[ExI] The meaning of life revisited

[BillK]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> A few months ago I asked the list for opinions about the meaning of life for
> an upcoming book chapter. The book, Transhumanism and Religion: Moving into
> an Unknown Future, eds. Tracy Trothen and Calvin Mercer, Praeger 2014.
> http://abc-clio.com/product.aspx?id=2147553420 , is still a few months away.
> However, I thought the list might like to see a preprint of the chapter:
> http://www.aleph.se/papers/Meaning%20of%20life.pdf
>
>

Your other post sparked a thought.

How much of life is housekeeping?
i.e. just surviving can take up a lot of time and resources.

Possibly it is only in fairly recent times that humans have had the
luxury of spare time to wonder about the meaning of life. Even now I
suspect a quite small percentage have this luxury.

Eating, sleeping, working, takes up a lot of time. Add in
self-defence, repairing property, healthcare, family activities,
entertainment, texting, status updates, socialising, etc. and there
are precious few minutes left for meaning search.

That's why people weighed down by the practicalities of life say -
"When I hear 'culture'...I unlock my revolver!"

BillK