the meaning of life

[kakteed]

I'm going to be curt here and say: the meaning of life is subjective.

Some people don't need a meaning, some people's life purpose is to find their life's purpose, some people aim to be happy, some people aim to destroy, some people aim to pay their debts, some people aim to go to heaven, some people aim to be wealthy, some people aim to give until they don't have anything, etc.

Like, Gedral says the meaning of life is to find out what it means to be human, Je Suis La Vie seems to think that the purpose to live is to be happy, HotCamoEmoMuffin (Lol. Love the username, btw.) thinks that the meaning of life is along the lines of the American dream (at least the fmaily part), bluecherry also thinks the meaning of life's to be happy, Mal-0 is questioning the existence of a meaning of life, Big J THUG doesn't actually make much sense (lo siento chico =P) but I think he said there's no true meaning, gs_gsd is alluding to life paths, Shinobi12321 thinks we live to breed, motoko uzamaki thinks the meaning of life is to live like everyday is your last until you get to that last day, snake79797 is basically saying the same thing I am, and S u g a h b o p? Lol.  

[abeydube]

To be Honest there is no meaning to life unless you can find one for yourself.You cannot force someone to have a meaning for life.

To me the meaning of life is to be selfless despite all temptations and allurments but no one ever acomplishes it because of our own needs and the word"WANT"


*i may have misspelled allurments incorrectly my apologies  

[altomymind]

Life has no true meaning. Whether you do something with your life or not, you will eventually die and be forgotten. If you do something revolutionary, it will merely be a convenience on the behalf of the rest of society until something better comes along.

In summation, life itself has no absolute meaning, because in the end, we all die. Really, the only point in an individual's life is to decide what happens to him or her after they die (but that's getting on the topic of religion).  

[bluecherry]

Whatever happened to "it's not just about the destination, enjoy the journey?" I'm mortal, but just because I don't last forever doesn't mean the time I do have is useless. That's like saying not having all the wealth that exists means what you do have is worthless because you can't get everything and anything with it. So what if I'm not remembered forever either - I won't be here to be even possibly bothered by any such thing. All I'll ever know is the time I do have and in that time, I do matter.

 

[Bloody Laughs]

people haven't posted here for awhile but regardless. Most people say living for god or to pass our genes. Those our goals. This question has been asked for centuries with the same results. Know one knows, cares, or there's many beliefs. honestly know one will ever know the "truth". But we surround our selves in wat we call truths. and stand by them. honestly I try not to worry myself about these things. I go by the every so famous phrase "Carpe Deium" I live for myself and do what my heart says. But I dont try to change the world. Because every time someone "changes" The world it makes things worse even if not intended the point is to keep things the same way they were  

[Gman6817]

bluecherry

Whatever happened to "it's not just about the destination, enjoy the journey?" I'm mortal, but just because I don't last forever doesn't mean the time I do have is useless. That's like saying not having all the wealth that exists means what you do have is worthless because you can't get everything and anything with it. So what if I'm not remembered forever either - I won't be here to be even possibly bothered by any such thing. All I'll ever know is the time I do have and in that time, I do matter.

That's a great answer. Just find something to do that you enjoy and just live. I guess that's my answer; the meaning of life is to live. Seems simple enough.  

[bluecherry]

Yup, that's pretty much it. Surprising how many people miss it though or just refuse to find it to be satisfactory or "enough." "Grr! I don't like what the facts are! They suck! I'm going to curse existence for not meeting my demands of having some epic secret treasure hunt ingrained in it to go on or else deny that there isn't one and pretend that there is anyway! scream "

 

[Natural Born Freak]

This is not my meaning of life, but it's what I've noticed.. for a long time now.
The meaning of life, for us people, is to live and destroy everything that's in our paths. Said that we are evolved species and we keep the species at balance, well, we make animals extinct, we're destroying the planet, global warming is going to take place... and we don't do anything about our growing population. Top that off we torture the animals to get "good" quality and then end up dying later anyways, then suing takes place cause of what's in the food, what about the animals? If the plants die, the animals die, if the animals die, we die. If global warming takes place we'd be underwater. Basically, if anything bad happens to this planet we take off and go to another one to inhabit for quite some time before we destroy that one. So, I stand by my statement that the meaning of life is to destroy and not give back. neutral  

[bluecherry]

