What is the meaning of life? Only answer this one seriously!?

Question

I mean it. No silly answers. I only want long philosophical ones! I have told you this so please don't because I will remove your answer if you aren't serious!

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 actually does have an intrinsic meaning, but to get to it we're going to have to progress a little sideways. So bear with me...

Before we can talk about the meaning of life, I think it's productive to first ask the question, "What IS life?". This is a bit easier to answer, if not perfectly clear, because biologists obviously have to be able to explain what, exactly, the bio- part of their name refers to.

Biologists, when they try to define what life is, tend to look at the number of things that are generally considered to be 'alive' and figure out what qualities they all seem to have in common. This gives us a handful of properties that all living things we know of seem to have, including growth, reproduction, and the ability to make long-term adaptations to the environment.

Okay. So what does that MEAN? Again I think we need to break down our question with another one: "What IS meaning?" I'll take the same approach as the biologists on this one and consider examples. If a boulder fell on someone's house, and one observer asked another, "What does that mean?", what would acceptable answers be? I can think of a number of them ("It means that was a bad place to build a house"), and what they seem to have in common are that they describe greater implications and intent. Or in other words, given the event, process, or object, what will happen in the future, what led to it in the past, and what effects and intents does it have in the present?

So what does life do? It changes things. We know from the definition of life that it grows, consumes, spreads, alters its environment and alters the ways in which it does all these things. Having living things around means things are going to be different later, and probably were different before. Any time we imagine a place where nothing is ever different the only way that image works is to make it completely devoid of life. So that is something.

But it's not everything. Life doesn't produce just ANY change, but a certain flavour of it. Simply put, living things want to live. The changes living things make, generally speaking, either help them do so or kill them off. So life is not just about change, but change ideally for the better, even if practically it falls short sometimes.

This, then, must be the meaning of life. To change for the better.

Curiously enough, a quick survey of major philosophies, religions, and systems reveals that almost all of them seem to integrate this concept. Change for the better. There may be other important things, as some of the above systems would suggest, but to 'change for the better' is, at least, is the one thing implied by the very nature of the way things are. So do it!

Answer 3

Meaning and purpose are basically the same. Both imply (actually require) a plan or design. It is just that we use the word "purpose" when we speak of things/objects and we use the word "meaning" when we speak of actions. Since we sometimes view life as a thing and sometimes as a set of actions, we use both words.

Purpose (and meaning) of life requires God. Obviously, if we're speaking about a plan or design for our existence, there has to be a Planner. The atheist philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell stated it as:

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

Why are we always talking about meaning and purpose? Our human nature requires us to have a life worth living and we know that things that have no purpose also have no worth.

No God, no purpose, no purpose, no worth. The consequences of no worth are severe according to the atheist philosopher/writer Albert Camus:

"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."

So those of us who reject God still have to invent some activity and pretend that it is true purpose. But these activities are really just psychological crutches that attempt to avoid suicide. With suicide as the threat, there is great incentive for self delusion. These activities are designed to keep us busy and focused on happy thoughts so that we won't have time to think about a meaningless existence.

But if God exists, then we can have real purpose. I reason that if God exists, then He must have put our need for real purpose into our human nature to point us to seek Him. Under that reasoning, our primary purpose is to seek our Creator. Seeking our Creator is the Christian idea of worshiping God.

Answer 4

I'm ... kind of putting the same question in my head sometimes. And i don't know ... the more i think about it I realize that even if you look for answers ... you can't get the actual truth ... why is that ?
Because no one had lived that long to see and hear or experience how we got here if there is a God, and many other questions without an answer. My point is that every human who seeks an answer to this question comes to make his one answer related to things he saw, hear or seen.
I happen to know as well of the rest of you guys that we began to count 2007 years so far. Religion says it's because of "Jesus" who is ... the son of God. Well i don't know that , there is no proof ... the thing is that people always felt the need to be protected to believe in a certain GOD that would influence their lives. It's like a second mom who has the power to punish us if we do the so called sins.
I personally think that we are left alone here ... people die everyday ... accidents , rapes , murders are a common thing .... death is inevitable . Anyway if you think about it mostly the meaning of life is to take care of your relatives, our friends and esspeceally ourself. You got to work in order to earn money and to survive ... you could always have something to do. I dont see any other meaning than that, i guess we got here by mistake .... we kept evolving from monkeys to homo sapiens and now humans. Water, light , and the warm caused by the sun as well earth made possible this whole thing . Now that we are aware of death , life , joy , sadness and all the other things we start to put ourselves questions ... but look there is no one to answer us. What is this universe ... it's a black nothingness with stars and planets ... anyway you'd took it we should be happy that we get to live here.
It's kinda of sad tough i would like to be more than just a human and to have a more complex meaning .... who know's maybe im wrong and i do have a more important meaning but it is not in my ability to comprehend.

