What is the meaning of life? why are we here? Please no 42 lol?

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

Im writing an entire fiction on this topic and have many many responses in my research. Perhaps the best answer i recieved was from my dad who said this:

Maybe the meaning of life is awareness.

Without awareness, nothing exists.

Something can be there - a rock, a stream a cloud - but if hasn't entered the conciousness of a person, animal or any other living thing, it hasn't become part of life.

So, maybe the meaning of life is awareness, conciousness and an appreciation that life is the sum of many parts.

Answer 3

According to the dictionary, the meaning of LIFE is the process of being alive. It is a four letter word, having 2 consonants and 2 vowels in it.
We are here, because we know little of how to be anywhere else.
By the way: what is 7 times 6?

Answer 4

The reason this question has never been answered is because it is not a valid question.
It is the mathematical equivalent of asking z+4=y in that they can be related to each other but have almost infinite solutions.
With so many solutions none can be incorrect , hence no means selection of correct answers is possible.
But enjoy the ride, you only get one go!

Answer 5

"Why are we here?" is a question that requires a God in order for the question to have any meaning.

If there is no God, then we are here through some mindless, natural process of evolution. "Why questions" make no sense for natural events. Why is a rock on the moon? Why did that raindrop hit my nose? "Why questions" presume an intelligence.

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

So we either have to accept that life has no purpose and no meaning, or we have to accept that God might exist. If we accept that God might exist, then it seem obvious that God must have put our need for purpose into our nature to point us to seek Him; so seeking our Creator is our purpose.

If we reject the idea of God, then the best we can do is to think of things we can do to make ourselves feel better and to forget about the utter meaninglessness of existence.

BTW, people who say there is no meaning or purpose to life cannot honestly face that fact. It's like honestly facing one's own death. We always find ways to avoid honest, detailed examination.

Answer 6

I don't know that life necessarily has any meaning. I think it does or it doesn't, depending on how you choose to look at it. As to why we're here, in my opinion, we are here to try and make the world at least a little better for current and future generations by trying to follow the golden rule and by eliminating injustice where we find it.

Answer 7

How about rephrasing the question. Instead of what is the meaning of life. How about "what meaning will you add to life?" Instead of why are we here. What about "where do you go from here". Destiny is a farce. Create you fate. Live life like tomorrow isn't promised, because it isn't.

Answer 8

We are part of the Universe, everything science, since we are here as the most intelligent being, we think good, do good, that's the right meaning of life..

Answer 9

The meaning of life differs person to person. For most of us life is a routine where we do our specific tasks but for some life is more than just routine they live life to teach, preach, serve the humanity. Most of us are here to die one day.

Answer 10

Because i am god and i wanted to cos i was bored ok?




42

Answer 11

The meaning of life is to discover the truth that lies beyond all we can see.
We are here to learn from our mistakes and to become what we were meant to become.