What is the meaning of life?

Question

This may be the hardest question ever given to you, but why not give it a go and share you opinion. thx

quit with the number 42 joke already lol.

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

The only reason the question is hard is that it is invalid and that is why the the answer comes out at an incongruous 42.

The foundation for the formation of the environmental conditions that enable life to exist is serendipity which, not being the product of design, has no 'meaning' in this context.

Mankind, steeped as it is in the pathetic arrogance that spawned the ridiculous notion that it has been 'specially created', has enormous difficulty in accepting that ultimately the only reason for its existence is pure chance.

So, the only valid question in this context would be 'Is there a meaning to life?' The answer would be easy; it would, of course, be 'No'.

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

Number 42?

Answer 5

sorry to say 42 is as good an answer as anything else - why does there have to be a meaning? it is just wonderful to beat the odds and be alive. Do you realise you are at the end of an unbroken chain of life going back to the first living organism - isn't that enough for you?

Answer 6

42

Answer 7

This is a question that is constantly asked. Every person has their unique set of experiences therefore it would be rude to say that life has only one meaning. Life's meaning changes by the hour and is dependent on certain circumstances. For example an enthusiastic swimmer may say that swimming is his meaning yet if certain circumstances disable his swimming he must search for a new meaning. The inability to find that meaning may lead to depression, mental illness, and maybe even suicide.

Answer 8

An an Existential Nihilist, I'll give you my perspective on it.
I believe the world is 'without meaning or purpose'. It is full of illusions and constructed values, however at the base of all of this is 'nothingness'. We as humans naturally seek to construct or invent some sort of 'meaning' to this nothingness.
So for me, a natural question arises:
Can we accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose?
My answer is 'not everyone can'. For some, the anguish and terror of purposelessness will be overwhelming and will lead to an unhappy life. For these people, they are better-off constructing some type of artificial direction so that they can confront their agonizing situation.
However for others, our answer is 'Yes', as Karen Carr states, we can apply a "cheerful nihilism" --an easy-going acceptance of meaninglessness.

Answer 9

sure i think of that life for repeat offenders is physically powerful.I recommend reason maximum of those murders could have been prevented if the killers might have stayed in reformatory. i will relate to the sufferers households. My chum grew to become into killed in 1997 and that they have no leads.An i understand in specific cases the jury we could them off yet come on if the guy or woman killed greater beneficial than as quickly as you recognize hes going to do it returned.

Answer 10

It is not a hard question for me. I don't believe that life has a meaning. We are here that's it. Make the best of it, be kind, help when you can and enjoy as much of it as possible.

Answer 11

In my opinion, it is having happiness, sadness, success, failure, kindness, listening to someone that needs a friend to just listen to them. Calling your parent just to say you love them, or giving your child a long and strong hug. Having an big argument with someone that is close to you and then later calling to say sorry, and lets to watch that game, have a beer or coffee. Life is a journey, its not always going to be smooth sailing, there's going to be thunders and storms and also going to be sunshine and rainbows. Just don't ever give up and always have faith.