What's 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

This question is asked by everyone from the time they are able to wonder till they die. From a 5 year old's question, "Mama why was I born?" to an old man on his deathbed asking a nurse, "Life! Is this all there is to it?" The question is a query as to whether there was a creator and what was his/her/its purpose in creating the universe. Many people think they know his/her/its purpose but after a life time of asking I think they are all wrong!

To me the purpose of life is to find a meaning for it and that meaning may very well be "just life itself"; with out life we have nothing and can do nothing. Live it, enjoy it and maybe, to even surprise the faithful (whom I think are whistling in the dark), it may not naturally end with death!

Good luck in life! Good health, peace and love!

Answer 3

There is no meaning socially.
Life is what you make out of it, however long or short it may be. Procreation to sustain the species can be one answer I guess, but then again, the Human race will continue to multiply until this planet can either not hold any more, or the humans living on it decide to blow it up.
Either way, Life is what you make of it. If someone tells you if life hands you lemons, make lemonade. then remind them that sugar is required as well and see what their answer is.
Look into yourself and within your soul to determine what the meaning of life is about. You are born, you live and learn, you die. The meaning in buried within the middle and within yourself.

Answer 4

The most important question is, where does our great need for meaning come from?

If we are created beings, then our need for meaning must come from our Creator, put into our nature by Him to point us to seek Him. If our Creator asks us to seek Him, then seeking Him is our purpose and meaning.

But if we decide that there is no Creator, then our need for meaning has been established by the mindless process of evolution. Our feeling of meaning and purpose and compassion and love and every other feeling is just drug induced, i.e. little shots of chemicals to the brain that makes us feel good. So the alternative to God is slavery to an evolution provided drug addiction.

I would rather seek God, even though I am not sure He even exists, than submit to slavery to a drug addiction.

Answer 5

The meaning of life has two possible answers: the first is the answer for all living things, survive and reproduce. The second is more for those religious: praising your god. Those are the only meanings I can think of, I hope they are satisfying.

Answer 6

it depends on whose life we are talking about. Animals lives are all dependent on one another to create a balanced echosystem.
I am not sure what man's role is except to loot, burn and destroy earth's resources.
Like a computer that periodically needs to be reformatted, because of man messing it up I guess earth gets "reformatted" every so often, perhaps even only every 10k years, who knows could be the next great discovery :) -Man on Yahoo answers finds new meaning to life-

Answer 7

I don't believe anybody truely knows this question. There is an opinion behind almost everyone person, but there really is no way to know the real answer to this question.

My opinion: It is simple, to learn from and live through as many experiences as you can (good and bad). Experience is the best way to learn and better your soul for divinity.

Answer 8

life is its own meaning. i think the meaning of my life or your life is the meaning we give it?

Answer 9

To be the best person we can be and work towards the collective good so that we can all ascend to the next level of life.

Answer 10

The meaning of life is to be (come) divine. The divinity (god) is everything.

Answer 11

to live life like everyday is your last,live to the fullest everyday,dont regret and dont make really bumb mistakes.