How often do you properly realise you are surviving?

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I never had the desire for children, so to me, it would not create any meaning to my life. It seems pointless to me.

But I understand that many people have that desire so if they want to do it, they should... but responsibly and lovingly... which is not common.

Also. kids shouldn't be "accidents". That's irresponsible.

Human beings don't just pass on genes. We also pass on ideas. When we invented language--especially writing--we changed the evolutionary game to the point that some people speculate that evolution simply has too long of a time scale to be relevant to humans any more. Long before natural selection changes us, we'll have changed ourselves, using our capacity to create, combine, and transmit information, which is lot easier to change and easier to transmit than DNA. We've already changed ourselves to a huge degree just by inventing culture.

Many non-reproducing human beings make their lives out of transmitting information of one sort or another. I don't see it as a problem not to reproduce. We have enough humans already--no need for more. Information, on the other hand, is potentially world-changing. If my descendants are ideas stored in computers rather than flesh-and-blood people having babies, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Needing a meaning and things actually being meaningful are two different issues

It's hard to objectively prove that there is any meaning as meaning is so subjective/personal

I don't think beyond my lifespan anyway. What happens in the future after I'm gone is irrelevant to me as I won't be there to experience it.

I feel exactly the same. My whole life seems to have been about surviving. Yet, my avoidant and procrastinating mind has been trying to push the idea of surviving out of my counscious mind, hence not actually properly dealing with it. I have to do something about it.

I don't see it that way. I can care about something that happens even though I don't know about it--something that happened before I was born, or far away from where I live. Why shouldn't I care about things that happen after I die?

I'm more interested in the past than the future

I can feel compassion for people who had a hard time in the past but the future is of little importance to me as I won't be there
so it seems to me to be meaningless to focus on it

It's not an egotistical thing, it's a practical one

I like ancient things rather than modern ones

The medieval period is far more interesting to me than modern times

Currently, only 31% always properly (i.e. intuitively) realise they are actually trying to survive.

Without knowing I'd guess that percentage was higher in the general population.

I would say most people who are living comfortably don't consciously acknowledge their survival on a daily basis. And those who are struggling don't have the luxury to intellectualize it day-to-day.

31% is rather high. Moreover, if one has the ability to sit and ponder this at length, then they're probably in a position where actually having to worry about daily survival isn't top priority.

I think you gotta understand that there are multiple levels of survival.

There actually a known hireachies list, where human,s primary concern is air, followed by water, food, shelter, etc etc.

At each stage one's awareness shifts.

Prosperity in the end becomes the true goal of survival.

It's a much deeper thought process and goes beyond self preservation.

Prosperity is the same as survival and is certainly not a deep concept - it's as shallow as it gets!

[img][800:866]http://beycritical.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs.jpg[/img]

Though it's been proven that this is outdated and it's actually much more complex - this is a good starting point in understanding.

For clarification, I was referring to why his poll got such poor results.

IF you ask people do you believe in prosperity or do you wish to prosper I think OP might of gotten better results on his poll.

How has his poll got poor results?

Do you mean poor from point of view of number of participants or what?

I'd never take number of participants of indicative of a good or bad poll; low participation is more likely to indicate higher intellectual content in my opinion!

I think survival is the more appropriate term anyway

Keeping alive ie surviving is not strictly the same as prospering which is what you do on top of survival

Thriving might be another term but even then that's not totally the same as survival which is basically a matter of staying alive

It's funny, but sometimes when you're very poor and struggling to survive, you often do have a lot of time to think. Not free time or leisure time; just time to think. You stand in line at the food pantry or the clinic or at the welfare office. You daydream while you do jobs that require no thinking and pay minimum wage. You walk long distances, or you spend a big chunk of your day on the bus. There's a lot of time to think, because you spend a lot of time essentially waiting. When I had very little money, and was often literally trying to figure out where my next meal was coming from, I wrote a lot of blog entries and did a lot of thinking because I had so much time to do it. Now that I'm a little more secure and in school, I spend a lot of time thinking about schoolwork, and so not so much idle time for philosophy. For the most part, I'm refining old ideas, not creating new ones.

I did not take offense, I said I did not think it was appropriate criteria.

The rest of what you wrote makes no sense to me. It seems like you're trying to fit everyone into these conceptual boxes you've come up with to explain survival and perceptions of survival, and interpreting statements in that context without really understanding what was said.

Here is why I find it problematic (not offensive - is it so necessary to turn disagreement into an extreme emotional thing? To project so much emotion onto it that it loses its actual meaning?) to say that not reproducing is a form of failure:

Not everyone can have children. Not everyone wants to have children. Many people have had their ability to have children forcibly removed just because they had a disability or the "wrong" skin color. People are capable of having meaningful lives without having children.

Also, declaring that everything is meaningless is itself meaningless. What I do certainly has meaning to me, and what others do has meaning for them. Because there is no teleological meaning to anything simply means that what you decide has meaning has meaning. Yes, that's subjective, but removing subjectivity from experience is mostly just a way to talk over people and tell them what they really think and what they're really worth in someone else's (supposedly objective but far from objective) opinion.

As long as enough people have children and barring any other catastrophe humanity will continue.