What is the meaning of life? Since you guys have so much time on your hand! lol?

Question

I wasn't expecting deep, insightful answers as these. I appreciate them but it was just a joke emphasizing on people having too much time on their hands that they have earned points in the thousands by answering question. Just thought i'd let you know. Thank You tho! lol

Answer 1

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives. Some people believe that the meaning of life is one or more of the following:

Survival and temporal success

* ...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
* ...to compete or co-operate with others
* ...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
* ...to die having succeeded in your purpose
* ...to live
* ...to protect one's family
* ...to gain and exercise power
* ...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
* ...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction
* ...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
* ...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
* ...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension)

Wisdom and knowledge

* ...to be without question, or to keep asking questions
* ...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
* ...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
* ...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
* ...to try to discover and understand the meaning of life
* ...to expand one's perception of the world

Ethical

* ...to express compassion
* ...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
* ...to give and receive love
* ...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
* ...to serve others, or do good deeds
* ...to work for justice and democracy

Religious, spiritual and esoteric

* ...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment and atonement
* ...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
* ...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
* ...to become God, or God-like
* ...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
* ...to follow the "Golden Rule"
* ...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
* ...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
* ...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
* ...to worship, serve, or achieve union with God

Other

* ...to advance natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
* ...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future human
* ...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
* ...to die, or become a martyr
* ...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
* ...to live, and enjoy the passage of time
* ...to have fun
* ...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
* ...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
* ...to relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
* ...to seek and find beauty
* ...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
* ...to participate in the chain events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
* ...still some do not even think there is any purpose whatsoever (see nihilism)
* ...(This is actually an extension of the point immediately above) There is no inherent meaning to life, existence, the universe, etc. They exist because they can. However, humans appear to inately give meaning, usually many, often conflicting, to what they are conscious of. So, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever they decide it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.

Answer 2

Try doing a Search for Questions using your question as the search parameter. You will find that the question has been asked and answered thousands of times.

My answer: To touch other people's lives in positive ways.

Answer 3

The word "meaning" doesn't apply in those kinds of questions. I realize people ask them. But the word "meaning" actually means "give me another way of saying this". You probably intended to use the word "purpose" as in "What is the purpose of life?"

However, the word "purpose" usually refers to the intention of a living being. As in "What is the purpose of a book? Answer, so that a living being can transmit information to another living being.

Life (in the sense of that part of the universe which reproduces units of itself) cannot be said to have an overall purpose, although the individual units of life have various purposes.

Answer 4

not easy to assert. he's performing like a boyfriend, yet for now, your purely determination is to believe your instinct. He sounds as if he's fascinated. purely time will tell. imagine this by ability of intently if you're making plans to be roommates. this can bring about a clumsy situaiton if you're purely wanting him as a pal. i'd go slow on making any plans as acquaintances. human beings will say that they don't seem to be fascinated in the adventure that they experience that they could scare off the different man or woman.

Answer 5

Do you really think mocking other people would make your life any better?

If you want to work on your self esteem, do something that would enrich your life, this will not really help you in the long term as soon you’d always need to make someone feel bad or small to feel good yourself.

Don’t worry, once you have experienced life enough, you too will have something meaningful to say.

Answer 6

I feel the meaning of life is passing on your genetics... Life is not always good and I often question myself if bringing a human being into this world is the right thing to do.. But I feel that you will always have that desire and you will do anything you can to complete that task.. Unless of course you have psychological problems, or any mental illnesses...

Answer 7

Since I read Zarathustra for the 300th time, I am not really sure anymore. Long walks on the beach. Horse back riding. Listening to Pearl Jam. Watching American Idol with your grandkids.

Answer 8

The meaning of life is to look before you leap.

Big bang event was not planned out. The after effects were unknown. And walla, we got life but along came so much suffering, which survival entails. It was not planned.

Answer 9

There are three common questions people ask of philosophy:

1. The meaning of life,
2. The aim or goal of life,
3. The purpose or use of life.

These are not all the same question. What's more, the people who ask them usually neglect to make clear whether they are asking about their or my own personal life, about human life in general, or about all life in general.

So you see that there are nine different things these three questions might be asking. Here are my answers to them:

1. Your own life has only the meaning you give it yourself, there are plenty of alternatives to choose from (see below).
2 & 3. It follows from 1 that there is no meaning common to all human life, nor to life in general.

4. Again, your aims or goals in life are a matter for your own choice. What's the difference between meanings and goals? It is that goals can be reached, but meanings are ideals - they might not be reachable, but their reward is not in being reachable but in being pursuable and worth pursuing.

5. Human life in general might, I suggest, have three main aims: - to defeat death, to maximize knowledge, to maximize happiness.

6. Life in general would have the same ultimate aims as human life (see 5). Naturally, life has to develop human capabilties (or better!!!) to be able to do so.

7. If you want to have a purpose or use in life, that suggests selflessness, and it might be either moral selflessness (being of use to others) or immoral selflessness (self-destructive behaviour is immorally selfless).

8. Is there some use to which some outside power is putting the whole human race? One hopes not, but this is what some religious people claim - that we are all God's instruments, we exist for some inscrutible reason of God's own.

9. Does 8 apply to life in general? Again, one hopes not. And again, some religious beliefs claim so.

Life has only the meaning you give it yourself. You can choose your own goals and values, your own ends and means. Basically, there are three sorts of alternative, and each has both positive and negative 'roads' to take.

One, you can live life selfishly. This, from a moral point of view, is negative - looking out at all times for 'number one'. But it need not be negative - not if you have a special ability or high degree of ability (say, in art) and you concentrate on developing that ability in a way that is 'selfish' in the short term but is likely to make a contribution to human good in the long term.

Two, you can invest yourself in others. This can range from simply concentrating on being a good parent, to being a dedicated contributor to some community or some organization, whether it be a religion, a political party, a commercial company, etc. But the negative side of this is that you might, in the latter part of your life, find that the group you have dedicated yourself to has not appreciated your contribution, or has changed negatively from what it was despite your efforts, and you might, when it is too late, regret not indulging yourself a little more than you did.

Thirdly, you can turn away from both self and others and, negatively, abandon any attempt to be a moral person, letting yourself be ruled by your emotions or appetites, to the cost of both yourself and those around you. Or, positively, become one of those intensely 'practical' people who 'get things done' in the purely physical sense (but are good for little else).

Of course, it is possible to combine elements of each of the three basic alternatives - though it probably isn't advisible, for sanity's sake, to combine both negative and positive roads.

Life is about choices. Your life is about your choices.

Answer 10

It just means we're not making the most of the short time that we're here, altho the quest of Level 7 is driving me on....once i reach that plateau, i promise to start living again!!!1

Answer 11

The answer is 42.