The meaning of life, what is your view on it?

Question

Okay, I've been pondering lately what the meaning of life is. The way I see it, it's been aboot survival for the fittest for millions of years. We live, no one knows why we were born, and we come up with our own motives as to why we continue living despite the troubles. We try to improve as much as we can, some more driven than others. We create bonds with people and our lives intertwine to a certain degree, our actions affecting them. We create our own mission(s), our own goal or goals, and work to achieve it (them). We try to survive and accomplish as much as possible. Some are strong and handle the adversity, adapting like homosapien, and some can't handle it, case and point being neanderthal. Someday, if we don't destroy the planet from pollution, there will be a new species on top of the food chain, like us. What do you think, what do you feel the meaning is?

Touche', I agree, I don't find meaning in religion myself. That is true, the majority of it appears to be to increase pleasure and decrease pain. Also, I wonder if we ever try to lessen the pain we bring to the world, because we all make negative as well as positive impacts. Maybe making the positives is subconciously us trying to make up what we've done, also because it seems the right thing to do. But I wonder, why do we know what is right or wrong? How much of an impact can someone truly make??

I started thinking aboot this after this one day in art class last week (aboot 8 or so days ago) when someone asked, "What's the meaning of life when everyone hates you?" on the thought board (the art teacher puts up a quote on this large piece of paper and you can write your thoughts on the quote and other things). Does life even have meaning? Why do most of us automically strive to be good?? Why do we have conciouses and how intelligent are other animals in comparison to humans? this is causing more questions than answers....

Answer 1

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 2

you want to know the meaning??

no one on the earth is smart enough to find one people go mad trying to find one and when they relize they cant usually these people are the suicidals

i read your Q and the people answers all using impresive vocab and trying 2 explain it but seriously no one can.

and as for religion did it ever accurr to the human brain that we might not find evidense for it because we arent smart enough? think about it evedense is something that makes sense, or makes the therory click in our head so our brain says that it must be true. but did anyone stop and think that maybe the reson we cant find evidinse and the reason we cant exept the idea that there is a god is b/c it does not make sense in our heads or basicly it is illogical? but my case and point is think bak. in the 17-18 hundreds people would have thought you were crazy and stupid if you said it was possible for a piece of metal that weighs more then a ton to fly not to menchen it would be carrying people. or a lion that took in a baby antalope as its own even when the lion was starving for food. sure it makes sense to us now that there are planes and a lion has done this but in 17-18 hundreds no one was smart enough to relize it was possible. or when we discoverd the world was round this seemed impossible i mean you have EVEDENSE that its flat just look at the ground. its flat yet the world is round. my point is just b/c someone is not smart enough to prove something does not mean it isnt true.
also if it is you will be gald you believed while your in heaven

Answer 3

The meaning of life is to bring out your best by being always truthful, positive and helping others.

"The Joy of Life"
This is the true joy of life. The being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. The being a force of nature instead of a feverish and selfish clod of ailments and grieving senses complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and that as long as I live it is my priveledge to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got to hold up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
- George Bernard Show.

I deeply believe that we are not just our bodies or our minds. I think there's more to us than that. If you think about it you will agree, that we are much more advanced creatures than all the world's beasts put together. Surely, we have much more important things to work on besides reproduction, don't you think?
What I've grown to understand over the years is that all that really matters is your character and how well you treat others.
For "It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives."

Answer 4

I really appreciate the detail that you add about your own thought process. It sounds like a serious question.

Real purpose of life requires God and real meaning comes from living for a real purpose.

If we reject God, we have to invent some activities that substitute for real meaning and then convince ourselves that they are real.

We must think ourselves to have purpose because things that have no purpose also have no worth. The philosopher Albert Camus had this famous line concerning worth:

"There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." ( Camus - 1942)

So in truth, we invent a goal and trying to reach the goal is the invented purpose but the real purpose that we keep hidden from ourselves is to prevent insanity or suicide.

When we set these invented goals, we always set laudable, praiseworthy goals, e.g. "accomplish as much as possible", "improve as much as we can", "make a difference", etc. We do this because we get a feeling of worth in the real and imagined praise of others. We covet praise even though we know that it is usually meant to manipulate us.

So when we get our worth though praise, we always have to do something to earn it but we long for our worth to be because of who we are and not what we do. When we were children, we had worth just because of the love of our parents. We didn't have to earn that love.

Christians believe that we get our worth simply by being sons and daughters of God. We don't have to earn that love but we do long to please God just as loving children love to please their parents.

If we accept that we might be created, then we can immediately conclude that our Creator must have put our great need for meaning and purpose into our human nature to point us to seek Him. So seeking God is our real purpose.

Answer 5

Nobody knows (and i mean nobody) knows the meaning of life. There is absolutely no evidence to support religion, and little evidence to support evolution. I hope, but still do not believe the answer to this question will ever be solved.

Answer 6

the meaning of human life can only be understood in context of religion and spiritualism.my islamic faith tells me that humanbeings have been given this earthly life to be tested by GOD ALMIGHTY to test out his humanbeings that who among them are able to recognise and develop their faith in their creator and are able to do good deeds and that all the human beings will be resurrected on the day of judgement to provide accountability for their own deeds individually to GOD so that the GOD can send the believers and the pious to the eternal blissful life of heaven and the disbelievers and the evil ones to eternal torment of hell.

Answer 7

Be happy.

look after yourself before others because if you cant look after yourself how can you know how to look after anyone else?.

care for people, if you dont care then why would you want people to care for you?.

master virtue will give you heavens life.

Answer 8

Haven't got a clue. Maybe this will help, or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2JU4gX6rg8&mode=related&search=

Answer 9

There is no meaning to life unless you give it meaning.

Answer 10

My view is that if you had used "search for questions," you would have found 10,000 previous answers. Try it next time.