what is the meaning of life?

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

Life is a condition that distinguish organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. In physical terms, life is an organism that feeds on negative entropy.[1][2] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrodinger, Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and life).[3][4]

A diverse array of living organisms can be found in the biosphere on Earth. Properties common to these organisms – plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea and bacteria – are a carbon and water-based cellular form with complex organization and genetic information. They undergo metabolism, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations.

An entity with the above properties is considered to be a living organism, that is an organism that is alive hence can be called a life form. However, not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. For example, the capacity for descent with modification is often taken as the only essential property of life. This definition notably includes viruses, which do not qualify under narrower definitions as they are acellular and do not metabolise. Broader definitions of life may also include theoretical non-carbon-based life and other alternative biology. Some forms of artificial life, however, especially wet alife, might alternatively be classified as real life.

Answer 3

There's no specific meaning, you're supposed to make up your own purpose in life. Think about what you want and what your dreams are, then go for it. For example, I want help people with social anxiety, because I used to have problems with it. Therefore, I'm going to start by writing a book - I haven't decided exactly what about, but I'm going to get it started. It's something I've experienced and know plenty about, so it shouldn't be hard to write about if I break it up into small pieces.

Here's a naff saying: 'No one can walk a thousand miles, but everyone can walk 1 mile a thousand times.'

Make up a purpose that you believe in and live it. Simple.

Answer 4

9

Answer 5

Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. In physical terms, life is an organism that feeds on negative entropy.[1][2] In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrodinger, Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and life).[3][4]

A diverse array of living organisms can be found in the biosphere on Earth. Properties common to these organisms – plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea and bacteria – are a carbon and water-based cellular form with complex organization and genetic information. They undergo metabolism, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations.

An entity with the above properties is considered to be a living organism, that is an organism that is alive hence can be called a life form. However, not every definition of life considers all of these properties to be essential. For example, the capacity for descent with modification is often taken as the only essential property of life. This definition notably includes viruses, which do not qualify under narrower definitions as they are acellular and do not metabolise. Broader definitions of life may also include theoretical non-carbon-based life and other alternative biology. Some forms of artificial life, however, especially wet alife, might alternatively be classified as real life.

Answer 6

I guess the meaning of life varies from person to person. Your meaning will be different than mine, so only you can answer that question. But two things most common to people would be (a) Do what you love to do, and (b) Have fun doing it.

Answer 7

When you typed out this question, Yahoo showed you how many similar questions there were, all you had to do to see more answers to this question than you could read in several hours, was to look at those resolved questions, and read the answers.

I just asked the same question, but without submitting it I looked at the similar, mostly the same questions, there are at least 3 of the same questions open as I write this.

It is much more fun to ask, and answer original questions.

Answer 8

42

Answer 9

There is no meaning of life. You are born, you work, (unless you are like Paris Hilton and that ilk) then you die! Whatever you put into the time in between is up to you. Enjoy it while you can,travel, meet lots of people,eat every kind of food you can,make love as often as you can,fall in love at least once,have your heart broken at least once,be nice to people that you meet,laugh out loud and often,smile at little children who pull their tongues out at you,ride a horse along a beach in the rain.Embrace every day that arrives as though it will be your last!
And it's a Monty Python film!!

Answer 10

Whenever I see this question I place a bet with myself that there will be many "42s" in the answers. Now I'll go and look.
EDIT Well, only 3.
I hate to answer a question with a question, but "Why do you want to know?"

Answer 11

i think the meaning of life is to put up with all thew stress you go through like exams and paying the rent. when you have done that you can get into heaven.