Noam Chomsky: Meaning of Life
00:00:00.000 | One of the peculiar things about us human beings is our mortality.
00:00:06.920 | Ernest Becker explored it in general.
00:00:09.920 | Do you ponder the value of mortality?
00:00:12.160 | Do you think about your own mortality?
00:00:15.040 | I used to when I was about 12 years old.
00:00:19.160 | I wondered.
00:00:21.160 | I didn't care much about my own mortality, but I was worried about the fact that if my
00:00:27.200 | consciousness disappeared, would the entire universe disappear?
00:00:32.160 | That was frightening.
00:00:33.160 | Did you ever find an answer to that question?
00:00:35.440 | No.
00:00:36.440 | Nobody's ever found an answer, but I stopped being bothered by it.
00:00:39.240 | It's kind of like Woody Allen in one of his films, you may recall.
00:00:44.720 | He goes to a shrink when he's a child and the shrink asks him, "What's your problem?"
00:00:49.200 | He says, "I just learned that the universe is expanding.
00:00:52.640 | I can't handle that."
00:00:56.120 | And then another absurd question is, "What do you think is the meaning of our existence
00:01:03.760 | here, our life on earth, our brief little moment in time?"
00:01:07.600 | That's something we answer by our own activities.
00:01:12.360 | There's no general answer.
00:01:14.080 | We determine what the meaning of it is.
00:01:18.360 | The action determined the meaning.
00:01:20.640 | Meaning in the sense of significance, not meaning in the sense that a chair means this.
00:01:26.080 | But the significance of your life is something you create.
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