What is living?

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Exactly as the title says. What do you think of as "living"? What is life, when is someone truly living life? Yet again however you interpret this is how I want you to respond. But of course keep it civil and keep it at least mostly serious.

[Icy]

Questioning.

 

You asking this question is an example of "living" to me.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

[Thar]

When you pinch yourself and nothing changes, but you stab yourself in the heart and everything disappears.

[G4hardcore]

Living is when philosophical zombies, like the lot of us, start thinking that we are alive and are capable of making thought and enlightening contemplation. After all the metaphors and symbolism is said, we go back. Back to the shadows, for we are formless, nameless heathens that shall not pass!

On a serious note...

Living is an art. There isn't necessarily a bad way to do it, unless your black paint gets all over my drawings of flowers and stuff. Even then, we need that accused "black paint" in order to recognize what it means, and by extension appreciate, true art. Therefore all art--all life--is beauty. Living is wonder, smiles, sunshine and laughs just as much as it is ignorance, loss, shadows and tears. It's the rise and fall, the breath of the soul, the high and the low. And when it's all finally over, after uncounted iotas of experience, not a single regret shall be had, for it was all a beautiful work of art; your signature on the planet.

[EHN.]

"Life is one's journey through life" - Alex "Xpecial" Chu 2014

[Lunar Origins]

Life is true contentedness.  Not necessarily happiness.

 

That's my definition.

[.Rooster]

Living is Living :D

[Azure Wolf]

Living is being content with what you have and being accepted by, or accepting, someone.

 

"It doesn't matter what humanity thinks of an individual, it is what that individual does that dictates whether or not they are alive."

 

I have no idea if any has really said this, so it might be a new quote i thought up.

[Instinct]

Living is a large plate of chicken and rice.

[G4hardcore]

I would also define life as that which resists death. I've seen a lot of great comments and opinions on this thread, and I feel it's important that no one think any answer is more or less wrong than another. Indeed, even chicken and rice is worth dying for, which is why we live!

I have to wonder if there's a deeper point to life. Is this reality? Are we a complex computer algorithm? The dreams of a god? Are we mere physical matter with an expiration date? Are we more than what meets the eye? Does this make us Transformers?

[Simping For Hina]

Are viruses alive? 

[G4hardcore]

Are viruses alive?

Somewhere in another galaxy, there is a superior, highly advanced civilization of celestial beings asking the same question about human beings. Viruses exhibit a few of the same key characteristics of life forms, but they are simple and without conventional form. Perhaps in a hundred million years, the things that made us "alive" will be so radically different, we'll be forced to change our views on what constitutes being alive or not.

I would say viruses are alive. I would also call them radically different from a traditional concept of what we feel it means to be alive. Then again, what authority do we have to deem what is and isn't alive? Hey, at least you asked the question! That's what counts.

[Agro]

Are viruses alive?

Viruses are considered by some to be a life form, because they carry genetic material, reproduce, and evolve through natural selection. However they lack key characteristics (such as cell structure) that are generally considered necessary to count as life. Because they possess some but not all such qualities, viruses have been described as "organisms at the edge of life".

[G4hardcore]

Are viruses alive?

Viruses are considered by some to be a life form, because they carry genetic material, reproduce, and evolve through natural selection. However they lack key characteristics (such as cell structure) that are generally considered necessary to count as life. Because they possess some but not all such qualities, viruses have been described as "organisms at the edge of life".

Any thoughts on that, or do you agree with whatever you've read on the internet?

[Agro]

Any thoughts on that, or do you agree with whatever you've read on the internet?

They're pockets of DNA/RNA surrounded in protein. Everything else in that quote is factually accurate.

And I'm not sure how you can ask if I agree with everything that's said there when the statement itself offers three different viewpoints and is not conclusive on any of them.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

Viruses can be killed so I reckon they're alive but that's just my reckoning and such. 

[G4hardcore]

They're pockets of DNA/RNA surrounded in protein. Everything else in that quote is factually accurate.And I'm not sure how you can ask if I agree with everything that's said there when the statement itself is very clear that you can go either way on the subject.

I wasn't questioning the validity of the facts, I was questioning the philosophical implications for the fun of it. And if you want to be factually accurate, the article makes it clear that viruses are alive. If I told you I lived at the edge of New York, I'd still be a New Yorker.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

I too like to live on the edge. 8)

[Agro]

I wasn't questioning the validity of the facts, I was questioning the philosophical implications for the fun of it. And if you want to be factually accurate, the article makes it clear that viruses are alive. If I told you I lived at the edge of New York, I'd still be a New Yorker.

The article makes it clear that some think that it should be considered alive. Not, factually, that they ARE alive, because the article in question can't pinpoint whether or not they are alive because they hold traits of living things while also missing some features that some think should be considered as necessary to be called alive. And again, it says "have been described as" which is a statement that doesn't take anything as a definitive either but suggests some consider them that.

 

And as a counterpoint to your New Yorker comment, I live on the very edge of Milwaukee county, and when I talk to people who are not from Milwaukee, I tell them I am from Milwaukee, and they agree. When I tell people who are from Milwaukee that I am from Milwaukee, they disagree because I am not living within the city itself, merely a suburb very close to the city. The point here being that different people consider the edge of life to be in different places, and that affects how they perceive whether or not a virus is alive. Because the article indicates that not all are of the same opinion on the subject, it's fairly clear that the article does not take a stance one way or the other, but merely lays them out and explains why people feel one way or another.

[Aerion Brightflame]

I actually had a discussion about this in effect the other day with a dear dear friend of mine, and we came to this rough conclusion (It's in a rough form of poetry, but that's just how our discussion winds up going); 

 

Well what is life worth without love? The child of science's mad process? Material success and personal achievement? Bitter pain, and ecstatic pleasures? No, life without love is worth little, for love is how we define and shape ourselves from our very core, our source of enlightenment, and the reason to dwell in this mortal realm for a day more, and not to escape beyond the veil to peace.

 

So really to me, there's a define difference between living and existing. And to me love is that difference. The capacity to love, to feel, to experience the joys and horror's of existence is what I define as living. And not the scientific definition of it. Which is funny since I want to be a medical physicist. But Lord knows if I am, I'll be one with romance in his soul. 

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

^What is this "love" you speak of?

[Astolfo]

To be technical, whatever falls under the whatever stuff people in those science/etc heads decide the criteria are.

To be poetic, being able to enjoy/feel pleasure/etc, or just simply, to be able to feel.

 

This thread reminded me of this quote I saw somewhere, it went along something like dying without having ever lived, and I found that pretty impactful.

Sure, pretty much everyone starts off technically alive and then technically dies.

But in a poetic sense, being alive without happiness, enjoyment, pain, and all the other emotions that come with life, isn't really living.

 

Sure, there's good and bad parts to life, sometimes it might seem like there's more good than bad, sometimes it might seem the other way around, but I feel like if you can achieve some goal or find happiness and move past whatever regrets that you'll inevitable end up having sooner or later, I feel like that would be a meaningful life?

IDK, rambling too much.

[epicmemesbro]

Life is a state of mind.