What is the meaning of life?

Question

What is the meaning of life? And why is it so important?

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

Everybody asks what is the meaning of life and they simply do not know that there is not a simpler question that could be asked. The meaning or purpose of life is to live. how ever you want to do that is fine, there are absolutely no rules to how you can live. But yet people continue to take the same path which is go to school, get a job and raise a family. For some reason that has always been the picture perfect life and peopl have not yet realized that you don'y have to do that and that they can do whatever they want. There are no rules but some actions would cause other people to take actions towards you that you do not like, this being a punishment. But yet it is only a punishment if people decide on their own to make it one. If one goes to jail they have chosen to live their life like this and they adapt to it being their actual life. They stop looking at the outside world as their real life and this as a temporary one, but they start to reverse it and make that their actual life and now they have adapted to their choice on how to live their life whether they like it or not. Now there are other people affected by this persons choice of life and this effects their lives without their own choice. SO one persons choice in life affects an entire families choice in life and they had no choice in life presenting us with the fact that, lifes not fair and it never will be.

Answer 3

The Earth is so perfect that there is no way life couldn't develope. If you make a time line starting billions of years ago up until today. Billions of lives lived and gone. Yet you, we, are at the very tip of this line. Of course if you're dead you can't read this. But, you can! I think all living things live on with us, in our hearts. And when we die, nothing really changes. Sure we lose our body, our individuality, but we have always been a part of the big picture and that will never change. We will always live on as long as there is a burning sun and other junk.

Answer 4

Yes I think that life for repeat offenders is good.I mean cause most of these murders could have been prevented if the killers would have stayed in jail. I can relate to the victims families. My friend was killed in 1997 and they have no leads.An I know sometimes the jury lets them off but come on if the guy or girl killed more than once you know hes going to do it again.

Answer 5

The meaning of life, is to give your life meaning. Life is a struggle, and it is this struggle that brings out the most in the human spirit and in human potential. To get the most meaning out of life, one should work at developing one's talents, abilities, and spiritual strength, so that one can use them to make a positive difference in this world. If you contribute to making this a better world, your life will mean more to you, and to the others that your effort has affected in a positve way. Famous people, you read about, whose lives are considered very meaningful ussually have done something of value in this world

Answer 6

42. And it's really not important. Sometimes, I think Ice Cream might be a meaning of life. Especially hazel nut flavored.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

That, no one can answer, not even the greatest minds could. The world as we know it is pure energy, life is nothing but our own souls. Our self's are the ones we should ask that question, what's our meaning? Why are we here? What's our purpose? And then, you will not ask yourself that question anymore.

Answer 9

The meaning and purpose of life is to glorify God by being an object of his graciousness.

But Fail at that and you'll end up glorifying his judicial nature. Either way you'll glorify God.

Answer 10

Forty Two.

Or perhaps trying to figure out the meaning of life.

Answer 11

Enjoy it to the fullest. The meaning of life is to live.