful things, but life exists because millions of good decisions were made millions of years ago. Nothing has ever happened in life that could have happened to you if you had not been busy making other plans, and God does not allow bad things to happen to people who let it happen.
This proves to be an important argument against those who believe a soul reduces life to meaning or that those who want a meaningful life prefer the physical world or at least one in which people are mortals. On the contrary, the soul is the centre of everything, and no one who has had a soul can put it in a certain state that makes life meaningful, because God does not exist. We have not asked the question of the meaning of life, and the answer is missing.
Today many people believe that we humans are the creation of a being called God and that God has an intelligent purpose in forming us, and that purpose is the meaning of life. I was surprised to find that the most immediate definition of life is the idea that, if you ask me, there is a consensus and an answer that is repeated over and over again: life.
The most important thing to take away from this discussion is that meaningful experiences and definitions of what makes sense vary: some people find significant life-changing meaning in every situation while others shrug their shoulders and carry on with their lives. There is an ongoing debate about how to analyze the concept of meaning of life and define the term "food", but the field remains well placed to make progress on other key issues, namely what makes life meaningful and whether life actually makes sense. There are many questions that need to be asked, but one thing is certain: you never stop learning and life never stops being amazing.
The three-component theory of meaning of life is relatively new, but it is a promising step towards a broader understanding of what meaning means to man. The above-mentioned characteristics for life are growth and reproductive processes, adaptability, metabolism, chemical reactions and energy-driven biological activity. This narrow definition excludes peripheral cases, but a broader definition would allow us to include a wider range of potential life forms in our popular definition by dropping Trifonov's inclusion of self-propagation, allowing immortal AI that does not require replication, and NASA's requirements for chemical systems that allow organisms to carry no genes or DNA-like molecules.
According to influential arguments, lower goods such as animal pleasure, desire and satisfaction exist only for God, while higher goods concern the meaning of life, moral virtue and what does not.