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    1. #1
      Xei
      UnitedKingdom Xei is offline
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      The Best Things in Life are Free

      True or false, or a bit of both? If possible back up your ideas with those of influential philosophers.

      (I have to write an essay on this and am lacking in inspiration :P).

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      You cannot buy love.

      ...And there's your essay.

    3. #3
      Xei
      UnitedKingdom Xei is offline
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      It's gotta be more than 500 words. lol.

      Excessive repetition of a single point ain't allowed either.

    4. #4
      I LOVE KAOSSILATOR Serkat's Avatar
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      Well, food isn't free. And you're in quite the predicament without food.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

      Ich brauche keine Waffe.

      Ich ermittle ausschließlich mit dem Gehirn!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

    5. #5
      I LOVE KAOSSILATOR Serkat's Avatar
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      Make the point that Westerners think the best things in life are free because they're taking everything for granted.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

      Ich brauche keine Waffe.

      Ich ermittle ausschließlich mit dem Gehirn!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

    6. #6
      Member Photolysis's Avatar
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      The notion is complete bullshit.


      Let's take love as an example. Forgetting all the energy, time, and money (in varying quantities) that is required to have a loving relationship in it's own right, it stands on many things that are not free.

      As someone pointed out above, you're not going to have a very enjoyable life without food, something that is most definitely not free.

      Conversely some of the worst things in life come for nothing. Famine. Disease. Thirst. Cancer.

      The best things in life are not free, and the come from many other things that also require time, energy, and money.

    7. #7
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      Ok so Love = "best thing"

      Love on its own is free, even if you need food, shelter etc to be part of that relationship. Love itself is free. On a qaulity of life basis money plays a very major role. The one way I've concluded capitalism is fair for everyone is that money acts as a kind of "I.O.U happiness/Quality of life". Let me explain, when you buy a £1000 TV it will improve your quality of life more than a £100 model. So when you pay the person who you bought the TV from you are giving them £1000 for improving their quality of life, then the original owner (shopkeeper) can sell 20 of these TV's and purchase a New car. The new car will improve his quality of life more than a TV's, The car dealer then uses the profit from selling cars to buy a house, A car being more needed for high quality of life than a car. Then companies come into it, they might pay you £8/hour to help their business and allow them to get mroe money, if you were a private mechanic you would earn more then being employed at a garage but then the owner has done work setting up the bussiness and is provide you with a way of earning money, making them entitled to take a cut of what would would have earned being a private mechanic.

      Aswell as this if you can't get food eventually your brain chemstry may imbalance to a point where you wont be able to love.

      My 2c

    8. #8
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      Quote Originally Posted by Xei View Post
      (I have to write an essay on this and am lacking in inspiration ).
      Please tell me your teacher didn't select your thesis for you...

    9. #9
      Member Photolysis's Avatar
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      (I have to write an essay on this and am lacking in inspiration ).
      "Everything in life is a function of time (and therefore money), and energy, therefore there is a cost for everything and therefore nothing is free, rendering the basis of this essay incorrect and meaningless"

      How about that?

      Love on its own is free
      Is it? Love requires socialising at the very least which costs time and energy (and money). Courtship costs time and energy. The relationship which gives birth to love costs time, energy, and money.

      It's not free by any means.

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      maybe not so much as the best things in life are free...

      but freedom is the best thing in life.

      heh heh, i don't know, just wanted to sound smart

    11. #11
      DEATH TO FANATICS! StonedApe's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by Serkat View Post
      Well, food isn't free. And you're in quite the predicament without food.
      Have you ever seen an apple tree. Hey, free food.

      The best things in life definetly are free. Nature. The best thing in life, and it's quite free. Everything you need can be found in nature, for free.
      157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.

      Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious

    12. #12
      D.V. Editor-in-Chief Original Poster's Avatar
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      Everything in life has a price, and you typically get out what you put in. The more you put in, the more you get out. The harder you work, the better you'll find yourself. Obviously efficiency and some imagination can make your benefits greater based on a smaller amount of work, sometimes.

