In your opinion what is 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

Life is an infamously unpopular sexually transmitted disease that occurs mainly between the events of birth (Or, as many pinko rightie subversives claim, conception, or as most near-psycotic feminists claim, as soon as the kid is old enough to bring home a paycheck) and death (AKA leaving the baby in the dumpster.) It is the only known STD with a 100% fatality rate.

Discovered by René Descartes, the statement "Cogito, ergo sum," which translates roughly to "I suck, therefore I exist," best sums up the characteristics of the disease. The symptoms of life include breathing, eating, sleeping, and peeing. Life can lead to other diseases such as happiness, calmness or tranquility, diseases that all have their own seperate symptoms.

Life has been the subject of philosophers, scientists, muses, artists, and John Conway for zillions of years. Every major culture has attempted to unravel the mysteries of life, and they've all sucked at it.

Fortunately, nobody really cares.

Life is also the name of a species of mosquito, leading to the famous and oft-quoted exclamation "Life sucks!"

The Meaning of Life
The answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, is 42, as stated by that background guy from that movie that people always talk about.
As all life begins, so it must end. Or not. Wait, a second...yes. Uhh...no. Whatever. One can die, or be turned into an undead dude, or perhaps ascend into the pantheon and "live" forever. As with the beginning, the end of life is an oft-debated topic despite being useless to anyone alive. If you've ever wondered what happens after life ends, don't worry about it too much. You'll find out in about five minutes (this is what is known as a deadline).

The Game of Life is the first game ever created by Man. It only has two rules: 1. The game starts when you are born 2. The game ends when you are dead

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

OK...this questions is asked in this thread a hundred times a day. Let me answer it once and for all. Forget ontology. The question implies unnecessary concern for what exists at the end of the journey. We will all get there soon enough. When we get there, we will have closure and perhaps an answer. Alternatively, we will just take a dirt nap and have no awareness of how the story "ends". So, do not concern yourself with the destination (if there is one). Worry about the journey. The journey is made up of a series of nows. The now is what it is all about. The zen notion of ever present reality is what it is about. Being consumed with past and future mindedness robs us of participation of the present, immersing ourselves in our senses and the present and having a meaningful experience.

Forget about meaning and the end game. It is a perceiver created universe. We write our own scripts. Just live, enjoy, have fun, love.

Answer 5

Shakespeare once said "To be or not to be that is the question."

All things strive to exist, to be, to become.

The leaf has no other reason to exist other then the characteristics that come with the definition leaf.

The stone has no other meaning then stone.

But we notice that life, the more complex it is creates and stimulates a deeper meaning.

What is meaning?

The more you do in life, the greater your meaning becomes.

The less you do the more you become like the rock.

Thanks for asking this question))))I am going to make a youtube video about this subject.

Answer 6

It is the result of pure serendipity, and I marvel that I am here to witness the untold opportunities it offers to learn all I can about the wonders of this planet and the cosmos. I am saddened by the misery that some people and animals have to endure and while there is little I can to change that, I do all I can to make sure that those who are here because of me and and my wife enjoy life as much as we do. I have no fear of death, it is part of life, and time is running out for me, but every moment that is left to me is enjoyed to the utmost.

Answer 7

Live Fast

Die Young

Leave a Beautiful Corpse

Answer 8

If you want well thought out answers, you should spend some time and add detail to your question. What do you think and why are you asking the question. You shouldn't expect people to spend more time on the answer than you did on the question.

Answer 9

The meaning of life is the meaning that you give to it..

Answer 10

We are not on this planet long enough for it to have any true meaning. We are just a blink in the bigger picture. It really only means what you want it to mean.

Answer 11

42. Google "answer to life, the universe and everything". According to the google calculator it is 42.