RE: Life's Purpose, by Jeff Dee

I was reading the article "Life's Purpose" on Jeff Dee's blog.

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A fellow atheist asked me, "How do we keep from being depressed believing life has no purpose?"

Here is my reply:

I agree that not having a purpose can be unsettling and depressing. But purpose doesn't require a god. Anyone can declare the purpose of anything they do.
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There are certain concepts that I've never been able to buy into, one of them being an "ultimate purpose in life".

I find that many  (if not most) or people that I meet don't know the meaning of words, and don't follow the chains of assumptions behind them, and so get lost in a morass of meaningless (literally) abstraction.

Please bear with Captain Obvious as we look into this.

If we can generally agree that the word purpose means "the achievement of some specified, chosen result", then it behooves us to ask why.

Why questions are really about our values. Values are simply "what is important to me?", literally and simply: something we value.

So as to an Ultimate Purpose, the question really is "what is ultimately important to me?".

When people say "we all have a purpose", I often get the sense that they intend the notion of a Great Mystical Destiny--being the one to find Excalibur, to change the world, to go on a hero's quest or to be influential in some aspect of the world.

In the end, even the greatest purpose is equivalent of your pumping gas: to meet a need, physical or psychological.

So how does your friend deal with the depression of this? By realizing that if it is a Great Destiny they desire, that the choice--therefor the power-- is their own to accept, reject, act on or ignore.

Liberating one's self from the notion of destiny being bestowed unto them by some Great Power (which is in fact a victim mentality position) is the greatest life-enhancing and joyful thing a man can experience: freedom.


Additional and tangential thoughts.

Many people fear true freedom. True freedom implies taking responsibility for everything in one's life, including the consequences of our actions. It also means giving up the comfort of peer group approval derived from conformity.

Fear of ostracism is instinctual in humans. We have a choice: Habituate ourselves to the excitement of facing the fear, or cower into conformity.

The pros of facing this excitement, is feeling alive, a greater sense of adventure and joy, better relationships and if we choose to learn, ever-increasing skill levels, which makes what we previously feared seem inconsequential: a virtuous cycle is formed.

The cons of facing it are that initial clumsy attempts may cause us to blunder into the very ostracism that we're facing, and if we're especially blunderful, may lead us into stupid acts that have grave consequences such as jail or death.

The pros of not facing up the fear of ostracism are the low-level and circumstance-dependent levels of a sense of security--feelings. I might go so far as to call this The Delusion of Security.

The cons of not facing up to our fear is to spend our short and unique life in a shell without having even risked living the life we dream of.

I can think of no worse hell--and that would be depressing!

The above reminds me of a quote by Nelson Mandela who is far more articulate than I can be about it. I'm sure that one can take a moment to look past the theistic imagery and into the meaning.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us: it's in everyone. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
     — Nelson Mandela

In the end, the very lack of a pre-ordained purpose, the freedom to live what we want, as we want and to the best of our ability is more than the very reason to not only not be depressed, but it is a reason to anticipate, create, celebrate (and alliterate!).

Newbie DIY Guy Needs Basement Advice

Thanks for reading this. I'm a novice DIY home-fixing guy, and while I'm not afraid to tackle things head-on, and have spent a lot of time on inspectapedia.com, would like some advice in some cases, and confirmation or corrections in others.

Go directly to images and captions. (Click on them to enlarge)

I've recently moved into a 75 year old home, which once was used as a summer-only restaurant for the local hunting chalets. It's basically a simple square box. I has been a rental for many years. When I moved in and winter struck, I immediately found that the windows were frosting up between 1/8th to 1/4 of an inch. Needless to say that I can't see out of of them. Yes, the windows are screwed up and I have to replace them, and probably, I also have to re-insulate the house, but this is not the issue of this particular post. Today, I start at the very foundations of the house.

The indoor humidifier doesn't work very well in the house, and combined with electric baseboards, makes the air and temperature uncomfortable. I decided to take the matter into my own hands, go look in the crawlspace and dehumidify it to see if it would help resolve my issue.

This is just a shot to give a feel for the crawl space. It's 6 feet from footer-top to the bottom of the floor joists.When I first started dehumidifying it, most of the sand was still a dark, wet brown. It was mostly moist, but not yet wet.

Running the dehumidifier 24/7 and a 3800 watt energy sucking space heater is certainly resolving the issue (albeit slowly and very electricity expensively). I'm currently hauling out 4-5 gallons of dehumidifier water a day. The under-floor heating, does, however give me the advantage of permitting me to lower my electric baseboard heaters thermometers and provides a much more comfortable space to live in, and is (very) slowly resolving the frosting issue.

The relative humidity level was 92% when I started, the walls were sweating with condensation and the sandy earth was dark wet-brown. Since the last 10 days or so, I've managed to bring it down to 70% and slowly, energy suckingly counting. The current temperature in the basement is now 70 degrees F.

