what is the meaning of life?

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

I agree with the first answer. ("42", which is the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" calculated by a supermegacomputer in the book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".) You really can go a long way towards answering this "question" by reading that book.

As Adams point at, the question is somewhat absurd. In the first place, hardly anybody ever understands what it means when they ask it. What they might really mean could be something like, "what ought you do with your life?" (e.g., love/believe in God? or just be a hedonist?) or "what's the most important thing in life?" (e.g., to live a happy life, etc.? or to love God?). It might mean, "what makes life meaningful?", which is slightly more clear. But then, what does "meaningful" mean exactly? The question sometimes also means, "did we come to exist by "random chance" (evolution) or did God make us?".

To me, the clearest conception of this question is, "what is the purpose of life?"; i.e., is there something that we humans are supposed to be doing or ought to be doing? Is there some end or goal beyond the temporary ends and goals that humans have? (like food, sex, survival, happiness, etc.) Or is it enough to have these temporary goals?

No matter what the question means, the answer almost always hinges on whether or not you believe in God.

The non-believer will typically say that meaning is found in this life, and is temporary. There may be some moral obligation that is felt to hold on human beings, but in the end our temporal existence and the happiness we create in it is all that we have. It is sometimes said that the greatest thing you can do with your life is truly love another human being.

This may be a satisfactory answer for some non-believers. Some still feel that a human-centric answer is naive, and that the universe is so inherently bizarre, unknowable and unpredictable that no straightforward answer to this question is possible.

The believer in God will answer that something more is needed, either way. Christian's are probably the most vocal proponents of God, in Western culture. They will say that one ought to love Jesus, accept him as your savior, follow the 10 Commandments, etc. If Jesus is God and Christianity is true, then this would of course be a good answer.

Answer 3

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

Answer 4

There Is No Meaning

We Are Merely
An Out Of Control Cycle
Of Mutating Biological Infestation

On One Of Billions
Of Similarly Infested Planets
Hurtling Through A Void Of Space

On An Evolutionary Clock
We Will Be Gone In The Blink Of An Eye

Eventually,
Virtually No Trace Of Us (The Human Race)
Will Ever Be Found

The Planet Will Recover
And A New Similar Cycle Of Mutating Infestation
Will Begin Again Without Us

Answer 5

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 advisable, for sanity's sake, to combine both negative and positive roads.

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

Answer 6

I see a lot of people ask this question...."bong hits".....omg....lol

There is no absolute meaning to life because that's like asking--what is the answer to life?

Every person lives life finding the questions and answers that define their own self. That is how we live everyday---finding problems and solving problems. It's not necessarily in finding the answer or the meaning all the time, but rather how we encounter something and what we do with it.

If we knew what the meaning of life was---life would not be worth living, right? Because then we have no reason to live.

Answer 7

This is a far more personal question than it would be to ask each of us to describe our genitals. Each person has unique experiences that can never be put into words. Even if words could express more than words can, it still would not be essential meaning that could be given - just words about essential meaning.

Assuming that Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed understood the true meaning of life, look what's happened to their explanations. An explanation of love becomes a basis for war? A speech about non-attachment becomes a basis for attachment to detachment? Devotion to God becomes hatred toward those who express their devotion in other ways?

Do you think the participants in Yahoo! Answers can do what Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed could not?

You ask a question that surpasses any possible answer. But nice try anyhow.

Answer 8

The meaning of life is simple, direct and understandable. It is to mature to the point of reproduction, reproduce and then die. Each reproduction being another step forward in time and another kink on the DNA.

Answer 9

I am not sure about the "meaning" because I don't understand the question. However, the purpose, according to messages received via mediums from the deceased, and from those who have had NDEs, is that we are here to grow in love and knowledge.

Answer 10

Life is meant to be lived, not to be questioned.

Answer 11

Just to go along for the ride, do not fight the events, and circumstances that present themselves as you experiene life.
Enjoy your life.