Everything is Arbitrary

[JM]

Any thoughts?

Sherdog: If you had one principle by which to live your life, what would it be?

Greg Jackson (mma trainer): I really want to fulfill my potential. I really think that encompasses it. To me, everything is arbitrary -- what you put meaning into has meaning -- and, so, this is what I put meaning into, this is what I have decided to make my life; it is the pursuit of making myself the absolute best trainer I can be, to be the best martial artist I can be. That, to me, is what I live my life by, just trying to fulfill my potential.​

 

[Theognome]

Any thoughts?

Sherdog: If you had one principle by which to live your life, what would it be?

Greg Jackson (mma trainer): I really want to fulfill my potential. I really think that encompasses it. To me, everything is arbitrary -- what you put meaning into has meaning -- and, so, this is what I put meaning into, this is what I have decided to make my life; it is the pursuit of making myself the absolute best trainer I can be, to be the best martial artist I can be. That, to me, is what I live my life by, just trying to fulfill my potential.​

This is an arbitrary thread.

Theognome

 

[BG]

B

 

[Reformed Thomist]

Greg Jackson (mma trainer): I really want to fulfill my potential. I really think that encompasses it. To me, everything is arbitrary -- what you put meaning into has meaning -- and, so, this is what I put meaning into, this is what I have decided to make my life; it is the pursuit of making myself the absolute best trainer I can be, to be the best martial artist I can be. That, to me, is what I live my life by, just trying to fulfill my potential.​

Fulfilling our potential is what life is about. But certainly our potential as human beings extends beyond being the best at X, Y, or Z profession -- it is far more general, higher, than that. Actualizing our potential as human beings, or beings endowed with rationality, is to be the best human beings possible, bringing our thinking and behavior in line with rationality (to not be thinking and behaving irrationally) as much as our intellectual faculties allow. (This includes, or rather culminates, in faith, which is by no means an irrational act.) This is the real 'good life', not that you are great at training or fighting... or whatever specific skill you want to mention.

Wayward behavior and unhappiness is ultimately reducible to people thinking that being or having specific things is what the good life is about. Such persons are really selling themselves short. They are more like beasts than men.

 

[BG]

M

 

[Reformed Thomist]

Man's cheif end is to glorify GOD not to fulfill ones potential.

Actualizing our potential is to glorify God. Surely God does not consider those who squander their gifts to be glorifying Him.

 

[gene_mingo]

maybe.

 

[PresbyDane]

This answer to this thread

 

[OPC'n]

Not everything is arbitrary for instance TranZ4MR isn't