It seems to be the question that stumps me.......... so whats your take on it?
2006-09-21 08:44:29 · 17 answers · asked by tinkerbella 2 in Social Science ➔ Other - Social Science
"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question:
Survival and temporal success
* ...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
* ...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 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 gain and exercise power
* ...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
* ...to live
* ...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction
* ...to protect one's family
* ...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
* ...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 expand one's perception of the world
* ...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 understand creation
Ethical
* ...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
* ...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
* ...to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land
* ...to become like God, or God-like
* ...to be rewarded for your deeds
* ...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
* ...to express compassion
* ...to follow the "Golden Rule"
* ...to give and receive love
* ...to live in a way that you don't harm yourself and don't harm your environment
* ...to work for justice and freedom
Religious and spiritual
* ...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
* ...to die and become a martyr
* ...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
* ...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
* ...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
* ...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
* ...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
* ...to serve others, or do good deeds
* ...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment and atonement
* ...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
* ...to worship, serve, or achieve union with God
* ...to disprove the existence of a or all all gods
Other
* ...to achieve self-actualisation
* ...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
* ...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 participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
* ...to make the conformists' lives miserable (see non-conformism)
* ...to participate in the chain of 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)
* ...to relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
* ...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced (see Buddhism)
* ...to seek and find beauty
* ...as there is no intrinsic meaning to life, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever he/she decides it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.
* ...an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" is that it is just simply being able to ask the question, "What is the meaning of life?" (see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar below)
* ...a combination of any of the above.
No purpose, and therefore...
* ...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
* ...just a series of events
* ...just nature taking its course
* ...the wheel of time keeps on turning
* ...the cycle of life
* ...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
* ...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever (see nihilism)
* ...who cares?
2006-09-22 02:17:20 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
At a basic / biological level, the meaning of life is to live or to survive. But it doesn’t stop there. At a higher level, every living organism also participates in ensuring the long term survival of its community or society, its species, and its environment. Beyond that, every living organism also participates in evolution - giving rise to new species, and new types of communities and societies, that are more capable of surviving. So, ultimately, life is about the long term survival and proliferation of this chain reaction, called life, that started with the first living organism and continues until today.
But this was just the physical part of the answer. Beyond the physical level, life is about “reflection”, or discovering the meaning of life itself, the nature of the universe, and the relationship between the two. As evolution leads to more and more intelligent species as well as more evolved societies of species, they are more and more capable of reflection, and this process will also continue until some living organism or some society of living organisms in the future finds the true and complete meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
2006-09-22 13:44:16 · answer #2 · answered by Vin 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
42
2006-09-21 16:06:10 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you're serious about this question, how will you go about inquiring into it? There are any number of answers that can be thrown at it and you can accept or reject them as you see fit.
The meaning of YOUR life is for you to determine, but if you want to find out if there is any meaning to human existence you'll have to go beyond yourself, and few, if any humans have managed to do that.
2006-09-21 15:54:54 · answer #4 · answered by lidlolady 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Meaning...what a strange word. I would ask, what is the purpose of life.
To me, the purpose of life is to be inrelationship with other human beings and through those relationships, to learn stewardship for each other and the planet.
2006-09-21 15:53:19 · answer #5 · answered by Mimi Di 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is nature's design that all living creatures are placed on our planet to live their time and die.
Therefore the purpose of life is living.
Given nature's self evident purpose, one must define for one's self the meaning of "living"
THE DEFINITION OF LIVING IS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
my personal definition is:
LIVING IS EXPERIENCE, CONTRIBUTION AND RESPONSIBILITY.
Experiience
Living is the sum of life's experiences, good or bad, pleasurable or painful. Since life is experience my goal is to expand my experiences, subject to a logical and a moral test.
Logical test : an experience sought or controlled by me should not deny or seriously limit further experience i.e. suicide does not meet this test.
Moral test: an experience sought or controlled by me should not deny or seriously impair the ability of others to pursue the same philosophy of living. i.e murder fails this test.
The application of these tests introduces limitations on experiences to be sought and many subtle variations, compromises and conundrums.
Contribution
is at the core of my definition of living. Making a contribution to whatever is undertaken is paramount. Contribution gives a relative value to experience. It is the currency that measures experience and the value of pursuing an expereience. Experience that enhances contribution has greater value than experience that does not. One's value in any endeavour is not based on pay, titles or the assessment of others, but on one's own assessment of contribution made
responsibility
Experience without responsibility is a recipe for disaster. Being responsible for one's own actions, experience and contribution is essential to my definition of living. I must take responsibility for experiences undertaken by me that turn out badly for me or others. Accepting responisbility means not walking away or shifting blame, but facing and tackling problems. A first responsibility is in assessing the value of experiences as outlined above before undertaking them.
This definition of life and meaning is entirely personal. There is no overiding imperative. It is up to the individual to devise one's own definition of living and its limitations.
2006-09-21 16:50:41 · answer #6 · answered by Fred R 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you are born to die.It's what you do between those times that make life.Everybody has a different opinion of life some want wealth and power,some want children to carry on thier name,I think it's to help out whenever i can,be a better person today than yesterday,and laugh at all my short comings and help my fellow man get through another day.
2006-09-21 15:56:19 · answer #7 · answered by bjec22 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Ahhh, yes. The big question!
No one really knows the purpose us humans have here on the planet, after all, we're only helping ourselves, but I suppose it may just be to live life to the fullest- what have we got to lose?
2006-09-21 15:48:16 · answer #8 · answered by inevitable_fall 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
We give our lives significance by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers
2006-09-21 15:47:08 · answer #9 · answered by martin h 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
all the experiences that make up the existence of a person
2006-09-21 15:47:47 · answer #10 · answered by johnathan b 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
life itself
2006-09-21 16:06:40 · answer #11 · answered by Sweet 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