What is life?
 

Just asking everyone opinions about what is life. Please dont say its different for everyone thats not what i am asking. what i am asking is what do you think life is. Also please dont pick apart the question. Yes its a hard question and it has no right answers its all about perception. i am asking about your perception. what do you think life is.

edit: I am all about the socratic methoid so poking holes in other peoples perception is ok but if you do respond to this thread please leave your idea/s on what life is. i am not trying to bash anyone but to protect the posters who have the courage to post their ideas here.

Froggy

Physically, it's when you can respond to external stimuli.

but

Mentally, I think it's when you can know something. Have a conscious thought. That sort of stuff.

So a bacterium is conscious? Or is it not alive?

I am all about the socratic methoid so poking holes in other peoples perception is ok but if you do respond to this thread please leave your idea/s on what life is. i am not trying to bash anyone but to protect the posters who have the courage to post their ideas here.:thumbsup: :) :thumbsup:

Life is one of my favorite cereals.

Life is characterized by the ability to replicate dna, reproduce true, and grow, repair, and maintain itself through internal expansion or maintenance from the ingestion of external nutrients.

My sister in law is a research bio-chemist, and she says there is actually some debate among virologists about whether viruses are alive.

Maybe it is conscious. We don't know. None of us have been a bacterium, so we can't really say.

Life is this inexplicable gift that so many of us fail to cherish until its over and we are left with endless regrets. To explain what life is, or why we are here is to delve into the infinite, something on which we simple humans have a tenuous grasp.
To think you have it figured out is pure arrogance.

Life is the only thing that isn't either death or absence of life (I love defining things by their opposite). Life is a condition manifested by growth through digestion, reproduction, and the ability to adapt to an environment through changes originating internally. That is organic, so far, but I think it's possible for life to exist in an inorganic form, too.

Inorganic life? Wow.

Life is what we have until we die, the imaginary parts are philosophical.
3LF, being alive must give you a clue.
I do thank you for the poking holes line.

:) just being alive doesnt mean a person knows what life is.

Life to me is a journey (to steal from Buddhism), a journey of experience. Each moment, be it a blissful or a horridly painful moment, should be cherished. It dosnt matter what you do with it, its your life. Your one experience. Even if you do believe in reincarnation you wont rememeber this life in the next.

all I ask from myself is dont interfere with someone’s else’s moment. I may interact but not interfere.
Froggy

To say that it does not matter what one does with their life is extremely general. If I were to kill myself, i would assume you would say that "it's your life. You can do what you want." and this is were i would stop you. you may not care, which is understandable. BUT, my family, would care if i comitted suicide. saying that it does not matter what someone does to their life is showing that you do not care for them, or anyone. Apathy is applied here. and if you are apathetic, to yourself, your friends or kids (especially kids) you are saying that you do not love them. if i had kids, i would hope that i would LOVE them. and i think i would be EXTREMLY upset if my child took his or her life.

if you can kill it, cook it, or kiss it, it's alive.

Bonus points if you can name what that quote is from ;)

zanth

Killing oneself affects everyone around them. Children of a suicide parent are more likely to commit suicide themselves. I my self do not believe in suicide as it prematurely ends ones experience. Remember I said that all experiences must be treasured both the good and the bad. Suicide will also interfere with other people’s experiences not just ones own.

Would I interfere with a person who is going to commit suicide? Maybe. Children under the age of 20, (yes I think people who are under the age of 20 are still kids sorry), I would interfere because they do not understand what death truly is. Kill oneself because a girl/boy friend dumped them is not truly understanding death. That once ended life is completely over. I would also try to stop a person of any age who is under the influence of something be it alcohol or drugs because in my opinion their judgment is impaired. If once they sobered up and still wanted to die then I would try to talk them out of it. I would also remove any object that they could use to kill them selves. i would also try to get help be it law enforcement or medical help. I believe that at this point I am still interacting with a person. But in the end if a person truly wants to die and finds a way then it is their life and their choice. I did my best to try to interact with a person to try and convince them that life is really worth living. If they received all the help possible and the desire to commit suicide is not a medical problem (ie a brain imbalance or other medical affliction) then it is their choice because its their life. Anything else is interference. A person who is terminally ill and wants to die due to the extreme pain I would try to talk them into living as long as possible but no, I would not stop them.


good arguement zanth and thanks for the help with clearing up my point of view but whats your view on life? What do you think life is?

i am unclear about what is being asked here. are you wondering about "life" in a way that operates beneath human representations and so a conception of life that is not anthropomorphic? (one function of this might be to provide a foil relative to which the limits of anthropomorphic representations might be outlined--an operation that is not as easy as you might think at first.)

or is this more a metaphysical question, on the order of "what are we doing here?"

these aren't at all the same question.

roachboy
I left it vague so its open to interpretation. Answer as you wish.