      Love requires work. It's difficult to love yourself if you don't take care of yourself, take care of your interests and of things that are important to you. It's pointless to love another if they don't love you back and to maintain mutual love, you have to work. You have to give love to feel it.

      It costs nothig to give love, though, or to feel self love. People simply don't allow themselves to for whatever reason.

      Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.


    13. #13
      I LOVE KAOSSILATOR Serkat's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by stonedape View Post
      Have you ever seen an apple tree. Hey, free food.
      Except someone usually owns them. Also you'll most likely starve and not be able to participate in social activities if you restrict yourself to free food. You're essentially making yourself a bum. So, yeah. Being a bum is free. But being a bum is not one of the best things in life. So fail.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

      Ich brauche keine Waffe.

      Ich ermittle ausschließlich mit dem Gehirn!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eP84n-Lvw

    14. #14
      Member Reality_is_a_Dream's Avatar
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      Masuterbation is free

      By far, Mothra (in all of it's forms) is the worst kaiju of all time.

    15. #15
      Opethian Wrathful's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
      The notion is complete bullshit.


      Let's take love as an example. Forgetting all the energy, time, and money (in varying quantities) that is required to have a loving relationship in it's own right, it stands on many things that are not free.
      I agree partially in his first paragraph. Love isn't free at all and I'm not talking about love in terms of simply attraction and affection, but I think it is unmaterialistic (I'm not sure if it's a real word) love where you love a person for his persona and nature. It takes a long time for a person to really know someone.

      I think this quote "Best things in life are free" meant to be taken as you should really not take things for granted.
      And if I had wheels, I'd be a wagon.

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      The best thing in life is free... The rest you have to buy... Food, water, a home and music...

    17. #17
      Member really's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
      "Everything in life is a function of time (and therefore money), and energy, therefore there is a cost for everything and therefore nothing is free, rendering the basis of this essay incorrect and meaningless"

      How about that?
      Hmm...

      1. Time is not real.
      2. Life is energy.

    18. #18
      Member Photolysis's Avatar
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      1. Time is not real.
      If this is right then why aren't you out there getting a Nobel Prize in Physics for your definitive definition that has eluded countless geniuses? Money and everlasting fame are yours!

      Seriously, if you could prove time was not real, when it is currently a fundamental concept in modern physics then it would completely overturn the field.

      Quit talking out your ass about stuff you have no knowledge of.


      2. Life is energy.
      And? It requires a supply of energy to continue to function. What is your point (if there is one)?

    19. #19
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      I would just fuck with the assignment and define "free" not as costing money by definition but as being freely accessible. It doesn't matter if stuff costs money, even if love and bunnies and rainbows cost money, it only matters if it costs so much it gravely restricts your possibilities. It is the best to have the things in life you like to be freely accessible.

      Or something like that.

      Or you should totally make up a scenario where the person you love is being held hostage, and you have to pay ransom. Best things in life are free you said? I guess we'll have to let the bitch die. Or at least Somehow fuck with the pretty empty statement 'the best things in life are free'.

      No wait! I will logically prove you how the statement is blatantly false.

      xA = x costing time
      xB = x Costing money
      xC = x is fun

      p1. xA ↔ xB (time is money)
      p2. [all]xA (everything costs time)

      ..............................1. xC → x┐B (it it's fun it does not cost money)
      .............p1 + p2. -> 2. [all]xB (everything costs money, because everything costs time)
      ..............................3. Assumption : [there is x] xC
      ..............................4.

      Okay, shit, it's still vacation, I can't bring myself to remembering how logic went. There is a way to prove, with first-year philosophy logics, that -if time=money-, saying 'fun/best things in life are always free' is false. I promise.

      Good luck with your essay.
      “What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'” -Hume

    20. #20
      Sleeping Dragon juroara's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
      Is it? Love requires socialising at the very least which costs time and energy (and money). Courtship costs time and energy. The relationship which gives birth to love costs time, energy, and money.

