@gronkle
it seems you're assuming that meaning must be an intrinsic thing to be "real".
Nope. It has to exist outside of your imagination in some form to be real. Which is to say that it needs some fragment of objectivity, however small... but it doesn't. It isn't like the whole "objective vs subjective" thing is some sort of boolean divide. A great many things have a little of both in... like the concept of "big", for instance. A relative measure of size, and a rather vague one at that, but it is a qualification of a real physical attribute. Two people both thinking of "big" are almost certainly going to be thinking along similar lines, though likely differing somewhat in scale. Odds are though that if you told 10 people to imagine "meaning" in real terms, no two of them would imagine something similar... unless it was quite simply drawing a blank.
The impact of quantum events at the beginning of the universe caused a non-homogeneous distribution of energy that allowed the universe to arrange itself as you and I and everything else 14 billion years later. Time and distance does not diminish that fact.
And yet eventually all matter in the Universe is going to become evenly distributed and devoid of energy... and whatever happened in the meanwhile will have lost all relevance long since because there will be not a single conscious thought nor recording of it left. So in fact... time and distance absolutely and indubitably diminish that fact. Some things just need a lot more time and distance than others.
Everything a human does is part of nature, so I reject the false dichotomy.
You're wrong for thinking of something and its absence as a dichotomy. The absence of a state isn't a second state, but an absence. It is something I've tried to explain to people time and time again, but whether it is just that I'm bad at explaining, that they're thick as pigshit... or both... (most likely both)... it tends not to be understood.
But in any case... if you opt to take the word "natural" to apply to absolutely everything that exists... then the word ceases to be useful for anything. It is the purpose of words to distinguish between things, and if there is nothing that a word does not apply equally to, the word is useless.
Regardless though... I was using it as a shorthand for actions consistent with the advancement of the so-called "biological imperative"... which at its core, is a matter of persistence. Humans are in a rather unusual position where, under certain circumstances, they can deliberately and knowingly violate the biological imperative... though in a manner of speaking it is a conflict of interests between memetic and genetic drives. And it continues to exist because the average fitness cost for removing it would be higher than the average fitness cost for keeping it.
The point is that the same feature that allows humans complex memory systems and reasoning ALSO happens to allow filling up those memory systems with cat memes... or committing suicide... which are irrelevant or actively contrary respectively to the process which led to the existence of life in the first place and the means by which it persists.
You say everything I do is compelled by biology... sure... but some of it is a product of bugs in the programming is what I'm saying. And some bugs are a lot more difficult to remove than others. And I happen to like those bugs. They give a lot more autonomy than one would ever be capable of otherwise... autonomy one can have to effectively gallivant off in a direction completely contrary to the process that brought us here. And it is my opinion that if you just go along and, in spite of this potential autonomy, just do what all other life does anyway.... you're completely wasting that tiny mote of freedom.
You have an opportunity to break the rules and get away with it... and you are not only ignoring it but regarding it condescendingly.
And frankly if I wanted "progeny" to have an impact on people after I'd died... I'd give them hammers and tell them to hit people in the head. But then I'm not the sort to delegate such tasks if I was inclined to want them done. If I could get away with it, I'd probably kill people... Lots of people. ESPECIALLY people who have a lot of children (plus the children themselves, of course). Well... probably everyone I could eventually.
I suppose you should be glad that my desire to die a quiet and peaceful death alone trumps my desire to cleanse the world of human filth. Well, that and I'm lazy. Very lazy. Not easily motivated and all that. ^_^
