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2007-12-03 20:50:47 · 15 answers · asked by amith s 1 in Arts & Humanities Philosophy

15 answers

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)

2007-12-04 01:12:54 · answer #1 · answered by Jayaraman 7 · 0 2

I think the meaning of life is what you make it. For everyone's life is different and everyone has different goals. My life goal is to get rich and make my family proud. Find my best friend, and marry her. Raise good children who grow up to be good people. And lastly I want to look back on llife and I want to say that I did what I did for a reason. And as long as I can do those things, I don't care what the meaning of life is, because to me, I lived a good life, no matter what anyone thinks. I hope yours is good too.

2007-12-04 04:58:57 · answer #2 · answered by College Boy 3 · 1 1

Physical life on earth is a necessary step in the creation of something out of nothing. We are the something that is being created out of nothing.

In other words, the unmanifest conscious source of all things (what some call God) is having children, and we are those children.

Physical life on Earth is a necessary step in this creative birth process. First, as organisms capable of stimulus-response we become aware of our environment. Next we become aware of ourselves. Then we become aware that there is something unmanifest beyond and containing ourselves and our environment. Finally we recognize that we are physical embodiments, children, of that universal source.

Life is the universal energy that is constantly growing and becoming more than it was. As embodiments of life we, too, are constantly reaching toward our highest fruition.

2007-12-06 20:30:42 · answer #3 · answered by Michael S 3 · 0 0

The meaning of life is to mate and to have offspring then to die.
If there is a genetic default or ilness with one of us then we will more than likely die. This is also essential as it is part of evolution - survival of the fittest to make our species stronger.
ie - the people who are ill wont get chance to mate and so only the good genes from the healthy people are passed on to the next generation.

All other things - like emotions and love and good times are just personal things (i think equally important)

2007-12-04 04:59:31 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Most people seem to answer a different question, i.e. "what can I do to make myself feel good enough to get through life?".

But we have a longing inside of us to live a life that is worthy of living and just living to make ourselves feel good isn't it.

Purpose and meaning are essentially the same. We use "purpose" to refer to objects and "meaning" to refer to actions but both imply an intelligent design or plan.

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

2007-12-04 06:24:04 · answer #5 · answered by Matthew T 7 · 0 0

The meaning of life is to satisfy ones definition or lack of what it means to live.

2007-12-04 05:19:52 · answer #6 · answered by mtheoryrules 7 · 0 0

dear amith

to me the meaning of the life is the integration of your mind and the body.

you see when you eat, your body is on the dining table but mind is busy in calculating the bills of the office. when you watch programe on TV your mind is busy in the market. when you lie on the bed to sleep your mind is making preparation for tomorrow's tender. you (today's man) are totally disintegrated.

the life gives you an opportunity to integrate you. you are a conscious being unlike animals. only you can integrate yourself because you have a will.

gurus preach, to bow in the temples, sit in meditations, join group therapies, proceed on holidays at beeches but all this is a wastage if you are doing it being divided at the core of your existence.

wine, money, merry, leisure nothing is prohibited if you engage in them after such integration. but if you do it sleeping in the sleep of disintegration it will be an offence against nobody else but against you. against your life. your life is the ultimate value, which you can aspire.



my source is the material studied at the webssite

http://www.lightinlife.com/




.

2007-12-04 05:36:39 · answer #7 · answered by Pratap 3 · 0 1

To learn, grow and evolve until you finally realize that you and everyone else are God and the only way to get there is through love and compassion.

2007-12-04 05:00:22 · answer #8 · answered by Veronika 1 · 0 1

to be happy and explore life..different places..do different things and to create memories that you will remeber and take w/you when you die at a really old age

hope ihelped:)

2007-12-04 04:56:17 · answer #9 · answered by cant take heat?get the f%&k out! 4 · 0 1

42 !

2007-12-04 05:45:03 · answer #10 · answered by foxylady 5 · 1 0

life is what our thoughts make..^_^

2007-12-04 05:08:06 · answer #11 · answered by Timawa 6 · 0 0

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