purpose

[ajschumacher]

the lure of simple, full-confidence purposes, like cults, causes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purpose_Driven_Life, etc.

see also https://planspace.org/20201107-how_to_live_on_24_hours_a_day/

[ajschumacher]

"Work is the goal of life"

https://www.davidsongifted.org/search-database/entry/a10030

[ajschumacher]

"But personally, I still feel there's a big difference, in some emotional sense, between "we go on forever" and "we don't." Nima Arkani-Hamed feels the same way. "At the absolute, absolute deepest level ... whether or not people explicitly admit to thinking about it or not (and if they don't they're all the poorer for it) ... If you think there is a purpose to life, then I at least don't know how to find one that doesn't connect to something that transcends our little mortality," he tells me. "I think a lot of people at some level—again, either explicitly or implicitly—will do science or art or something because of the sense that you do get to transcend something. You touch something eternal. That word, eternal: very important. It's very, very, very important."" (page 207, The End of Everything, by Mack)

[ajschumacher]

"It is important to me to have something big and external, not inside myself, that I can devote my life to. Gauss and Goya and Shakespeare and Paganini are excellent, their excellence gives me pleasure, and I admire and envy them. They were also dedicated human beings. Excellence is for the few but dedication is something everybody can have—should have—and without it life is not worth living." (pages 321-322, Halmos, I want to be a mathematician)

[ajschumacher]

"When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure." — Viktor Frankl

https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish/status/1438134450588639233?s=20

[ajschumacher]

This NYT article is largely about people making Trump their purpose in life:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/trump-voters-2020-election.html

it refs this paper:

Exposure to authoritarian values leads to lower positive affect, higher negative affect, and higher meaning in life https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256759 (emphasis added)

[ajschumacher]

[The Religion of] Workism Is Making Americans Miserable https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/

The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.

“We’ve created this idea that the meaning of life should be found in work,” says Oren Cass, the author of the book The Once and Future Worker.

[ajschumacher]

"... the reality and ultimate goal of what we have fondly called progress, ..." (Henry George, in Essence of Progress and Poverty, page 26)

[ajschumacher]

The question of life's meaning is a difficult problem which cannot be solved. So, too, is the question, "Why did God send us into this world?" But the meaning of life becomes very simple when a person asks himself, "What should I do?"

Your life may be cut down at any time; therefore, your life should have a deep purpose, a significance that will not depend on whether it is short or long.

There is only one way, if you want to live without understanding the meaning of your life: to become addicted to tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, and to live in the world of permanent entertainment.

Tolstoy, Calendar of Wisdom, November 23, page 340