what is the meaning of life?

Question

i want to figure out what i should dedicate my life to

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

"live life to the fullest and to know you have lived a good life"

"Life is what you make it, and how you make the best of it."

"(life) is what you make of it."

"Squeeze everything you can out of life. "

Those answers are really unsatisfying because they don't answer the question.

Meaning of life comes from living for a real purpose. Obviously you know that since you ask what you should dedicate your life to and that is the same as purpose.

By definition, life has no purpose unless there is a God because only God could create your life and at the same time have something in mind for your life. Natural processes such as evolution do not have purposes. For example, it is nonsense to ask a snowstorm why it created a snowflake.

If we think God might exist, then we would realize that He must have put our need for meaning into our nature to get us to seek Him. So if you accept that God might exist, your purpose is to seek Him.

Otherwise, we have no real purpose and no real meaning and all we can do is to try and chase after good feelings. Find things to do that give us little bits of happy feelings but it doesn't amount to a real purpose.

Answer 3

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.


To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 4

Dedicate? Hey, you shouldn't dedicate your life to ONE purpose, and one purpose only. Squeeze everything you can out of life. Go with your impulses. I'm not saying to go with your impulses every time, but every once in a while; living by the rules your whole life may make it successful, but taking chances and risks may lead you to a whole new path that you never even knew was there, but find that it's perfect for you. Once you find that, stick to that as your basic layout of life, but at the same time, branch out to other areas of life that you have or haven't touched, meet new people, get to know things that suit or don't suit you. Don't live like a hermit, live like there's no tomorrow.

So what I'm saying is, LIVE LIFE TO ITS FULLEST!! YOU ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE IN THIS LIFETIME!

Answer 5

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 6

Life is a gift but then its a test, a trust & a transitory mission.
Some says life is a show, a fairground ride, a riddle , a symphony, passage, a dance & a merry-go-round: at times you're up then next thing you're down & you just go round & round.
Lots of meanings but at end of the day we all close our eyes and thank God for giving us a life.

Answer 7

"Meaning" is a language term. It is synonymous with "semantic reference," and "denotation." Words that refer to reality have meaning. To what they refer is their meaning. English words' meanings are set forth in dictionaries. The best English dictionary is the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. You will find a really good definition of "life" there.

Answer 8

Well depending our your age you should care or not, at a young age dont bother, unless your a spartan than you have no choice. But regardless youll find your calling and what skill suit your then youll follow it, no need to think about it, you should already know, if not then it will come to you when you realize what you are good at.

Answer 9

I love this one quote" the purpose of life is a life i say is a life of purpose" so yea thats what i say did that answer?

Answer 10

Sleep, eat, work

Thats all >.>


PS Sorry for the vague response, thats how I live MY life. Heheh. I probably won't get best answer but whatever...

Answer 11

Life is what you make it, and how you make the best of it.