What’s the meaning of life? Don’t know if or how many threads on this have been posted before.
My best guess is that if there is meaning, it’s to do good works and spread happiness. As a musician, I do it through music.
But I wonder what opinions others have. Is it to have the most sex? Make the most money? Visceral pleasures of food and entertainment? Reproduction? The pursuit of power? The pursuit of love and finding a soulmate? The finding of beauty in nature? The attainment of knowledge?
I am prepared to admit that we are all just blobs of molecules and that we create our own meaning…that meaning and purpose are just concepts that humanity imposed to give order to the chaos.
But when you genuinely put a smile on someone’s face, it makes you want to think there’s something more than chaos. On a practical level, I’d rather live in that fantasy world than be a nihilist.
The fact that everyone may have differing opinions as to what meaning is implies that there is no correct answer. But my mother always taught me it’s what you DO with what you have, not what you have, that makes the difference.
Consider Absurdism In philosophy, “the Absurd” refers to the conflict between … the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and … the human inability to find any.… The universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.
It might not make anyone else smile, but if it makes you smile, it has succeeded.
Great Og, after all, is a comedian, you could at least do it the favor of laughing at its divine punchline. Fuck prayer, laugh.
Someone once said – I know it only from a quote by Robert Heinlein – that the only two occupations worth a damn are the creation of beauty and the discovery of truth. Art and Science.
I disagree, and think there are lots of other occupations that are worthwhile: the supporting infrastructure that make Art and Science possible! The Artists and Scientists need us to bake bread, survey for roads, run the electric generators, put roofs on houses, and so on: all the thousand little tasks that are necessary for a civilization rich enough to be able to afford Artists and Scientists.
For most of us, today, that is the Purpose of Life: maintaining Civilization, so that Beauty and Truth may be created and shared.
I agree. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and most important command. And the second command is like the first: Love your neighbor the same as you love yourself. All of the law and the writings of the prophets take their meaning from these two commands.”
I think the term meaning of life is too vague. You’ll get responses about why you’re here, why anything exists, what you should spend your life doing, what principles you should live by, why living things exist and more.
Plus people who don’t even try to answer the question
Meaning depends on context, and the meaning of life would depend on the context too I guess.
In this case “meaning” seems to mean something like “quest”, as in what am I supposed to do and what am I supposed to achieve. And in this case your “meaning of life” will depend on your level of development and your life situation. Ultimately I think the meaning (or quest) of life is “Self Realization” in the Eastern sense, or what’s called “Enlightenment”. But before you can get there you need to do all the mini-quests…
Another perspective is of course the Big Three. The Good, The True and The Beautiful. Find out what is true, do what is good, enjoy or create that which is beautiful.
The concept of what gives meaning to life I feel is what drives me in my senior years. I feel compelled to attain higher levels of existence, not always an easy task when even identifying what I percieve to be higher levels of existence is not always so clear.
I have come to the conclusion that the best I can do is play a supporting roll. Whatever I can do to contibute to the great collaboration where all humans work together for the good of the earth will place me at that higher plane I am comfortable with. For me this means keeping my oversized ego in check and helping others where ever I can.
I tried being a vegetarian for seven years (including being a vegan for six months), but a prime rib sandwich, au jus, on a toasted garlic bun turned out to be the meaning of life.
