ANSWERS: 3
  • We don’t meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason, agree or disagree?
  • Sorry in advance if this is a bit philosophical. I think this sort of question is a result of poor definition. What is the meaning of "meant" or "reason?" What is the meaning of "accident?" We can define an accident as something done by a person who did not intend to do it, but, even then, the intention is relative to either the actions or to the outcome. I know when my kids were little, if one child struck his brother intending to physically force compliance, but not to harm him, yet the strike ended up causing harm, he'd say it was "an accident." I don't think most people would agree, but I think that your question sort of puts the scenario in the same light. You don't meet someone by accident, you meet someone intentionally, and then what happens as a result of that meeting is unintended, often times. But I think we are fooling ourselves if we say that we were completely unaware that the outcome was ever going to be a possibility. If we go even deeper philosophically, and delve into the meaning of "meaning," then there are volume of discussions that could be had. If you ask yourself what is the true meaning of anything, you either assign meaning to proxies, and start a metaphorical snowball involving everything else without directly addressing the thing itself, or you divert and say that everything is essentially random and meaningless ultimately anyway. I personally think the problem is that we are trying to assign a quality to something without first understanding what that quality is. For example, "What is the purpose of mosquitos existing?" You answer that either by assigning value by proxy - "They feed birds" - as if the person asking the question is assumed to already hold value to birds / or / by acknowledging randomness of the universe - "Well, some things just exist to test us." Either way, it doesn't address the actual heart of the question, because we, generally, do not have mutual agreement on what the question is even asking. A scientist might answer the same question something like "Early arthropods discovered that they could feed from animals more successfully than they could feed from plants. They were so successful, in fact, that mosquitos have remained mostly unchanged by evolution for tens of millions of years." It's a direct answer, but probably directly misses the intended subject the person asking the question intended, leaving us only to ponder if that misdirection was intentional or if it was by accident.
    • DancesWithWolves
      Thanks for your comment :)
  • I agree. Even if their purpose is to serve as a bad example of what not to do and why. If this is a quote it really should be in quotation marks with a reference to the person who said it.
    • DancesWithWolves
      Thanks, for sharing your comment :)

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