What is the meaning of life?

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

I know the answer to this question, and yes, humans do have a purpose or meaning. However it's a logical fallacy to think that philosophy, religion or spirituality can provide the answer. This question can only be answered definitively by science.

All other attempts are mere opinions, many of which border on the rediculous! Once you read what I provided below, you will realize that.

THE ANSWER IS...not just yet. Please review the next few sentences for more background information...

As life evolved on the earth, natural selection allowed better and more intelligent life forms to come into existence, eventually leading to mankind. What most people don't realize, though, is that there is another side to this equation.

It has to do with the inherent opportunities there are/were in nature and the environment which offered the "niche" for a particular species to evolve into. For example, there was this prehistoric aquatic mammal which learned to dive down and catch fish to eat.
As it evolved over the centuries, its legs got smaller and smaller until it no longer had legs. During that same passage of time, its eyes grew larger and larger so that it could still see as it dived deeper and deeper into the deep dark ocean searching for food. See, what was happening was that the beast was evolving in order to refine its ability to survive in a particular ecological niche which was part of the complex natural environment offered on the face of the earth.

As the many and varied species of creatures expanded and evolved across the horizon, they did so as a way to capitalize on as many of the available ecological niches as possible. That is the other side of the equation. If an ecological niche does not exist, it is impossible for a creature to evolve in a direction that would need that non-existing niche.

NOW FOR THE ANSWER:
OUR PURPOSE IS, WAS AND WILL ALWAYS BE TO FILL THE HIGHEST AND BEST ECOLOGICAL NICHE THE EARTH HAS TO OFFER. Yhis is what provides the meaning in our lives.

Another interesting side note is that we did not evolve simply & casually into this position of control and dominance over the world around us. Homosapiens competed with many other non homosapiens humans (such as the Neanderthals) for about a million years in a fight for survival. Bestowed upon the winning species would be the glittering prize...final control of this incredible ecological niche, and defacto control of the entire planet eventually.

This situation, which most people naively take for granted, has only been the case for about a hundred thousand years...when the last of the Neanderthals died out as a result of the smothering effects caused by the more well bred homosapiens.

BTW, it has been more recently discovered, due to our advanced technology, that there was very little in-breeding (if any) between the many species of people who shared our ecological niche over those million years. This means that the other species truly did just die out, they did not get absorbed by interbreeding their kind into the singularity of humanity which is represented by us today.

Once people realize what I've just told you, they will then be able to see why it's a logical fallacy to try and answer this question with philosophy, religion or spirituality.

However, you can pick up from here and ask questions like, "Do we have any resposibilities and / or obligations due to this powerful meaning we've acquired from nature?" These are the types of questions which belong to philosophy, et al.

Answer 3

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 4

Does life really have to have any meaning. I mean, what does it all mean?? since my glass is about half full (or maybe a little more than half), I tend to look on the brighter side of life. Let's say that you have never been born. Do you think there is any meaning then? Probably not, although we spend a huge amount of time just thinking about what will things be like when we have passed on. Is there no meaning then? My advice is for you to not spend to much time worrying over things like this, and take things as they come and examining them from every angle just as I have your question.
since my glass is so full, i'd better go drain a little of it. try the Latin phrase for yourself "In Vino, Veritas".

Answer 5

I find a great deal of meaning in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series, particularly on one point.

He begins by telling readers that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is "42". This, in and of itself, tells no one anything. So, a bigger computer is built, to find the Question to that answer. The Question turns out to be "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?" The logical conclusion they reach is that there's something fundamentally wrong with the universe.

Then, there's the question in the movie "Bulletproof Monk" - "why do hot dogs come in packs of 10, and buns come in packs of 8?"
Because you can always get some more hot dogs.

The meaning of life - IS life.

Answer 6

To live a life with meaning.

Answer 7

The word "meaning" requires a plan or design and when we refer to our existence, a plan or design requires God. What did God mean when he created us is a logical question. We can't logically ask that question of any purely natural process such as mindless evolution.

So unless we assume God exists, your question about meaning is nonsensical. Without God, we have to change the question to "what will make me happy and forget about my meaningless existence?" And there are some psychological techniques that can help there, such as keeping too busy to think about a meaningless existence.

But if we admit God might exist, then He must have put our intense need for meaning into our human nature to point us to seek Him.

Answer 8

Life means that you stick up for right and correct wrong. Sit down and drink a cup of tea, fit into your pants and widen your horizons.

Answer 9

The meaning of life for all living things is to reproduce.

Answer 10

I think you have to ask God we have to be here for a reason so maybe to embrace life and make the most out of it.

Answer 11

Inherently meaningless, evolutionary meaning is to reproduce.