Thread: The Best Things in Life are Free

You cannot buy love.

...And there's your essay.

It's gotta be more than 500 words. lol.

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

Well, food isn't free. And you're in quite the predicament without food.

Make the point that Westerners think the best things in life are free because they're taking everything for granted.

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.

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

Originally Posted by Photolysis

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.

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

Originally Posted by Serkat

Make the point that Westerners think the best things in life are free because they're taking everything for granted.

This This THIS.

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.

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...

This is basically my argument against time being real.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

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.

The first paragraph is really what it hinges on.

Originally Posted by Schmaven

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. Time does not exist, yet we benefit greatly through its use regardless.

This is basically saying you can't measure things that don't exist with something that does exist.

This is my current conclusion, as I have not seen any convincing arguments for time being real.

Originally Posted by Serkat

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.

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.

Originally Posted by stonedape

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.

Masuterbation is free