This is like asking "What is Love?" or "What is God?" I used to love discussing all three of these questions, but then I found they are all basically the same (to me) and I'd rather just take each day to enjoy or despise or feel neutral about whatever it is that my consciousness has woken up to that day... call it life, love, or God.

The present moment. That is life, for me.

i'm not sure of my view on life, i don't even know how i would define life. In my life, i try to be truthful. which is really all i try to do. i love my girlfriend, i try to always be truthful to her, i try to be truthful to her parents, and mine. my peers and strangers are no different.(in the case of me being truthful) i guess i go by feelings? i don't know. although, i don't understand how you can define life at the moment. sure, Princeton defines life as "the course of existence of an individual," but i do not know how to regard this as anything other than total crap. i wish i could state what i think life is, but i can't. though, at the moment, all that comes to mind, is "truth" and "trying." my life, at the moment, is a series of tries, in which i hope for the truth.

and a side note, just because this made me think of it... having "goals," are bad... goals imply that you want to own whatever is is. For example, say my "goal" was to be an astronaut. I would then do whatever it takes, within "reason", to be an astronaut. yada yada, i finally become an astronaut. the question i would have to ask myself, if i had this goal, would be "now what?" and then i would have to find another goal. It's almost as if i am searching for something to buy. "i want this(goal) to happen!" then "i will make this happen." and then the excitement. "I made it happen!" and finally comes, "now what?" and it starts all over... i just can't function that way.

Imagine a huge huge hill. No bigger than that. And steeper. Almost a cliff.

On the hill there are rocks. They are bouncing and rolling down the hill.

Some of the rocks have managed to form a careful self-reproducing pattern. They bounce off each other, draw energy from the falling action. Two of these patterns of rocks, if they meet, can force other rocks falling down the hill to form a similar pattern.

That is life. Except there are lots and lots of rocks in even the smallest of the self-reproducing patterns, and our rocks are atoms. The slope is the arrow of time/arrow of enthropy.

On one hand, it is "just rocks". But on the other, the sheer majesty of a pattern that is capable of surviving and harnessing the avalanch is something to be in awe of.

Speaking physically, life is nothing more than a nifty coincidence which allows entropy to be somewhat controlled or managed.

Speaking chemically, life is a way to create and and store energy in the form of chemicals, which may interact to create or destroy more chemicals, all the while appealing to the physical meaning of life.

Speaking biologically, life is the ability to reproduce, and create and/or consume chemical housings of energy, all the while attempting to create more and more efficient entities, while also appealing to the physical use of life.

Speaking through the voice of a human, life is consciousness, and the intrinsic beauty and majesty found in all living things. Life is being able to enjoy music and artistry, as well as the ability to create them.

The meaning of life changes depending on what level of reality your questioning. This is (or these are) the meaning(s) of life as I see it.

Life is the ability to use outside energy, to continue existance and reproduce toward evolution.

Life is so many things. At the base of it, Life is the very beautiful dance of constant death. From the second we are born, we begin to die. We are constantly dying until finally, we go cold. The trick is to dance. A candle is the most beautiful just before it is snuffed out, and that is what we need to capture in life.

Life is chaos. There is no order of events, no calendar to plan life to. There is nothing separating one day from being absolutely incredible and then incredibly mediocre, and then nothing following the next day from being a sharp end as a bus turns a corner too fast and crushes you.

Life is scary. So many talk about risks and taking them, but if you ever come to see those risks you might find it harder. From moving out to take on life (a very foolish notion, by the way. You are to life what a twelve year old girl is to Mike Tyson) to marriage to having children to trying to be successful, life is great at tripping you up. And once you stumble, you become afraid of what falling is like.

But most of all...Life is beautiful. It's scary as hell, completely chaotic and the path of death, but that's what makes it beautiful. Everything changes and nothing changes back, so what you see and experience will always be special to you.

And that, to me, is life.

One can generally define living things by their ability to maintain homeostasis, organize, adapt and respond to stimuli, grow and reproduce, and metabolize through some means of consuming energy.

At least, this is the case for a great deal of biological life on Earth. I get the feeling that as our knowledge of biology increases, we'll continually have to redefine just what it is we mean by "life." I tend to identify living things as some sort of system that actively responds to their environment in ways that facilitate the continuation of their species.

Life is a sport, drink it up!