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

Who ever dreamed up that it has to mean anything? Jeez. A better question might be "Why do we waste time, talent and energy asking ourselves questions that can never be answered through life's experience?"

Now, I'm going to go get a beer out of the fridge. I do better contemplating one or two of those on a hot day like today was. I'll contemplate the hidden truth of what this means later, but I am pretty sure it means I am hot and thirsty.

Answer 3

42 is NOT the meaning of life. It is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

42 is the answer, but that isn't to say we know what it means.

Answer 4

Life has no meaning.

Answer 5

The meaning of life ,gets muddled in life...but we all follow the same path,some more or less than the other.
And I will throw out a number also #48..my age,and because that means life(alive) to me!!
I wonder why the computer spit out #42,if you "mouth" the word ,you,exhale,inhale,then exhale..that works for me!!!

Answer 6

The correct answerer to that should receive 10,000 points instead of 10! Noone yet has discovered that question on a general level. I think a lot of us have our own opinions on what our individual lives mean.

Answer 7

Bones is correct. the meaning of life is 42. The question is..."What is the question of life"?

Answer 8

To be more than you were yesterday. To transcend what you are today.To be more aware of your place in the cosmos. In my humble opinion most people think they are their body,when this is only a small piece of the puzzle,What is that piece of you that will go beyond your worldly existence and what is it doing here in the first place,

Answer 9

42


sources: " Life the Universe and Everything" Douglas Adams

Answer 10

Progression!

Answer 11

Why do you think life has meaning? Did you forget that we are random atoms, controlled by time and chance... meaningless!