Hw 30

What are the sources of this sense of meaninglessness but also of the need for a sense of meaning?

What is meaningless to this world? Are humans meaningful to this planet? How so? I agree “that humans seem to overwhelmingly share a sense of emptiness, or a hole that needs to be filled.” Just like being able to have the same emotions for certain events, all humans have some emptiness that lingers within them selves. Even though they do not like the feeling of having this emptiness within themselves, they still seem to carry it. The big question here is what actually causes this feeling, the feeling to be lonely and hollow from the inside. This later on leads to “fitting in” and trying to distract this feeling of hollowness that we all have inside us. Most of it has to do with the lack of care and respect for an individual. “We feel meaningless because of the lack of care and nurture received from our parents.” (Henry, 12/18/09) If a child is raised with parents by the side, not only in certain times like while tucking them into bed or providing the child with money, they may not have such a great sense of meaninglessness. Instead they should receive care with some one providing them love all the time; they shouldn’t be left with a baby sitter to take care of them. If they receive this type of care then the child may not have such a big sense of emptiness. There is emptiness contained within everyone, but it varies on how big the space of emptiness has taken over one.

“When people feel like they have no meaning or purpose to their life, they often play the victim or take self pity… People make up excuses to help answer questions that have no answers.” (Mcgraw, Phil) To make this sense of meaninglessness to go away we all try to ignore it by trying to fill up the space with something else. Now it varies on what someone wants to fill this space up with. Some people take the not so great route of using drugs to make them feel as if they mean something to this world. But this feeling of being superior only lasts for a limited time period. Another way to fill up this space is by creating friends and having a social life so that one cannot remember the feeling all the time. Other people do other things such as leisure activities: sports, reading, painting, etc… Back to the quote, the feeling of meaninglessness makes the individual feel trapped. No matter what, this feeling is always with us and never seems to go away. Even when people try to ignore it and try to fill up the space with other things, the feeling is still there, it is a permanent felling that will stay with us forever.

The big question that pops up in ones life at some time is: what is the meaning of life? Nobody has the clear answer to this question yet, but philosophers are eager to find out. One of the earliest philosophers was Plato. “In Platonism, the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, which is the Idea (Form) of the Good…Human beings are duty-bound to pursue the good, but no one can succeed in that pursuit without philosophical reasoning, which allows for true knowledge.” (Wikipedia) There are always different goals for everyone in life. In Plato’s mind the way to live a meaningful life is to attain the highest form of knowledge. But what if these goals are not met? Is this the reason for why so many of us have a sense of meaninglessness?