I find many problems with that post. Evolution means some species survive and others don't, it just so happens the way humans evolved made them serious winners at that since we can come to understand all kinds of things about the world and start adapting it more to us instead of always needing to adapt to it. We can only change so much stuff though about our environment and if we get too reckless, we'll start harming ourselves and if we make it bad enough, then we've destroyed what we need to survive and once again, natural selection takes over and we get wiped out. We can't just survive no matter how stupid our actions may be - if we act stupidly enough, we WILL die off. If we get overpopulated for example as you mentioned, then we won't all be able to survive anymore and some of us will die off at least, then either we survive within our means, or we get overpopulated again and more people die again until or unless we all get wiped out. Humans need to understand and produce to survive, we can't just survive off being stupid and recklessly destructive. If other animals go extinct because of humans - did humans benefit from those other animals? If so, did we benefit more from the animals or from what killed them? If the former, then we were stupid, if the latter, then it's just more natural selection at work, oh well, tough break for the extinct animal, eh? It isn't as if every animal species NEEDS to survive, plenty species died off before humans existed and plenty more will after humans are gone, including plenty died off from being killed by other animals. That's how things work. Predation is one of the forces in natural selection. (And no, humans and what we do are not exempt from being counted as "natural" - all that which exists and happens must follow natural law.) I've already commented on "destroying the planet" a bit, that as long as we need the planet we've got to keep it from being totally blown to smithereens for us to survive. Otherwise, I cite George Carlan's discussion about how the planet will survive regardless of what we do, it's survived much worse than a little plastic here or there or warming or cooling a little. The planet goes through all kinds of changes, it always has and always will as long as it exists, whoopee. It's a fool who thinks we should or even can keep it from ever changing at all. And what about animal torture? Good quality what? We have plenty of good reasons we use animals to test things, but plain old torture of animals would get us no practical benefit, it isn't like if you bleed a rabbit enough it might tell you where the last Easter egg is hidden, and if somebody is just torturing animals for fun, I think that is a sign of some serious mental troubles and a dangerous person as many people who go on to do terrible things to people first started off doing them on other animals, so torturing animals is not cool. As for suing about stuff like what is in food - be specific. Suing because somebody promised you they gave you plain old lettuce and nothing more and then you find out that there was some kind of poison on it? That's fraud, hell yes sue the bastards, that's what law suits are for. They promised one thing that you agreed to and delivered another, forcing you to make a transaction you did not agree to do. On the other hand, suing McDonalds because you just wouldn't refuse to eat what you knew were not very healthy foods in large quantities and now you are very heavy and not so healthy - that's crap, you had every way to know what you were doing and just refused to consider it. McDonald's is not at fault and that kind of lawsuit should be thrown right out of court.

I highly disagree with you - humanity needs to produce value to sustain its survival. And why would we want or need to "give back" otherwise? That would go against our best survival to give back that which is aiding our lives and what are we "giving back" to anyway? A tree doesn't know or care if you spare cutting it down, a dog has no concept of things the way we do to understand what is going on think to itself in clear terms something like "Damn those humans, they keep taking all the good stuff and not giving me what I'm due." Sure, you can be nice to a dog or a not cut a tree down, but we aren't obligated to do so anymore than a lion is obligated to consider the lives of gazelles and spare them. All living things do what they need to to survive, to continue to exist, as their nature demands in the environment they are in.

 

[butsnif]

to find out what it is to be in this material world
to feel the wind or eat salt and vinegar crisps

different perspectives
for the universe to see and know itself
we are that bit of the universe  

[Fallenarchangel999]

The meaning of life is to create the next generation of life before dying and making way for the next generation.  

[bluecherry]

I'm not having any children ever, but I contend that my life has been far from meaningless. razz If each person's life was not worth something on its own, why bother to keep making more people anyway, eh? Wouldn't it all be a lot of spinning your wheels and getting nowhere?  

[cairaechan]

I think the secret to finding out the meaning of life is figuring out why we evovled into humans in the first place, if you believe in evolution. Because, if we were just evolving into the best form to survive and pass on genes, we would have stayed unicellular. Bacteria can survive in much more extreme environments and reproduce much faster than humans. They have us beat if you consider traditional survival of the fittest beliefs. Therefore, I assume that we evolved for some other reason, and if we figure out what that is, maybe we can figure out our purpose. So I answer the question with another question: What are the advantages to being a human over being a bacterium?

The other possibility, of course, is that evolution is random, and we're pretty much a random mutation. I think there's evidence against this though, but there's too much to say on the subject for one post.  

[bluecherry]

1) Natural selection is, as the name says, natural; it isn't run by a thinking thing with specific aims like "making the thing that can survive best," so here and there mutations can occur which may actually be a hindrance of sorts at least at first and under the current circumstances, but not enough to make the creature fail to be able to keep passing on its genes. For example, color blind people aren't all not able to survive and reproduce.
2) Different life forms have different survival strengths. Bacteria's species may be able to survive some climates we couldn't, but our species can survive a wider range of climates than many individual bacteria types can. Each individual member of our species is more adaptable. Additionally, largely because of this greater adaptability of individual members of the species, each individual member of our species survives WAAAAAAAY longer than any single cell of bacteria.