Purpose of life defined! Read below, Agree or not. Lots of answers. Long, short, deep, creative, all welcome?

Question

Survival and sole survival.
This leads to work for our best wellbeing and protect it.
And that leads to hunger for power. Attaining highest of powers guarantees us the highest form wellbeing and enables us to protect it.

The ways humans (and all living entities) have evolved is the proof.

Imagine by the year 9999, we advance so much that we guarantee our survival and the survival of all the living entities on earth till eternity or almost entity.

Now I am at cross roads at this point regarding how we can achieve it.
Is it necessary to work for the wellbeing of all the earth including all the living entities or we just take care of ourselves and all be well in the end.

EnJoy

please do not drag God into the debat. He is above and beyond our petty discussions. We enact God through our deeds so tell me what we ought to do.

thanks for a lot of answers, however, so far I have only two answers that are close. Please note I do not always expect generosity over selfishness, the logic behind your decision is more important.

Answer 1

mere survival without happiness would not be much

and does power produce survival or happiness?

with great inequality of wealth there is great inequality of power, which leads to struggle, conflict, in which all perish

how much is sharing, mutual support necessary for survival?

plutocracies have gained great power again and again - power to enslave, to send out to fight their wars of plunder - and yet every plutocracy has fallen

why? - why does it not work, as we have tried for millenia, to try to grab all power ie wealth? - because grabbing all power and wealth is necessarily theft, and produces resistance

the more you grab, the more people come to you to try to grab power and wealth - which means the more you have to spend to defend your plundered power - and the attacks go on as long as you have power and wealth - until all your power and wealth is gone

we still have faith that grabbing as much as we can is a happiness strategy - because the primitive part of our brain which relates to this idea, cannot grasp that every injury produces an equal and opposite reaction - if we are free to grab without limit we are free to be grabbed from without limit - ie, if theft, plunder is legal, then it is legal for all - so freedom to grab without limit produces only an endless grabbing from everyone by everyone

plunder seems good at first: you grab, and you get something, a gain - so far, it's good - but then everyone is grabbing from everyone, so it is just grabbing all the time, and no having the thing grabbed

this is what humans have done so far - gone for the whole cake and spent the last 6000 years grabbing and being grabbed from - europe steals from sicily, sicily is thus driven to steal from america - every theft creates a poverty which is thus motivated to steal - every plunder is attractive to every plundered - every overpay is attractive to every underpay - so there is endless war and crime

so you actually get more if you just take fairshares, because then no one is poor, and driven to rob, and no one is rich and powerful to rob

there is least violence - everyone is most content, no one is made discontent by anyone being richer

justice causes happiness - minimal disturbance, maximal happiness

the motivation to rob is least

it is obvious that if you have everyone comfortable and everyone working, and then you have one steal all from everyone else, you have maximal danger and violence - neverending - and if you return to wealth being proportional to work, ie justice, ie nontheft, the disturbance and violence is minimalised

britain plunders the world, and then has to fight to hold on to the plunder until all the plunder is gone - so it has been with every empire - the more you plunder, the more you have to fight to hold on to it, the more poor people there are attacking you, and so you must eventually fall

the state built on injustice cannot stand

we assume that we can injure without consequences - we dont 'get' the golden rule - that injury produces equal and opposite reaction - the robbed dont lie down and die, they get up and fight - we need justice - we dont believe in justice and we reap misery, danger, violence, horrors, terrors

the day we believe in justice, we will reap happiness, peace, safety, survival

is justice a bad bargain?

what does a tribesperson do? does he steal from everyone else in the tribe? or does he practise justice so that he can reap amity and trust and fraternity and survival and strength of unity?

the same principle applies between tribes - steal from another tribe and reap violence, danger, unsafety, horrors, terrors, crises, endless labour of war, anxiety, trouble, pain, suffering, loss

we ought to be being very careful to be just - for our own sakes - instead we are just using other countries as grabbags, forgetting the equal and opposite reaction - like charlie chaplin hitting the boxing machine

what makes us think that other people will feel differently about being stolen from, from what we will feel about being stolen from?

madness - unrealism - insanity - impracticality

see my other answers here at yahoo for more happiness philosophy

Answer 2

No, all will NOT be well if we only consider ourselves.However, I can't fix the world, and I have no solution other than to do the best I can within the sphere I move in. Attaining highest power guarantees no state of well being to anyone except the powerful. Those underneath them are considered unimportant and are discarded like trash. This has been true for thousands of years. Look at the reasons revolutions are fought; and at how the poor are treated in Africa, India, the Middle East, and the US. Yes, it has been survival of the fittest; that is, of the most powerful. But I hold that the price paid in loss of human lives and the misery engendered by these losses does not justify one person surviving over another.

