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

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 3

Meaning as in purpose?

The purpose of life is to give pleasure to the Supreme life, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is the reason we exist. We are His eternal, spiritual energy, and our constitutional position is to serve His desires. At the present time we find ourselves covered by material bodies and minds and therefore bewildered by the illusory energy. In this state we think we are these temporary bodies and minds. With this misidentification as the basis for our consciousness, how can we know what is the purpose of our life? If a madman thinks himself to be someone he is not, how can he understand what he should or should not do? First we have to understand who we are before we can know what the purpose of our life is.

There are basically two paths. One path is to think we are the body and when the body dies we are finished also. In that view, what possible purpose could anyone's life have? If we all return to dust in the end, any endeavor to make sense of life is just a madman's game. Instead of having a true purpose in life, the rationale becomes simply to 'enjoy' life, which is nothing more than animal life.

On the other hand, if we are actually eternal and the body is just the vehicle we have for a few years, then our purpose becomes very clear. Our purpose is to understand our eternal nature and what our relationship is to the Supreme. This is the process of self-realization-- purification of consciousness. The advantage of human life is that we are able to inquire about the Absolute Truth and the purpose of life. The animals and other lower life forms cannot do this. But if in the human life a person doesn't make this inquiry, he is no better than an animal.

This is a very good question and I wish you all good fortune on your journey to spiritual realization.

Answer 4

(I wrote this a bit ago, but it still applies- Keep in mind this is the meaning of ALL life. Finding meaning IN your life is another subject entirely.)

The meaning of Life


Well this has come up in conversation a few times recently, and not all of my own volution. I keep hearing about kids wanting to kill themselves, so maybe this will help those of you who are feeling a bit lost.

The point of Life
There are many things all life has in common, but generally they can all be linked back to one specific thing that life does constantly, and consistently. Life creates order from chaos.

When you breathe, when you reproduce, when you think.

When you do anything at all, you take the nether of chaos and turn it into a structured, ordered thing through the process of creation.



The Meaning of Life
The meaning of life is to experience that which we create.





Lifes role explained
The Big Bang cosmological model of the universe contains a gravitational singularity at the start of time (t=0). At the "Big Bang Singularity," the model predicts that the density of the universe and the curvature of space-time are paradoxically infinite.
A singularity has a finite mass but an infinitely small volume and infinitely large density. wikipedia 2006



If the start of time is a moment of singularity than we can say that the start of this worlds existence is a moment where all things are together. At this start they are so dense and small that everything we know to be true breaks apart. In this moment, literally anything could happen. In fact, at this moment it could be said all things are happening. If a moment is infinite than it is a moment that contains everything that has happened, ever will happen, and is happening now- as time is relative to distance.


The big bang is the moment after a singularity; it is when singularity is broken up from order and structure into chaos.

From that chaos life begins to make order until it completes its task.

The task of creating order from chaos. To understand why we do this we must look at what order truly is.

Order in the dictionary has many meanings, but almost all of them can be summed up in the following way. The act of bringing things together, the act of unifying thoughts, or physical devices.



Once the task of converting chaos to order is complete all things will have come together. If everything were to come back together it would become one. If everything were one it would be singular- completing the cycle. From order to chaos and back into order. Repeated indefinitely, infinitely. This is our destination, and at some point we will reach it no matter what. We are guaranteed this.

References
Wikipedia 05/2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/gravitation...


So anyway, take it for what it is. It won't solve all of life's little nuances but at least you can rest easy knowing that you are already doing exactly what it is you are supposed to be doing.

-k

Answer 5

What is the meaning of life or how do you bring meaning to life? If it's the latter, the answer is simple: love. What is love? To want the best for someone else... not necessarily what they want, but what is best for them. If you love with courage and perservance, you will find the meaning in life.

Answer 6

emmamac14 got close, it is actually 42....oh wait that is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The meaning of life may be different for people. Mine is to live healthy, without deliberately harming others and being conscious of my actions and how they may affect those around me. Help people without seeking praise or have them owe me. Treat life with respect. Continue to grow and learn.

Answer 7

I think that life has a diferent meaning for every person.... for me is a lot of confusion, but also is learn, grown and enjoy all the good stuff that is the only thing you will take with u at the time you die.... This question is like asking: whats there when we dead!

Answer 8

Beer, Food, Woman, Fast Cars, Money, Love, a Home, Children. Take your pick. Life is a soup of all these things. If you don't like the taste, yo could add your own spice to it.

Answer 9

Why does there allways have to be a meaning and reason? The meaning of life can only be that life means to be.

Answer 10

Living in my late fifties, I use my life to find myself.
The more I know him, far and far he goes.
Just like playing hide and seek
Still I enjoy the life
And I am sure with the evidence around me that
the end is going to be wonderful.

Answer 11

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