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)
2007-12-16 02:13:02
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answer #1
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answered by Jayaraman 7
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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.....
2007-12-16 06:39:52
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answer #2
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answered by Its not me Its u 7
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God Put us on Earth to live a Life to Share his Glory, and to Witness, But theres some Selfish people out there that dont want to! there is a meaning for life on Earth, why?, Only God Know's
2007-12-15 21:37:19
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answer #3
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answered by Anonymous
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Hello. The meaning of living things on Earth-they have their own reasons for existing. I think it is only humans that want some kind of 'meaning' to life.
As for what the Human meaning of life is;
Just ONE thing, and that ONE thing is completely up to the individual human .
Hopefully we won't spend our lifetime trying to figure out what our One thing is...
2007-12-15 21:40:15
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answer #4
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answered by matenmoe 3
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I am certain that by the definition of "meaning", that we cannot invent our own meaning for being on earth. What if I asked you, "what did you mean, i.e. have in mind, by your being born?" Obviously, you can only ask that of God.
What most people are answering is a different question, i.e. "what are some things to do that will give me happy feelings?".
Those who answered that there is no meaning have come to that conclusion through their belief that there is no God. If God exists, of course there can be real purpose and real meaning.
I think that we get real meaning from trying to achieve our real purpose. I think that, if God exists, He must have put our intense need for purpose and meaning into our human nature to point us to seek Him. So I think our purpose on earth is to seek our Creator.
2007-12-15 21:53:51
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answer #5
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answered by Matthew T 7
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There is no meaning, just random chance. History has proven that life is just an aspect of the overall universe, a small aspect to be sure ans that fact of the matter is we make little difference in the bigger picture.
2007-12-15 21:21:29
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answer #6
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answered by Orion Quest 6
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Experience
2007-12-15 21:04:27
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answer #7
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answered by Chris 7
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42
2007-12-15 20:58:56
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answer #8
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answered by icing_in_ak 5
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Lucifer/devil became into one in each of God's angels. The bible does not say that God "made" Lucifer. Lucifer became into thrown down from Heaven and hit the Earth like a bolt of lightning. God gave us what's noted as "loose will". We DO have a decision! God does enable us to make our very own judgements approximately Him and the devil. He already is familiar with the path we are able to circulate with even before we decide on that direction! each in particular circumstances it extremely is His way of assisting us advance wiser and bigger! each in particular circumstances the extra we conflict against him, the extra we advance closer to him. study John 3:sixteen a minimum of thrice or extra to attempt to comprehend what extremely surpassed off on what's now noted as "good Friday". enable the words soak in for a minute or so between each analyzing of that verse.
2016-10-11 09:39:19
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answer #9
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answered by ? 4
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life has no meaning. meanings are human-attributed qualities. since life is not a product of humanity in the manner computers or nationality are, life has no meaning.
the question whats the meaning of life itself is non-sensible.
its like asking whats the color of number 4.
2007-12-15 20:52:56
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answer #10
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answered by Anonymous
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But The color of the number 4 is green
2015-03-05 11:11:10
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answer #11
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answered by JOHN 1
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