Answer 3

I don't understand why people think that life having a purpose would really be any better than life not having a purpose. Say for instance that the purpose of life was to help calculate the answer to a questioin that the great computer scientist in the sky happened to be curious about. Perhaps we are fullfilling that puropose and when he finally gets the answer (which is sure to be 42 by the way) he pulls the plug on life and it is all over. How do we even know that we are playing an important role in the "Great Calculation". What if our species, as was suggesting in a recent childrens movie, was a food source for a more important species (we are food for the misquitos).

Answer 4

Life evolves from life. The human being is slightly different from other forms of life in that he is endowed with the power of reasoning and discretion. Others have only the instinctive reflexes.
So it becomes the responsibility as a being at higher stage to protect and preserve the other forms of life. If he does that there will be all round prosperity and happiness. On the contrary as he has done and doing now also, increase his own species and kill the other species to such an extent that many of them have become extinct and more are on the way of extinction.
Soon a stage will come when man alone will be wandering on the earth hunting his own species for want of food from other sources.

Answer 5

I do believe survival is the foremost purpose of life. No other purpose can be fulfilled unless we are alive to realize it. But a look at our lives reveals that we have much more than we need to just survive. I don't need a computer to survive, yet I consider an indispensable tool in my life. The same with my books, my phone and my PlayStation. Those things are not essential, but they are important nonetheless because our survival is, in large part, secure. You could die tomorrow, but the odds of that are pretty slim. Since we don't have to worry about survival all the time, we need things to do in the meantime. Consequently, I see entertainment as a close runner-up to survival on the purpose list. If survival was all that mattered, people wouldn't kill themselves when their lives didn't turn out the way they wanted. Mankind is blessed and burdened by the fact that it isn't enough to just live. We want to live a certain way.

Answer 6

There is no purpose, order, or meaning to life...which, to me, is completely liberating and enlightening!

Survival is what has evolved all species; you are correct. But don't confuse chaos for order.

Most likely we will all wipe ourselves out by the year 9999, having evolved minds so complex and so unique that we can no longer tolerate the differences of others. Surely you can already see this happening.

Play the game and live well. That is all that matters.

Answer 7

The first purpose of life (for humans) is to learn how to communicate effectively. That is what separates us from the animals.

The second purpose is to leave this world a little better than we found it.

The third is to have a little fun along the way.

Answer 8

People have no idea how to take care of themselves or each other. We aren't going to last to 9999 and even if we do last that long, no one will remember who you were and what you did. In a grand scheme of things your actions are quite meaningless. Just try to cause the least amount of harm while you're here.

Answer 9

I'm just a granny who believes that power,greed and corruption always lead to total destruction.....the US will just be a blip on the radar of history.
Out greatest chance of getting to 9999 is that we worry about survival of all people and our earth and its resources...all the way down to the smallest animal or bird.
It all begins with each individual.....what is each one's choice??????? good question as eventually the majority will win out.......

Answer 10

the short satire written defines an optimist view of what's probable to occur come it's moment... it doesn't define the real purpose of life but the role it must play... it defines man's instinct - to survive. it projects man's definition - to defend. it indicates greed - man's pitfall. it envelops wisdom - total enlightenment.

true, we have evolve... life has its stages. what is next is up to us. how to live it defines our season for reason. no proof can ever be validated unless it establish it's basic essential - that of change.

no, i won't look forward to that year (i'm dead, for sure). but hoping it creates wisdom, hoping it generates respect, hoping it resurrects humility, hoping for understanding be attained... that is my aspiration for future generations. eradicate hate, greed, war, chaos, famine... what ideals!!!

you and i are both in a crossroad. one slip, we fall. one wrong turn leads us nowhere. one swerve, we crash... that's the reality. thus i'd rather think of today, what i could contribute, what my legacy could be... a day at a time, small steps leads to what i believe would aide my being...

Answer 11

The purpose of life is more than mere survival.
The purpose of life can be said as meaningful living. But again it is relative. If it is told of any meaningful life to those who are struggling for the survival, it will be absurd.
Again the purpose of life is meaningful living.