I see "being alive" as just allowing things to be as they are. The person is just allowing themselves to experience, perhaps they go through moments of apathy. You are outside of it and do not participate.
I see "living" as actually experiencing. Relishing within the moment, accepting or changing it.... finding meaning or reflection. What have you. You are within it.. and actively participating.
"Being". That seems to be the main difference, not sure there is one beyond that but that's already big enough.
I see "being alive" as just allowing things to be as they are. The person is just allowing themselves to experience, perhaps they go through moments of apathy. You are outside of it and do not participate.
I see "living" as actually experiencing. Relishing within the moment, accepting or changing it.... finding meaning or reflection. What have you. You are within it.. and actively participating.
What sources have you considered on that point?
Is it "being" in a stoical sense, ie a form of quietism, or is life "training for an afterlife" or prelude to an afterlife or do you mean in a sense of prefiguring something, whether its an afterlife or final stage/end of history/end stage as posited by monotheism or secular equivalents like marxism, just substitute revolution for messiah, return of the prophet, return of Jesus.
Living is purely subjective, there are no right or wrong answers. Being alive? It's rooted in the energetic experience of love, some of us are already there/here.
What's the difference between living and being alive?
Semantics and subjective interpretation.
Whether you choose to occupy your days masturbating to the point of dehydration in your mother's dimly lit black-mold riddled basement until you're 40, or choose to skii off the Rocky Mountains and do all sorts of extreme SP shit, it ultimately doesn't make a difference as both roads lead to the same location. Live has been coming and going for an indeterminate amount of time, and for the foreseeable future the trend appears that it will continue, so pick your poison for the limited time you have available to you.
To "Experience" is a subjective concept and doesn't exist without a living context, so do what you feel you can derive value (in whatever form it presents itself, I guess) from and carry on.
"therefore, lets make it a greater, far greater life of accomplishment than ever imagined possible"
Never once have I heard someone proclaim some sort of sneering, clever nihilism and subjectivism and proclaim "therefore, lets make it a greater, far greater life of accomplishment than ever imagined possible"
all that its ever actually resulted in was the ever lasting age of the unter mensch.
I think its why when given the suspicion of its validity for long enough even the dullest individual comes to embracing some sort of absolutely ludicrous absolutist idea or ideology, the crazier the better most of the time.
Literally, no difference; the question, to me, seems to appeal to an intuition that differentiates the two ("being alive" and "living") in a manner similar to, say, "savoring" and "tasting". A paramecium's undulation as opposed to an olympic runner's sprint toward the finishing line.
I wonder what triggers this response. I posit that it arises out of how the phrasing is perceived, which to me suggests an intended distinction similar to the (definitional) one between the abovementioned terms; so language and therefore culture dependent, of course. Perhaps it's the approximation of a certain kind of platitude's form, such as: "[...] and that's the difference between a boy and a man" -- contingent upon whatever aesthetic ideal.
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Is being alive superior to "merely living"?
Many things can be learned from merely living, so for myself being alive wouldn't consider superior.
So, just to be clear: Does the question of how to be alive have an objective answer?