Purpose of Life
o1 Pro.icon
The following is a summary of the entire dialogue so far, rereading and organizing the statements and reflections on the "purpose of life".
Overall flow:
Discussions on "Life Purpose" and "Values" are taking place throughout this dialogue. The discussion is deepened by the following perspectives and steps.
1: The purpose of life does not exist clearly from the beginning.
The purpose of life is not something that is given to us in advance, but something that is gradually clarified as we reflect on what we "feel is important" in our daily actions and decisions.
2: Relationship to values
In considering the purpose of life, "values" is an important keyword. Values are subjective criteria of what each individual "values" and "what kind of things they think are good/interesting/want to do," and are difficult to clearly state.
The "purpose of life" can be said to be crystallized after one has pursued these individual values to a higher level of abstraction and gone through a number of "whys? The "purpose of life" can be said to crystallize after one has penetrated these individual values to a higher level of abstraction and gone through a number of "whys?
3: Bottom-up formation
When verbalizing one's life purpose, trying to define it top-down as "this is my life purpose" often does not work.
Rather, in the process of accumulating concrete actions and feelings such as daily "things I want to do," "things I find interesting," and "tasks I have chosen," and relating and abstracting them using the KJ method, a core objective gradually emerges: "This direction is intrinsically valuable to me.
This process is summarized by the expression "[Values are verbalized bottom-up.
The flow of this dialogue repeatedly suggests the viewpoint that humans live in a pluralistic world with a variety of values, and that what is "significant" or "purpose" depends on the subjectivity of each individual.
Therefore, the purpose of life is neither "what others decide it should be" nor "what society imposes," but is personal and subjective, rooted in the values one feels inside oneself.
5: Postmortem evaluation of research and life purpose
'Does it serve your life's purpose if your research is evaluated posthumously?' An example of this was.
If a person lives for the purpose of "wanting to be appreciated," if he or she does not get that appreciation before death, it defeats the purpose and would be hard to satisfy.
However, if you "research because you want to know," you can be satisfied with knowing for yourself during your lifetime, and postmortem evaluation is irrelevant.
Or if the goal is "to make the people around me happy," it is not affected by external evaluations as long as the people around me benefit from it.
In other words, the purpose of life is shown to have a different meaning depending on the person's desires and values. 6: Purpose is the end of abstraction of actions and thoughts.
If we continue to ask the everyday task or thought, "Why are we doing it?" If you keep asking, "Why do it?" a higher-level purpose will emerge. As you repeat this process, you will hit upon "fundamental values and things you want to do that cannot be explained any further. This is the area that is close to the "purpose of life. Summary:
What this dialogue shows is that "life purpose" is not something fixed or given from the outside, but something that is formed and verbalized in a bottom-up manner in the process of accumulating and reflecting on individual actions, feelings, and values. This process becomes a path to arrive at one's own "life purpose" through continuous questioning and abstraction of what feels good and why we choose it in our daily lives. Also, the purpose of life differs from person to person, and no absolute answer can be obtained from the outside. Only by finding what one truly seeks and acting accordingly can one achieve understanding and a sense of fulfillment. The purpose of life is a very subjective guidepost, shaped by one's own values. ---
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