what is the meaning of life?

Question

the question is the answer

an o.g once told me life is what you make it homie

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

Yes I think that life for repeat offenders is good.I mean cause most of these murders could have been prevented if the killers would have stayed in jail. I can relate to the victims families. My friend was killed in 1997 and they have no leads.An I know sometimes the jury lets them off but come on if the guy or girl killed more than once you know hes going to do it again.

Answer 3

It is not easy to have one specific answer for such a question. In my opinion, living a life wondering what its meaning is, is practically losing your life, letting it go by and finding the answer just at its end. A "healthy" way of finding out what is the meaning of life might be trying a little bit out of everything and not regretting any of your past actions. That is the best "recipe" to find out the meaning of life. Until then I say Music, Love and Laughter.

Answer 4

The meaning of life:

Is to live it.

"What the heck are you on about"? your saying. Think about it...

If there is a god or if we evolved from primates we went given instructions in life, no one said to us "Do well in life and get a good job and be famous" or anything did they?

Obviously it does benefit to do well in life but thats not the reason why we live, the reason is to just live it however we want therefor we have our own individual meaning of life for example the meaning of life for a medical scientist is to find a cure for a disease, thats hes individual meaning of life

Overall every person has an individual interpretation of the meaning of life but overall the reasons are the same, the meaning of life is just to live it.

Answer 5

And they were right.

I always try to think of the end of my life. What is it that will really matter as I lie there at the end, ready to leave this world.

If you were told tomorrow was your last day on earth, what would be going on inside your head? What would matter?

Would you be happy with what you accomplished? What, of yourself, did you leave behind in this world?

I think in the end, it matters not your physical accomplishments, unless they served to better humanity and this planet.

So the meaning of life to me is to give as much of yourself as you can, to benefit everything and everyone around you.

I think if we all did this, the world would not be in a crisis as it is now.

No man is an island. If we choose to build our own little islands, we all stand alone do we not?

Answer 6

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Answer 7

This is a question that only the asker can asnwer. The answer is variable from person to person. My meaning is not your meaning, is not another person's meaning. What means eveything to me can mean nothing to someone else. Then again, does it have to have meaning/ must we search for a cause? perhaps simply living happily far from the madding crowd and contrubuting to development...that would be my own personal meaning. Unfortunately everyone must find his/her own.

Answer 8

Hi there.
Life doesn't have a meaning unless you impose one.
So I do my duty by God and family, try to leave the world a better place than it was in any way I can.
While we live, let us live (as the Romans would say).
Cheers, Steve.
PS the last bit was to try and look a little less boring.

Answer 9

This question has been asked many times on this site. The problem is that the question is wrong so you will not get a correct answer. You are assuming a meaning.

Answer 10

True. Thats what my Mama used to say too; without the homie..

Answer 11

I've always thought that question was shallow and rhetorical. There are a billions of other conceptual questions of greater value that simply haven't been asked yet by those of us who use 4% of our grey matter.