Answer 5

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 6

The meaning of life, from an evoloutinary aspect, is simply to pro-create. It is a driving need to have our genes past down through the generations. However from a philisophical viewpoint there are several reasons or meanings to life. I generally follow that ones purpose in life is to be able to look back when you are lying on your death bed and have no regrets as you do. To think I am okay with dying I have lived my life the best I could. Life is there to be enjoyed to pursue that which you would like to and become the person you want to be. Life means to be alive and while you are you should live the way you would like.

Answer 7

you haven't any longer discovered a "genuine" answer through fact as human beings we gained't in all likelihood comprehend the respond. that question has been requested by using scientists, philosophers, and theologians in the process historic previous. the superb element to do define your guy or woman meaning. in case you prefer to commit your existence to ending worldwide starvation, than that's what you will desire to do. in case you prefer to tutor toddlers, than that's what you will desire to do. With the evolution element i think of we did evolve. besides the undeniable fact that this does not deny the existance of a writer! Why won't manage to technology and faith help you come across the answer? If there's a meaning than area of that meaning may well be to look into your self and are available across the meaning for your self.

Answer 8

The meaning of life generically is to achieve the highest state of becoming that you can. The only constant in this world is change. Change occurs at various rates of speed but change is inevitable. Everything in physical manifestation exists with in cycles.

Individually, most all doctrines speak about 2 seemingly opposite concepts. Those concepts are destiny or purpose and free will. In my theory of existence I liken destiny as a straight line. If we followed our destiny precisely, we would be following the path of least resistance. The element of time affects us much like a fish hook and line does a fish. Time reels us in toward the final state of physical manifestation, death. We cannot stop it or prevent its final outcome. Free will enters into the picture when we make choices. Essentially we make choices that are in alignment or not in alignment with our purpose.

When we make choices out of alignment with our destiny, we find life difficult, we search for meaning and want for more. This is the corrective or rebalancing action, which can be likened to a parent lovingly but firmly guiding their child back on to their proper course.

Free will gives us the right to live at the lowest or highest expression of our potential self, and every shade of gray in between.

Indications that we are on our proper path manifest in the physical world as synchronistic experiences. We meet a person at just the right time. We have premonitions that warn us of an event. We get guidance in a dream. We see certain animals appear more frequently than normal. These are signs from the higher intelligence or God that help keep us aligned if we choose to pay attention to them.

Answer 9

I think the meaning of life is to experience the simple pleasures and to learn. To give and to be given. To experience things in life such as love, pain, gain, happiness, and other emotions. Living a life means you get to watch others grow up, other people become transformed, you get to be happy for other people and you get to join in their celebration.
Life also means you experience pain, points in which you must make a serious discretion, and misery. You are vulnerable to the many unfortunate things of living a life (such as vulnerability, sadness, misery,anger,etc) until you learn somehow to defend yourself. It means you have to go through many painful experiences and some that you might regret.
But regretting those things in the past is not good because everything bad that happened to you is what made you who you are.
And living a life means you have to accept who you are.

Answer 10

This isn't going to be long but there are two meanings of life one is 42, the other is Buddhism. You probably don't know what i mean by Buddhism. Look it up and hopefully you'll find out what I'm talking about. Look for the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. [to peace]

Answer 11

It is utterly simple.

The primary meaning of life is survival even if that means to die for it.

That is what Jesus taught. The means to do this is through righteousness and faith.

The secondary meaning is to enjoy one's life with family, work, food, drinking in appropriate moderation according to each activity's limits.

Thus Darwin had one thing right. It truly is the survival of the fittest. That evolutionist are at the very bottom of this and cannot survive with their belief is their loss.