What's the meaning/purpose of LIFE?!?

Question

I like to say I'm a student of human nature.....

Answer 1

Obviously a vague question, but here's a take:

One can think of oneself as the author of one's life. We tend to think there is some real fact of the matter about how to understand what a fictional charcter represents or means in a work. Similarly, the meaning/signficance/purpose of your life etc. is conferred to it by your directing intentions. Just as (some would claim) the meaning/purpose Huckulberry's life is determined by Twain's directing intentions.

However, for many this type of answer is not satisying. One wants to know not what my life means to me (or anyone else for that matter) the want to understand the meaning of human existence itself, as if we were put here to do something. Religion and objective morality may seem to attempt to provide THAT kind of meaning. But I find it hard to believe that we were made or "are here" by some tracendent force to do something. Why didn't that force do it itself? And if human being are made to freely choose to do whatever it is, why would some people be forever incapable of autonomous/free choice? The severely retarded for example, or the severely mentally ill? If there is meaning to human life in this second sense there would be something we're each here to do, something we all ought to strive for. But "ought" implies "can" and there are humans who cannot freely pursue ANYTHING. In that case, there is not action(s) or pursuits we all ought to pursue, and seemingly no meaning to life in this second sense.

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.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.


To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 3

In my years of 'the search', the conclusion I have come to is as follows. And these things aren't easy to talk about!!

Ultimately, we have no purpose. We're not unlike an ant colony or a bee colony. Go up high enough and look at all the little patterns we create on the earth. Our little trails, our little skyscraper mounds. We have queen/king bees, worker bees...very similar.

There is freedom and even flights of joy when we fully realize that there is no purpose...other than living, grabbing and giving some love, "smelling the roses"...

What purpose does an ant have, not much, really.

Answer 4

The human being, having an intellect, tends to, in the exercise thereof, attribute 'meaning' to things. Extending from that, through observations of causes and effects, purpose is then posited. However, these artifacts of the mechanics of the consciousness of the human being are no more valid in the absolute than the human being is absolute.

That said, by way of tangential extension from the foregoing, the human being is able to establish for him or herself a meaning and thence, or in parallel and addition to, a purpose to the life they find themselves leading. That this may be more than personally arbitrary is certainly the case: other human beings, let alone many another phenomena beyond the human spheres of concern, exist to be observed and influenced. That any such determined meaning and-or purpose is less than absolute diminishes it not.

Self-knowledge, observation of the nature of the workings of the human frame and the consciousness seen to either arise therefrom or otherwise be associated therewith, may lead to knowledge of greater causal realities than mere external phenomena [sic - but little self-examination will lead one to wonder what is external to the self, by way of a process of finite but extensive regress of crucial identity: but such is going beyond the scope of my intended answer to this simplest of questions] might have one accomodate in one's ratiocinations. Such knowing may then lead to a determination of purpose, and understanding of meaning, beyond those normatively given.

Even then, there will be that which remains, the manifest human being, and the question may be asked again. And answered, albeit after another manner and with greater force and fire.

Answer 5

42

Answer 6

Life has the meaning/purpose you bring to it - do what you will with it.

For some it is collecting butterflys or stamps, for others creating the most joy for everyone, for others creating the most pain for everyone they can, for others creating a great work(s) of Art, for others getting as much pleasure as they can from their body, for others denial of all such bodily pleasures, for others creating a philosophy they can live by, for others discovering a faith that has meaning to them, for others it is to leave this planet better than when they were born into it, to others to procreate and enjoy the satifactions of raising children, for others to teach, and so on, and so on...

...to each his/her own meaning/purpose.

Answer 7

Improve spiritually.

Answer 8

God loved us, hence, He created life. Our life's purpose is to love Him back .

Answer 9

To recieve what we need, to love what is loveable to us and to die in a worl we understand and are not afraid to leave.

Answer 10

To live it.