The Meaning of Life

Why am I here	ie - how is it you were born where and when you were, offspring of those two parents, in these circumstances. Are you unhappy with your lot? Given you have internet access you're ahead of billions - depending on your definition of "ahead" of course. Why are some born into a charmed life and some not? Again, if there actually isn't anyone doing that kind of admin, nor a life-chances police protecting the right we ought to have to a life with as much potential as the next guy's (there goes your interenet if there were) life will be unfair - which is what we witness. And yours? Instead of asking, "why was I parachuted into this life?" where the I is somehow independent of the life, isn't it just simpler to recognise that you are the life that was born then, there and of them and what you're experiencing now (your life) is what followed? ie - a sheep shouldn't ask, "why am I not a dog?" when its parents were one sheep and another sheep. And after all, to quote T F Eccles, "Everybody gotta be somwhere".
Creativity	Can a robot compose a symphony? Can a robot turn a blank canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? asks detective Spooner of Sony in the movie I, Robot. Artistic expression and appreciation couldn't happen without a soul. How is that accepted a priori? We'll dodge animals completely despite them making a whole bunch of sound and spectacle - even though some may find more to value in that than the beatbox on a street corner. Maybe animals have souls, just little ones. Why do few of us create then? Different types of soul? Skip that - that's asking what the angels on the pinhead had for lunch. Maybe we all can but environment, opportunity, training, inclination bring just few on to it. Of course - depends on the definition of "create" too - TV Editors do it, kids with paint do it, even educated chimps do it. But say knock up a tune - an example I choose as I can draw on experience. Not a symphony by any means, but enough that others have commented positively on the results. Did I use a soul? Don't think so. In fact the process was a destructive one. The ideas came from the collision of the music I like with my trying to produce something similar and then repeatedly rejecting the outcomes until I could put up with what remained. Then with some music theory building on that with more of the review and reject routine until I had had enough of that particular piece and thought it would pass. No creative spark necessary. Course - maybe Mozart used his soul and I didn't. Or maybe his brain was better equipped for the task and given that there is no brain police making sure all brains are the same that seems more likely than having this whole other aspect to the Universe where we have a soul. Which we can't detect. But it affects our material self. Somehow.
Group Identity	Herd mentality, crowd behaviour - shoals of fish, flocks of birds, swarms of bees - who organises that then? The tricky part is how a group appears to act as one object while comprising individuals each with their own capacity for choice in behaviour - so we say. We can construct models of how individuals sharing a similar environment and stimuli may tend to behave in similar ways and those ahead in the goup may communicate how they behave to those behind who can then anticipate what's coming. That doesn't explain the collective sigh as the announcer regretfully announces a further delay to the captives in a train - nor the sense of shared experience when that happens. Perhaps when the stimulus is simple, here, being delayed, we will all ract in broadly the same way and project our feelings on the group. But it could be simpler - if we accept that we are only ever witnessing our bodies reacting to an environment there's no problem with identifying at different hierarchies as no one has to organise the stimuli on the crowd and on the individual to illicit a consistent response. It's just one stimulus.
There's probably no god	There's probably no god Dawkins, Dawkins, where are your balls? Is there "probably" no Santa Claus? Scientific truth, all that, sure. But is that meant to be a marketing campaign? Really?
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