Ask Your Question today
I know this is purely philosophical and not really an INN question and I'm surely not the first to ask it. But this community is just so wonderfully diverse that I'd love to see what rates highest here.
What's the most important thing in life?
| Money | 10 | |
| Power | 4 | |
| Fame | 0 | |
| Acceptance | 7 | |
| Friends | 8 | |
| Peace | 3 | |
| Knowledge | 13 | |
| Experience | 9 | |
| Wisdom | 12 | |
| Courage | 2 | |
| Health | 6 | |
| Sex | 8 | |
| Food | 3 | |
| Survival | 5 | |
| Humanity | 5 | |
| Faith | 6 | |
| Hope | 8 | |
| Love | 49 | |
| Nothing | 9 | |
| Other... (please comment) | 14 |
Wisdom.
You can have have everything else on that list if you are wise, but if you aren't wise you will become irresponsible with them, lose them, or destroy them.
Myself.
You've got to look after yourself first, always. If you love someone else more than you love yourself, you give them control over your life and that person might not use the control in a way that is respectful to you. So what should matter most to each person is themselves. That isn't to say you can't love other people too, but don't love them so much you can't put yourself first. I suppose it's a mixture between acceptance, survival, peace etc.
A great many of those answers are very important to me though, OP. Good question.
So if you had to make a decision to save your child resulting in you dying you would choose yourself?I think what matters the most are the conditions you are under because if you were 60 years old you life does not have as much value as you 20 year old son you endured,lived and enjoyed (almost) everything life has to offer.
Hmm. I think if someone chooses to give that love to their child, then they still have control because it was a choice. I think that putting your own desires first isn't necessarily selfish unless what you desire is to be a selfish person. Being selfless is a great thing to be, but you should always feel in control of when you can be selfless and never feel forced to sacrifice yourself.
So if a 60 year old wanted to sacrifice themselves for a 20 year old, then he or she should do it so long as she or he made that choice without any coercion. And a parent should be dedicated to supporting their child, but they should be dedicated to it because they want to make sacrifices not because they are legally obliged to.
(I'll comment here now, so we don't have the same discussion twice)
I totally agree with you on the last part. I believe a person that I could consider "good" does selfless things and makes sacrifices because they want to and not because they have to.
But people, who's only reason not to hurt others is the fear of punishment, are a problem.
If those people didn't exist we wouldn't need any laws, but many if not most people are like that.
I remember a talk I once had where some guy said: "You don't cross the street when the light is red because it's forbidden, otherwise everyone would do it, right?"
To which I replied "No, you shouldn't do that because it's dangerous! That's the reason the light is there."
So in a sense, power. Power over yourself.
I couldn't of said it better. Thumbs up to you.
That's a good way of putting it, yes. The word "power" has negative connotations to some people because it makes them think of power over other people, but I disagree with them. Power over yourself is something everyone should have.
Yes, I like your answer.
The truth is that you have to love yourself before loving others the way they need loved. I see it being wrong to let others cause you to be submissive because not only is it hurting you but you are letting them hurt themselves by lying about your true feelings. And they are in pain when they behave that way; they aren't showing love. :)
Plus which you were describing you need to love yourself before you love people the right way. When you love yourself you "want" to help others and not feel forced to. That's when you put yourself above others because you want to help save people, you want to love and respect everyone around you; even the disrespectful ones.
A lot of those words in the list bind together well too. It takes wisdom and wanting peace and hope to have power the right way; to give love to people. I think the one word up there that makes everything bind is wisdom because it takes wisdom to have peace, love, faith, hope and the right power. It also takes wisdom to be healthy, happy and to be able to be conscious enough to survive. Wise people are courageous, so they want to learn; they know it takes experience.
Thanks :D
I think if you sacrifice your life for someone else you love them more then yourself, right?
Would you say this is always the wrong desition?
Good question, which I'll have to think about. Hmm.
I don't think it's either right or wrong, necessarily. I think you should never feel obligated to sacrifice yourself, and you should take precautions not to be put in a position where you feel manoeuvred into self-sacrifice.
However, I think if you have complete free will - free of any pressure from anyone else - and you choose to sacrifice your life purely because you want to then that is a good decision to make. If you can freely choose to sacrifice yourself, then you have still retained that control over your own life.
If the question is meant as 'What do you find most important in your life?', then I find it a bit odd, given all the options. I do think a life in which only one thing would be present, would not be good. What good would hope be, if you had no love, friends, money, food, or health?
My best answer to 'what matters most to you?' would be happiness, but that, of course, is dependant on other things.
I would also say, that what matters most to someone varies over time, and according to needs and usefulness of things.
Looking up 'important' in an online dictionary makes me think that the question 'What is most important to you, in life?' may be answered 'incorrectly by some, i.e., they may be answering a different question.
If importance is understood as having great significance or consequence, then it can be different from someone consciously putting great emphasis on something or valuing it highly, which I think can also be used to describe how the word 'important' is used.
I did answer 'Nothing', because the question sounded like a 'what is objectively most important'-kind of question, and because I have a tendency to focus a lot on how I think there is not something that is objectively most important, and how every value or ideal that someone holds can be disregarded or held as insignificant by someone else.
Yes, I guess I could have said it better. English isn't my strenght. I believe nobody can be really objective, especially when it comes to things like this. I didn't mean what's the only thing that matters, but what matters MOST. Of course the interpretation of the question is already subjective, but I think that makes it even more interesting.
Thank you for giving it so much thought.
Money buys you a house, it buys you food, it buy you entertainment, it buys you sex, buys you security and it can buy you a lover. Pretty much everything you need when you have money. If you have love and no money you have no security, you have no food, you have no health or anything else. So the clear answer is going to be money. However looks can get you money so that's important too. However if you are in a state in which money has become worthless I would vote Survival skills.
Nonsense, you know nothing of the three.
You avoid them in the wish for more life, the greed in wanting more time, and the fear of losing that time.
Let go of this cowardice, repent and be saved.
Well after 70 plus responses,
Knowledge 3
Humanity 3
Faith 3
Sex 3
All these are just 10 Percent of Love 29 but half of
"Nothing" which was 6
Curiously, only two people chose knowledge as an answer despite it being required to give a correct answer.
Other websites are laughing at you.
Many of these things are required to answer the question. That doesen't automatically make them the most important thing in life.
People here agree with you. 53% of people voted for love, money, wisdom, or other. 4% voted for knowledge.
Ergo, knowledge is not valuable in answering questions here. Thankfully, the real world still values it.
The real world doesen't give a f**k about knowledge. Although most people have grandiose ideals of what one should pursue in life, most only live to consume. They eat unhealthy, unethical food, they have meaningless conversations with their shallow friends, they watch a fictional movie with lots of pathos and violence, go home, watch porn and go to sleep.
How many people do you know who'd prefer learning stuff to just hanging around. I bet it's not the majority.
To get back to the question:
You still haven't explained why you believe knowledge is the most important thing in life. You just said that it's required to give a correct answer. That sure makes it a means to an end. But answering this question is hardly the ultimate end, is it?
Power, although most of that power comes from a lot on the list, such as knowledge, experience, and so on.
Yes, but I think it good you said power. Because there are many different reasons people attain knowledge. I now take it that if you, ItDuz, want knowledge you want it to gain poewer and not just out of curiosity or some other goal.
I vote experience.
You cannot live life fully without experience.
Without experience you have nothing.
There is no way you can live with none of them . All of them create or make up the components and life.