what is the meaning of life?

Question

I think

Answer 1

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.
Popular beliefs
"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. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to be always satisfied
...to live, go to school, work, and die
...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to eat
...to prepare for death
...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
...to seek and find beauty
...to kill or be killed
...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything
...to be without questions, 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 understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
...to lead the world towards a desired situation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical
...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to become like God, or divine
...to glorify God
...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...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 discover who you are
...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

Philosophical
...to give life meaning
...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 know the meaning of life
...to achieve self-actualisation
...all possible meanings have some validity
...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:
...to die
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other
...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 participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete) --

Answer 2

42 is that right i mean that's what the guide book says isn't it? I think that the meaning of life is fulfilment. Be happy concentrate on the things that make you smile, do all those things that you enjoy no matter what the stigma (within reason), don't take any rubbish from anyone, enjoy peoples company. But most of all make sure that when you reach the edge of life you can smile to yourself and say honestly that its been a pleasure!!!

Answer 3

42

Answer 4

There is no meaning, we are here one second, gone the next. The only possible meaning would be to do the most we can in that short time, because it will all be over before you know it.

Answer 5

Dayum - saw your comment "I think" and wondered if we were dealing with a duh student using Yahoo for boring homework essay or a comedian or one of the try-and-tester-types, so I looked you up and have to ask if perhaps..er... you might just be a little obsessed (think Einstein and maths and physics)...or uni-dimensional in your search as regards the meaning of life?!

You need to find your own answer or else get that goddamn essay done and accept the late penalty points!

Answer 6

I think for there fore I am. No I think that you get out of life what you put into it. The truest meaning would be to live life Biblical And doing God's purpose for you life.

Answer 7

My mother always says its a magazine, which I somehow find offensive. Whatever is generative, contributive and significant GIVES meaning to life. For me, that means learning and creating, giving and affirming.

Answer 8

Simple to state, hard to achieve - to be happy without hurting others. And try to leave the world a little bit better than how you found it.

Answer 9

To put the human back in being, to commit random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.

Answer 10

We are at school to see what we learn and in the end God will judge us and see how much we have learned. You know, moral values, virtues... that kind of stuff.
The earth is a school... sort of, where we learn to try to be as much like God as possible.
Learn to put others first and stuff like that.

Answer 11

42.
I thought everyone knew that.
Maybe it's gone up tto 43 or something (inflation?)
Gordon Brown will probably hike it up to about 279.