[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Well, I don't know either. I am not a wise man. I only have answers to my existential problems — and the solutions are simple to me and me alone. I don't have the answers to someone else's problems. In any case, your life is for you to live, not for me to decide. The best I can offer is counsel based on my own experiences. Whether you choose to listen to my advice is, however, your choice to make.

What is property? Property is what we own. I contend that the only thing we own is our dignity. No one can steal your self-respect unless you let him.

So if a pickpocket makes off with your wallet, he's not a thief? Though my question referenced a less obvious problem: how do you own land? It's not like someone put it there. How do you own the fruit of a tree that grows on a land?

How do we balance our duties to society with our rights? Before we can govern a country, we must first govern a province. Before we can govern a province, we must first govern a town. Before we can govern a town, we must first govern a family. Before we can govern a family, we must first govern ourselves. Before we can govern ourselves, we must first govern our minds. Therefore, train your mind. The right balance will eventually reveal itself.

How do you find an answer? By training your mind. Not very useful.

If knowledge is experience, then do more, think less. More action, more experience, therefore more learning gets done. But if the world exists as will and representation, then we are what we think, therefore endeavour to think as properly as you can.

I actually agree with that... which is why I disagree with atheists "having" to define anything, or think about the meaning of their lives. It's enough to live. The rest can take care of itself.

(It also means that revelation is an intensely personal experience. Every individual is unique. Likewise his perspective of the world and reality.)

Regarding my dislike for complicated answers to the Meaning Of Life^tm, I like the moral of this apocryphal story:

You said :

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

For atheists, the challenge is a lot greater. You have to define everything from scratch. What's good, what's evil. What is worth celebrating, what should be condemned.

And then, when I said I couldn't define anything:

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Try harder. Or rather, you don't have to try that hard. Life is "complex" because, sometimes, we think too much.

I take your dislike of complicated answers a step further: it is my contention that we don't have to give any sort of answer. Philosophy's a luxury, not a necessity. Furthermore, I think that any answer simple enough to be formulated is wrong and most probably useless.

Unless, of course, some genius comes along and makes sense of it all, like Kepler and Newton made sense of the movements of the stars. They were, of course, wrong. But not nearly as wrong as their predecessors. And what they said ultimately changed our vision of the world, and thus our world itself.

And to me, life is simple because we neglect a lot of things. Like calculating the trajectories of planets by counting only the sun and neglecting Jupiter. It's not necessarilly illegitimate. But it can be unstatisfactory, and it's certainly not looking at the truth.