What Is Life? In 100 Words or Less
Today we answer the question that has puzzled philosophers for millennia. What, exactly, is a human life? Don’t worry, we’ll tie this one up in a neat little bundle. After all, we have blogs and the Internet on our side. Here we go, with two websites I happened to randomly stumble upon in the same day(synchronicity?):
Australian Nicael Holt sees his life as the combination of posessions, skills, friends and family. He then posts all of the aforementioned for sale on eBay, opting for a quick way to get a clean slate and start over. Eric Vieth at Dangerous Intersections wonders what would happen if we could blend and mix life stories. Would the ups and downs cancel each other out? Both of these, thought experiment, and life experiment render life tangible, physical, able to be bartered or sold, mixed or blended. What is life? A posession. Because in the end, that’s all you have.
And there you have it. Come on, you weren’t really expecting the meaning of life from a crummy personal blog, were you? At the very least you got something to ponder for a second or two. And, you must admit, the guy selling his life is pretty clever. Ten years ago, without eBay, blogs, and digital cameras, this simple experiment would have been impossible. It will be interesting to see how this plays out(if the winning bidder pays up).
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You have a problem. You just don’t know about it yet.
A Google Metaverse?
Hey man,
This is “earls” from digg, who snapped off on you earlier today about your 22 year old getting killed article. I’m just wanted to write you and apologize to say I’m sorry about what I said to/about you.
I understand now that you were mocking the very people that infuriate me. It’s just absolutely idiotic some of the things you come across on that site and when I read your description I didn’t think for a second you were joking because obviously we both know that total horseshit is absolutely rampant on that site.
So for what it’s worth, sorry, it was nothing personal. I went back and dugg it for you, it was very interesting.
Wow…thanks. Nice, and very surprising to see someone being nice to a stranger online. No problem- 95% of Digg users are more mean all the time. And yeah, I was mocking them. If you see some of the other stories I submit, you’ll see that I’m being something of a sarcastic ass in many descriptions. Makes submitting to Digg more fun.
In case anyone else is wondering, the Digg submission in question is here:
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/22_Year_Old_Killed_Amid_Internet_Lies_3
Two interesting takes on life, although I found the second one much more thought provoking (until it got dugg and crashed). There is an ancient tradition that deals with the mixing and blending of (life)stories to different effect - fiction. The shape that literary criticism uses to describe dramatic structure, the pyramid, is symmetrical. I think fiction has shown, however, that instead of canceling out the ups and downs, interesting stories amplify them. Rather than averaging towards the middle, an attractive life averages towards the edges.
As for Nicael, he doesn’t say whether his fear of dolphins is included in his ebay sale. Maybe he already sold it to Tyra Banks.
“an attractive life averages towards the edges”. I like that phrase very much. Fiction, particularly word-of-mouth oral history is an evolutionary mixing of life stories, in that only the best survive and get passed on.
I was thinking of it in a more literal, almost mathematical fashion. Assign a positive or negative value to every experience, friendship, and accomplishment. Average them, and see what you get.
Excellent site!