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

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 3

If you believe in a superior being the purpose of life is to test your faith in him. God has a plan for your life, here on earth you go through experiences that help you learn and grow, and you are challenged with a life to see if you will keep the Lord's commandments.
If on the other hand, you do not believe in a superior being then there really does not seem to be a meaning and purpose to life.

Answer 4

Its bloody well not to sit at your computer and ask the same question that gets asked 100 times everyday. :)

You want to know the meaning of life? Either go out and immerse yourself in life and its meanings or take the time and develop the discipline to read some philosophy books.

Answer 5

I tried to read her in stories, and in the books called sacred and most secret, yet she eluded me. Sometimes I thought I caught a glimpse of her in nature, but it resolved into shadows. I was sure, I knew, that if there were shadows there was also light. So I invoked an elaborate alchemy of approach, yet no prescription sufficed, and she yielded not. In the stars I looked for her, but every map gave more questions and never the face I sought. Glimpses, shadows, glimmers, always the gray game but never the luminous face. I made an alter of finest quality—by this I found exactly and only my creation, nothing more. She held herself aloof from the ancient images; my charms held no appeal. We gathered to invoke her name, but to no avail. Every charm was dispersed, and every craft and every conjurer’s task was as nothing to her. All commands, all entreaties came to naught. To number and element she remained immune. Nothing cast or broken, nothing done or woven, no cycle, no intonation served.

What was the strange and mysterious place of her birth? At first I thought the ancients had sent her, and that the word of her coming was already known among the simple people, even mirrored in their rituals. Then I thought she had always been with me, waiting for the day when she could speak. But I learned she had spoken long ago, and many times since, and down the ages to present moment. She had come to me in luminous dreams I had not remembered. She sang and whispered, but I did not notice. I know now how distracted I was by my toys and tricks. Coming to this, I dropped them, and on a morning before the coming of dawn, I left all behind. I went then to the mountaintop, and sat in silence for a long while. There was nothing within, and seeming nothing without, and I felt and knew that nothing of the old was needed now. Life became simple. I had nothing and needed nothing, save something to give—and that would now be the object of my quest.

And when the sun rose, she came to me at last. Not as whisper but as thunder, not as glimmer but as a storm of light. Her shafts of song assailed the secret places of the soul. She sang a new alchemy that cannot be bound in a sacred book. Her presence unveiled a new history of the world all laid in geometry of fire. Her charms were constellations, her craft a sphere of glory, her magic the sunlight of a thousand worlds.

Answer 6

you might not like this answer but you asked so i shall answer. We only have 2 jobs on this planet. Homiostasis and reproduction. Homiostasis makes you hungry, thirsty, tells you wen jumping off a ledge is stupid and anything else that keeps your alive. But the major job is the survival of the species through reproduction. the biggest example is in plants some die after parts of them are eaten but they need to be eaten to spread seeds. Also there are black widows, after sex the male feeds himself to the female to give her energy since he no longer serves a purpose. I am not saying why we have homiastasis or crave to reproduce im just saying that those are the only reason we are here

Answer 7

While there can be no official meaning for life, the meaning of life to me is:

It is a precious gift not to be taken for granted, to be cherished, enjoyed, and used in a way that benefits others whom have also been granted this gift, whether your range of affect reaches one or one billion.

Answer 8

What you want it to be... I believe it changes as you grow, the key is to remain open & honest with yourself

Answer 9

its the part and parcel of living and making things work or done.