Do these cells count as “life”? Depends on the meaning of “life”, so this thread is timely!
To the actual point of the OP: the purpose of our lives as sentient beings, or at least the nature of our lives, is to make our meaning. Even if the meaning we make is a null set that is our personal answer.
Thing about the human brain is that we will see signal even when there is only noise, we see faces in craters, bunnies in clouds … no matter how much our lives are actually chaos we will create our meaning out of it.
There is no meaning. Meaning implies some outside source created a purpose.
About 4 billion years ago some chemicals started reacting and started making copies of themselves, and the ones that were more efficient at survival and reproduction edged out the ones that were less efficient at survival and reproduction.
There really is no meaning, its more a side effect of that process. The only life forms left are the ones that are designed to engage in behavior that enhances survival and reproduction.
Human brains look for meaning because we evolved in an environment where we were surrounded by life (other humans, predator animals, prey animals, etc) so we assume that life in general has some sort of intent since the animals that made up our environment that our brains evolved in have intent. But there is no intent or meaning in life.
Having said that, what is ‘my’ meaning of life? Problem solving, sentientism and pro-social tendencies. Those things are the most valuable things that life has evolved. Using intelligence/problem solving to fix issues, creating an enjoyable experience for sentient life, and pro-social tendencies (compassion, kindness, altruism) are the most valuable things we can do on this pointless rock.
So what if it is a side effect? Sentience itself is likely a side effect of evolving more effective means of survival and reproduction … it still exists.
Bastardizing: “I” am because I think I am, and my meaning is meaningful because that “I” has found it so. My meaning is exactly as imagined as my self is, and as real: integral to it and bootstrapping itself into existence.
My point was that there is no external metric by which we are supposed to measure up to. Religions promote concepts like goodness, but if being evil provides a 1% survival advantage over being good, then evil traits will spread. Ghengis Kahn is the ancestor of about 1/4 of people in Mongolia.
‘We’ are sentient creatures. So even though there is no external meaning, we should do whatever is in the best interest of sentient creatures since we are the consciousness that inhabit these biological brains.
I’ve been a big fan of existentialism ever since I studied Nietzsche in college, so my answer is existential. I have a life where, for one reason or another, I’ve suffered a lot. I’m not even talking about misfortune so much as maybe a genetic predisposition to suffer. An inherent neuroticism. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the problem of suffering.
It was reading Viktor Frankl that led me to the creative response to my own existence. The meaning of my life is to find meaning in my suffering, and for that meaning to help alleviate the suffering of others.
As a Zen Buddhist, part of the meaning is my relationship to the present, to accept what is.
I am a Zen Buddhist but I am first an existentialist. Buddhism is a tool for making meaning and living in alignment with my values, but it is not inherently true.
Pragmatically speaking, I feel no higher calling than raising my son. Having a child radically altered my sense of life’s purpose. Now my task is to help him find meaning in his suffering. Because he’s going to have a lot.
The other dimension of meaning in my life is doing hard things. Mastery. Sacrifice. Effort. I don’t want an easy life and, well, I didn’t get one anyway.
Ha, I feel that way about writing (speaking of hard things.) I love having a pursuit where there’s always something more to learn.
I don’t even know where I’d start. It’s not like I don’t have any joy in my life, but I think if it as happenstance rather than something I can orchestrate.
Unfortunately I do think this is more inherent temperament than conscious strategy. Some of us are Eeyore and some Poo? Things can happen that move us off our personal center but we float back to it.
But for what it is worth I like to think of much of what I do as play more than work and that misfortunes are challenges to deal with not just events that befall me and those I care about? If life is otherwise meaningless then let’s at least have fun and spread some fun along the way.
Suffering finds us all without us having to look for it; finding the joy is a bit more of an active process.
Not to be the Pollyanna but I gently encourage you as a parent to spend less energy on teaching your son to focus on his suffering and the meaning of it, and more on finding how he likes to play and have fun.
I mean, we haven’t even begun to have those discussions. But if he ever comes to me with his pain I’m going to give him a framework that’s better than self-pity or rolling over and doing nothing. That’s the function of my meaning, because I see the alternative as paralysis. I’ve had some not great experiences with the system, so I have done everything in my power to change the system, that’s really what I’m talking about in the concrete sense. The meaning I have made out of my suffering is my career and my writing. This is by necessity an active process, not a contemplative one.
I never want him to feel helpless when life gets hard. As Cordelia said to her newborn son Miles Vorkosigan at the end of Barrayar, “Always be a moving target.”
In reality, my son is more enthusiastic about life than I ever will be. I’m happy enough, but that kid spends most of his life overjoyed. While he can get extremely upset and melt down when his plans are thwarted, it doesn’t last long.
I’m not religious myself, but one of my closest friends is a Presbyterian minister, and in actual fact we’re not that different. We might put it in different words but it really comes down to kindness and helping people.
To answer the OP, the meaning of life is to live it. Life may be a gift or a curse, one may pass it on or one may not, one might get lots out of it or one may (at least appear to) scarcely live at all. Every single organism’s life is different, even if only minutely. All the gnashing of teeth about why am I here is a waste of energy. Or what @elbows said.
I’ve finally started Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist and her father’s attitude resonates to this discussion. Begin from accepting that “Chaos is the only sure thing in this world. The master that rules us all.” but then recognize that chaos can create serendipity and joy as easily as destruction. Might as well do some belly flops for the fun of it and be kind to others: the Darwin quote there - “There is grandeur in this view of life…”
Moving back to the bootstrapping self’s search to find a pattern in the chaos and thereby create our own meaning. The same events can be a Rorschach test maybe? Some see one meaning and some another to the same inkblot of life events.
100% agree that the point is to not “feel helpless when life gets hard” …
As a former Christian, or current agnostic-Christian-atheist-unsure whatever, I agree that if God existed, and God were involved in our lives or had a plan, and this fact were well known to all of us, it would totally steer and redefine what the whole meaning of life and everything is.
It’s just that I wasn’t able to find proof that God cared or was involved. It felt like, even if God existed, He seemed to be like the Andromeda Galaxy, in the sense that the galaxy exists, but has no effect on our day to day lives.
In the absence of a clear indication that God is watching, or cares, or intervenes or is involved, people naturally conclude wealth and health are the most important things.
I’m not closed off to being persuaded otherwise, but if God is playing hide-and-seek, it’s reasonable for people to not see or think He’s there - and hence live their lives as if He’s not there.
Anyhow, not trying to make it a religious debate, that would be a hijack - but just mentioning as far as its relevance to the meaning of life, which is the topic of the thread.