The crawl space has 6 feet between the footer and the bottom of the floor boards and since the house is small, I'd like to turn this into a real working, dry, cement-floored, insulated basement, and to prepare for adding some layers of brick to create an 8-10 foot ceiling. I'd like to get this done this summer, if I can afford all the materials and the house lifting. I cannot dig down, because I'm bordering on a flood zone, and the house has been known to flood 2 feet deep at least one time.

This lead me to the slow process of cleaning out the crawl space and in that process I noticed various things.

Here's an odd-bit that might explain how I came to notice the issues. In the process of dehumidification, I figured that since I'm using a hot air blower and a dehumidifier, that I might as well use them to assist in the release the water from the sand. This led me to first raking the earth, then eventually digging the earth, then finally planning on where to put a sump-pump and the accompanying trenches that will lead any water to it.

I have questions regarding my basement walls and foundations, which I will follow up with images and captions.

1. Footer. I notice the footer is cracked in three places. No cracks are larger than 1/8th inch, but the seem to run from top-to-bottom of the footer. Must I drill this out and inject some sort of binding chemical to waterproof or prevent further cracking? If so, what do you recommend?
2. Under the footer, roots are growing. Are these a big problem, and if so, how do I resolve it? My house has MANY trees nearby, and mostly on the adjoining property. Is there another way of resolving the issue other than simply chopping them off? Perhaps from the outside when I expose the walls this summer?
3. I notice that the bricks are separating with a stair-step pattern. Given the fact that they are in the North-West corner and squarely between the footer cracks, I presume that the footer, over the last few years has dropped a little bit, I can't estimate how much. I'm wildly guessing that it cannot be more more than one inch, if that, based on the separation of the block and some mental geometry.
4. Where the cinder-blocks are separated, must I tear the wall apart and rebuild it, seeing as I want to add 3-4 layers of cinder-blocks, or can I simply fill in the cracks with new mortar, previous to sealing the blocks? If it is the structurally correct thing to do, I'd prefer the latter. Rebuilding a wall is still outside of my experience, and a foundation wall makes it even heavy-dutier.
5. In order to know the full extent of the footers, I dug the sand next to them to the bottom of the footer, to see them fully exposed. Since I'm at this point, and one day I'd like to put a cement floor, would it be wise to, once the exterior walls are properly french-drained and sealed, to put a plastic sheet under the sand, at the level of the bottom of the footers, then recover it with the dehumidified sand, upon which a new cement slab can rest? In other words: bare earth and bottom footer level -> plastic membrane-> dried sand -> concrete slab.
6. When I do pour cement, can I pour it over the footers, or must it not exceed their highest level?
7. While I intend to seal the exterior wall (more on that later), I'd like to put "interior french drains" that lead to a sump pump as a double-plus-good backup in the event that there should in the next 50 years be another rising of the river. Should these drains be placed ON the footer, in front of the footer where the drain is level with the footer's top, where the drain's bottom is level with the footer's level, or below the footer's level?

Exterior basement wall sealing questions.

1. Is the following procedure correct to seal the exterior of the wall?
1. Dig around the exterior wall to expose it
2. Clean it up to bare block
3. Raise the house (and all the plumbing, electrical diconnection, etc that goes with it)
4. Add fix up the walls with new mortar (or tear apart of rebuild--which I'd like to avoid, since that's BIG for me)
5. Add the new layer of blocks
6. Add a block penetrating sealant.
7. Add that black bitumen/tar water-proofing substance
8. Add a black 6mm plastic sheet
9. Add that black felt-like tar soaked sheeting (tentest?)
10. Add a layer of foam for insulation
11. Add the french-drains.
1. At what level do the drains go? Below, in front of, on top of the exterior footers?
12. Add the round 3/4 stone (6+ inches) on top of the drain tubing
13. Refill with earth
14. Ensure that there's some sort of slope-away from the house substance
15. Add a layer of round gravel beneath the (eventually newly fixed) gutters.

Now for the pictures and captions.

This is a crack in the footer. That black pipe is a one inch flexible pipe. I assume that it's from the restaurant days. There are a number of such old fixtures. Another one further down on the other wall (the other crack is not pictured) is similar to this one in properties.

Second crack in the footer. This is next to a lump of cements used as a center beam support.

Stair-step cracks that lead me to think that the footer has dropped a bit. The wall is not bowed at all. That white stuff at the bottom is simply the result of my having removed excess mortar that the builder had slopped onto it without concern. While there is some efflorescence, it is extremely pale, and if I did not know to look for it, would hardly think of mentioning it.

Close up of the worst of the stair-step cracks.

Please see comments on image. This is the worse of it all.

Please see comments.

Farther view to indicate location of detailed shots.

Wall shows no bowing. Footer is indeed not perfectly straight in build.

Where would I put my channels that lead to the sump-pump (which will be in this corner because 1) It's nearest the drain exit, 2) It's right under the electrical box upstairs and 3) overall, it's the naturally lowest part of the foundations, I think)

A reference to show what the walls originally looked like, and some notes.

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to this. The comment section should handle all of your responses, or you can email me directly at mr.zeph % gmail.com (replace the percent sign with the at symbol).