      It's not free by any means.
      courtship is not love. courtship is a ritual. a human created relationship.

      love is not created by humans. therefore it is not defined by man made relationships or costs man made items.

      love is free in that it doesn't cost a penny. come on. not all cultures even have money.

      the real price of love, is love itself

    21. #21
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      Quote Originally Posted by Serkat View Post
      Make the point that Westerners think the best things in life are free because they're taking everything for granted.
      This This THIS.

    22. #22
      Below are Some Random Schmaven's Avatar
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      My 2 cents:

      If you define free as not costing money, work, time, or effort, then that severely limits what can be considered free. As far as "The best things in life are free" is concerned, I've always assumed that free was meant as only cost free. Because anything worth having requires some work or effort. So if you restrict it to mean not having to pay for it, I think you'll be able to write a better paper. Although that depends on the assumption that your position would be that the best things in life are indeed free. Because obviously since you have to put in effort for anything in life, everything is going to cost effort, similarly with work. If you were to argue that the best things in life are not free, then you should definitely include work, time, and effort with money, as that would be very easy to prove.

      I would say that the best things in life are free. If you think about our monetary system, it didn't always exist. Before it there was the trading of goods for other goods or services, technically you wouldn't be able to consider the goods as money. What I would consider to be some of the best things in life have existed for as long as we have. Others probably came into being at a later time. Some things to consider as being the best are: beauty, love, peace, music, sex, massages, and harmony (when things just work) to name a few.

      You don't need money to enjoy any of these things. It doesn't cost a thing to look up at the sky, or to love, or to listen to music, or to have sex, or to get a massage, or to appreciate the occasional harmony of things. This doesn't stop you from also being able to obtain these things with money. But you don't have to spend money to get them, therefor, they are free. Money is only a short cut in many cases. You may need money to travel somewhere, but once you arrive at your destination, the beauty itself is free.

      I guess it also depends on what you consider the best things in life to be. If you think cars, dvds, video games etc. are the best things in life, then for you, the best things in life would not be free. The statement could be rephrased to, "The best things in life are free, unless you're materialistic."

      Edit: The validity of "The best things in life are free" depends on your personal values, so I would expect the answers to vary from person to person. Also, I'm sorry, but I am unable to back up any of what I have said with any philosophers. There may be some that agree, as well as those that disagree, but I have not really looked into the matter.

      The realness of time (for those interested):

      I would define time as the continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present to the past. Time serves as a way to order events, and is measured today by the natural resonance frequency of the cesium atom causing the atom to rise up and down through a microwave device with one trip up and down being one second. Time serves to measure the fourth dimensional distance between two events, and has many practical applications.

      As events pass from the future, through the present, into the past, they also pass through what I would call reality. Only the present is real. Events in the future are yet to happen, so they do not exist (the future is always uncertain). Similarly, events in the past have already taken place, and all that remains of those events are memories or records of their existence, but those events themselves no longer exist. They already happened. Only those events which are taking place in the present can be said to exist, and therefor be real.

      As time is the spacing in between events, it cannot be real. The only events that exist are in the present, and thus have no time in between them. The only way you can measure a time is when relating to the past or future, which I would say are not the present, and therefor not real. So if the thing you are measuring is not real, I would conclude that the measurement itself is not real. It is the separation between things that do not exist. But this does not take away from the usefulness of time at all. We use time in the same way we use imaginary numbers. We know imaginary numbers do not exist, yet that does not stop us from benefiting from their concept in many mathematical applications. Similarly, time does not exist, yet we benefit greatly through its use.

