The meaning of life?

Question

Yea, its the most used philosophical question out there, but im interested to see what people say it is to them. Im guessing the majority will say "happiness". Well, happiness isn't the pot 'o gold at the end of the rainbow, its not something someone can reach through a grand endeavor. Its not like you "find" happiness, then are content for the rest of your days. Then religion gets thrown in. But im open to anything you may think.
Peace.

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 think it is the least philisophical question.

It is the most conventional, redundant, easily approachable phillisophical question.

Most people do not say "happiness." Happiness may be their personal persuit and thus the reason they perpetuate their life but it does not reference an objective meaning.

We are clumps of atoms. There is no meaninging in a proton. There is no meaning in a neutron, an electron, nor the spaces in between. There is no meaning in light, a rock, under a rock, in a state of matter such as gas liquid or solid. There is no meaning except in the mind.

The mind is wrong.

Answer 3

I have absolutely no idea and it would be absurd try to think and type up ideas of what it could be. I guarantee I will never know myself what the meaning of life is. And I may never find out what the meaning is, or if there even is a meaning at all. I dont think there is an answer to this question, atleast not from my perspective, and I think I am content with that.

Answer 4

Good answers given in "Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet, "Men in White Apparel," Ann Ree Colton, and "The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock, http://www.divinecosmos.com

Answer 5

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 6

Taking a logical approach: Life is nothing but a means for genes to replicate themselves.
Taking a philisophical approach kind of intertwined with my logical approach in a sort of "far out" kind of way: Your children and the development of families is the meaning of life.
Taking a humerous approach: God is the meaning of life.
Taking my approach: what is this life thing everyone is talking about and how can i make use of approaches to understand it.

Answer 7

you would hope that there is such a thing. other than the cycle of life and death. someone has perpetuated death on our behalf it would be nice to believe in more, but that is our frail fear of humanity, to throw a "god" in the mix, or the belief in the second coming, whats up with the first, i'm curious?

Answer 8

To survive, as it is the most fulfilling reward and thing in life. In the end, its satisfaction that we truly seek, but never find, only through experiencing all we can.

Answer 9

The meaning of life....

The meaning of life doesn't comprehend into our normal thoughts. To really give a valid answer, I think, we must go deeper into what matters to us, what we believe, what we think, and what we share as a whole. The meaning of life is to think, to grow, to learn, to prosper.

"We were born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed."

The Meaning of life is:

To be born happy
Live learning
And Die smiling, knowing that everything you did was exactly what you wanted.

Answer 10

Assume you have been here before, maybe in another form, are here now for a finite instant, and will re-appear in the future. Your life must be lived to the utmost, to fulfill your obligation to be here.

Answer 11

The meaning of life for me is The One And Only God, Jesus. To love and obey Him. And then be with Him forever in heaven. I have nothing else to live for.