The meaning of life?

Question

why are we here

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

Well, every human being are here on this planet involuntarely, because of our mother and or father thoughts, regardles if we were plans or not. it has nothing to do with god, god is not anybody father, if that was the case, god would be paying child support for those kids who's mothers were rape and she cannot support her child. The meaning of life is to love one another like sisters and brothers, give respect and a helping hand, share whatever we can, have our own family and multiply our seeds with good deeds. Live, learn, love, laught and be happy. Life is for living.

Answer 3

I think we are here to learn and experience I am only 25 years old and I sure hope I dont have to learn much more at least pertaining to death anyways. But yeah I think we are here to experience for God (sorry about the religious talk but when it comes to the meaning of life it is hard to avoid)

Answer 4

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Answer 5

Its' everyone for themselves, because in the end there's nothing. Life just ends, so in reality there is no meaning to life. We assume there is because our brains are highly evolved. Take planets who are born and die therefore also have a life, but you never see them asking why they are here.

Answer 6

Your question presupposes a God who created us and gave us a purpose for being here. It is a perfectly good question to ask of God but it makes no sense to ask any "why" question to a mindless, natural process such as evolution.

Your question is the most asked, by far, in all the world. I think that God put that need for meaning into our natures to point us to seek Him, after all, you had to presuppose that God exists to even ask the question.

So I think seeking God is our purpose and our meaning is in a relationship of love with our Creator.

Answer 7

I do wonder what any person said 12,000 years ago about that exact question----see what i say---who cares----people are so caught up in the written word they forget the truth in between the written words----what meaning of life ?---yours or the muslims----yours or the jew----yours or the hindi---and vise versa---and of course the truthful eternal meaning of life from the all mighty christian---against all others---oh by the way CHRIST was a jew---through and through---never went to a church in his life ---figure that one out---and you will be closer to the meaning of life----OK

Answer 8

We are here to pass a test. Live a long, eventful life....learn valuable lessons....pass them on to your loved ones.....don't hate.....play nice.
Do all of these things, and you will have successfully completed...."LIFE: The Ultimate Reality Show"

Answer 9

the truth is in school anything that is around you that you feel or learn is nothing . you are here because god wants to test you if your good in earth . there is no such thing as a country but earth . the truth is we are greedy people . we built things that is nothing money is nothing but a tree . your books a school is nothing **** all they talk about is fight,greed,money, and sucess . i am just a human no name , you adam and eve
they made us to be here .if they didn't eat the apple we wouldn't be here because adam and eve is so perfect that they can do anything . now that they ate the apple we are here to fix that mistake " only one can be adam again and only one can be eve again .

Answer 10

you know, ive really thought about this and i think everybodies view is different...depending on beliefs about god, or science, so that lead me to my answer wich is...i dont really care anymore, we are here, and that is all. just do what you like to do and you will have a good life:)

Answer 11

God only wants his heaven filled with people who want to be there. So everyone comes here first, and decides whether or not they want to go to heaven. If they do, they search for the answer.