      P.S. That was probably more like 3 cents, sorry for the lengthy post if you're short on time.
      Last edited by Schmaven; 08-31-2008 at 02:07 AM. Reason: validity depends on personal values
      "Above All, Love"
      ~Unknown~

    23. #23
      Member Photolysis's Avatar
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      courtship is not love. courtship is a ritual. a human created relationship.

      love is not created by humans. therefore it is not defined by man made relationships or costs man made items.

      love is free in that it doesn't cost a penny. come on. not all cultures even have money.

      the real price of love, is love itself
      I didn't say courtship is love. I said love requires socialising (including but not limited to courtship). At least love that isn't simply the 'puppy' love, the shallow love that many teenagers have, requires socialising with that person.

      And in many cases this does actually have a direct monetary cost associated with it.

      Using the unromantic idea of comparing love to a car journey, you can jump in your car and go somewhere. There are many places you can go without having to pay an extra cost ('free'), but the journey still costs you money because you had to pay for the fuel to get you there. Love is the final destination here, and socialising is your 'car'.

      I would define time...
      Well ultimately we can define things however we want, but this has no bearing on how accurate and true the definition is.

      Only the present is real
      C'mon, you know better than this. Only the present currently exists, but to deny the past as being real is nonsense. Just because something no longer exists that has no effect on how real it is.

      Unless by real where you mean "exists" then you're simply saying the past doesn't exist, which says nothing really.

      As time is the spacing in between events, it cannot be real.
      This also doesn't make sense. Try the following:

      As distance is the spacing in between items, it cannot be real.
      So distance isn't real?


      Anyway (not aimed at you Schmaven), people can believe what they want about time, but unless you can prove your version of time is accurate (which would win you a Nobel Prize as I said, etc.), and particularly if you've decided to make a 1 line statement.

      It just really irks me when people make arrogant statements (and particularly when they have demonstrated a lack of logic and understanding of science elsewhere).

      But this is off topic...

    24. #24
      Member ChaybaChayba's Avatar
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      It all depends how you define free.

      In the end, all (the best) things are free, the only thing required is work/dedication.

      Even money is free, I never had to pay for money .
      "Reject common sense to make the impossible possible." -Kamina

    25. #25
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      Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
      If this is right then why aren't you out there getting a Nobel Prize in Physics for your definitive definition that has eluded countless geniuses? Money and everlasting fame are yours!

      Seriously, if you could prove time was not real, when it is currently a fundamental concept in modern physics then it would completely overturn the field.
      When you realize time does not exist, it does not change anything but your spiritual awareness, because it is a realization. This is because time is based off movement, which only exists relative to something, such as memory or a linear viewpoint.

      Schmaven has expressed similar views to mine, including the explanation of why time is irrelevant and the phenomena which are free for revelation.

      If we do not reveal this very moment, we are not truly "living" in the now, and thus we are thinking of the past or future to a clouding extent.

      Since the ego generally assumes cause and effect paradigms and ideas of "time", it then goes on to thinking that time has a beginning and end, when really, there is only eternity. In this way can no time be wasted, because it isn't even real.

      Quote Originally Posted by Photolysis View Post
      And? It requires a supply of energy to continue to function. What is your point (if there is one)?
      In the context of energy there is always transformation. Therefore through this we could relatively say nothing is free, or rather, all is free. Yet if we remain unattached to what is relative, we realize the universal - that which never changes, which is always free, and is Reality itself.

      Now, when we see this free universe to a relative, linear perspective, we automatically divide it into assumed opposites, i.e. "free" and "not free". Since these are based upon flexible positionalities - we drop them by realizing how they are illusions. This means we can look within ourselves to see that nothing needs to be gained or lost. In this way we can see all things as divine, and therefore free as Reality itself.

      Other examples: Money is free when we view work as costing nothing. Work is free when we view that an interview costs nothing. Purchases are free when we know that the money only goes towards another's life. Life is free in that is was brought about through the conditions of the universe.

      Quote Originally Posted by ChaybaChayba View Post
      It all depends how you define free.
      Yes, that's right. In the end you will have an essay based upon optimism or pessimism.
      Last edited by really; 08-31-2008 at 12:08 PM.

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