This afternoon I stood outside my BYU approved house for a smoke. I wanted to clear my head a little bit, and the smoke did not achieve that, but watching leaves fall did. They reminded me of how finite our lives really are. I imagined each leaf as a human being, dying somewhere, and how we never stop dying. Needless to say it was a depressing moment of reflection, but perhaps valuable.

So how long do we have on the tree, connected to our life line of air, water, and nourishment? Some a while, others, not so long.

Throughout my life I have been told one narrative that explains purpose in life. It is the narrative that God loves us, that the pain and suffering (as brutal as it can be) is a step in a progressive plan created by a loving Father in Heaven. I bet I have heard the answers you all will give, but I am hoping to hear something new, something that will give me more hope.

How do you all derive purpose from life?

It has been obvious to me for a while, as I am sure it has been to many of you, that there is a lack of appreciation for academic endeavors that are seen as non-productive. Included in this category would be the study of: art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and pretty much anything else that one couldn't be assured of putting to practical use following graduation.
Based on my Foucaultian view of the world, I had assumed that this had something to do with power structures trying to keep a limit on the amount of creativity and abstract thinking taking place within the confines of the system (which obviously would serve to reduce the amount of dissension within the system and thereby reduce the risk of its demise).

I have recently stumbled upon something that has changed my perspective on this problem.

In The genealogy of Morals, essay 3, section 7, Nietzsche says,
"Every animal-therefore la bete philosophe, too-instinctively strives for an optimum of favorable conditions under which it can expend all its strength and achieve its maximal feeling of power; every animal abhors, just as instinctively and with a subtlety of discernment that is higher than all reason, every kind of intrusion or hindrance that obstructs or could obstruct this path to the optimum (I am not speaking of its path to happiness, but its path to power, to action, to the most powerful activity, and in most cases actually its path to unhappiness)."

From this assertion he goes on to claim that the meaning of the ascetic ideal for the philosopher is that it provides the "optimum condition for the highest and boldest spirituality...he does not deny 'existence,' he rather affirms his existence and only his existence." Thus the optimum conditions under which the philosopher could or would function are those prescribed by the ascetic ideal.

In section 8 he goes on to say that there are "three great slogans" that characterize the life of all "great, fruitful, inventive spirits," these are: "poverty, humility, chastity." Later in this same section these are referred to as "fame, princes, and women." So the question arises, or at least it did for me, if these are necessary for there to be great spirits of philosophy, people like "Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer" etc, then is it proper to say that such an outlook on non-productive academics be attributed to a power structure acting upon these disciplines, or would it be more correct to say that this is a result of the 'will' of the discipline itself? In other words, is the necessity for the creation of the optimal conditions for the functioning of the philosopher the reason philosophical academic pursuits are not glamorous, and do not garner riches, and thus shunned by the community for whom these things are seen as the highest aspirations? This, it would seem, implies a reversal of culpability. We (philosophers) are to blame for our own position precisely because this is the position we must fill in order to become great. Poverty, humility and chastity are the breeding ground for the great mind, on this conception, and something that is sought after by all philosophical minds. Hence those who achieve philosophical greatness (despite their desire not to have done so) have created, both by their disposition toward the world and as the standard to which any aspiring great mind must overcome, a perception of philosophy for those non-philosophers such that the conditions for the existence of the philosopher are assured to exist.

If this is accepted and/or correct then would it also be the case that this is not limiting creativity, at least not for the philosophical mind, but actually attempting to produce it? And to the extent that it is limited, isn't this limitation enacted for the sake of philosophy, and by philosophy? In other words, if the above observation is accepted, we are the limiting factor not an outside power structure; we are responsible not an ambiguous other.