Lemmy, what's the meaning, or point if you prefer, of life? I know 42, but I'm serious. Nothing lasts, everything is meaningless - are we just amusing ourselves until death?
I'm not depressed (at the moment, well maybe a little), just feeling philosophical.
Edit: the idea of this came to me because I was pondering why people fight so hard to beat diseases and live a few more years. What are they planning to do? Why exert effort just to be here longer when you don't have a reason?
Just why?
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There's no meaning to life. We are an accidental self sustaining chemical reaction that has lasted for billions of years. There's no creator, no higher power, nothing waiting for us when we die.
We're also about to go extinct and are way past the window of being able to save ourselves. You and I are among the last humans that will ever exist.
And IMO that's extremely comforting once you actually internalize it. Focus on making you and the people around you happy in the short time you're here, don't worry about the far future because it doesn't matter.
It's a bit ridiculous to me why you'd think that we'd be the last humans to exist. Habitable zones will keep existing after climate change kills 99% of the population. Even full-scale nuclear war will leave most dead, but not all.
The remainder will probably keep reproducing and survive. Even 0.001% of our current population would likely mean humanity would continue.
What else do you think would make humanity 100% extinct?
I think the answer to your last question is "doomsaying". Its a fucking cult and its hardwired in the Lemmy community. I agree with you though. Society might fall, a large portion of humanity might die, but we will not go extinct. We're cockroaches. We don't go out easily.
Yeah, we have hard times ahead, and probably a lot of people will die, but I don't see humanity go extinct any time soon.
I recommend to watch "A case for optimism" from Melodysheep , which goes into that a lot more.
I'm not trying to convince you on this, but this is my personal belief:
There are runaway reactions already being triggered in the atmosphere that will make the planet hotter and hotter without stopping or slowing down for millions of years. Where are you going to live when the minimum temperature is 60C or higher? A difference of 30C or so is enough to make life impossible for us but isn't even a rounding error compared to the temperature range of a planet. Look at Mars.
Will it happen in the next few centuries or even millennia? No. But those timescales are miniscule compared to the life of the Earth or the lifecycle of an entire species.
We will be the cause of not just climate "change", but pretty much a life reset. Like the asteroid. EVERY animal larger than 10 or so cm will die. There's no way out of it. This is the great filter.
It might be interesting to you that the total number of humans who have lived and died is about 110 billion. So in the last 100 years or so 10% of all humans who ever existed were born.
And regarding the warming for millions of years, I think we had multiple periods on earth with higher CO2 levels. No humans existed back then but life in general was quite fine. We are at about 400 ppm right now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_atmosphere_of_Earth#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
Not to be too optimistic, we are heading for an unprecedented crisis. But reducing emissions matters because we are not going to go inevitably extinct.
There's no conflict with the whole chem stuff and life having a meaning. Something accidentally can still create its own meaning
Life has the meaning you choose to give it.
I remember when I learned about the vastness of space when I was, like, 6. I sat up that night just thinking about how incredibly huge the universe is, and how nothing on one random planet amongst it all could ever really matter. Then I thought "Well, I matter because I want to matter," and went to bed. Sometimes the simplicity of childhood can help answer the most paralyzing of philosophical quandaries.
pet cats
and make things better
Well, if you’re feeling philosophical I think you’d first need to address your presupposition that life has or is meant to have any meaning whatsoever.
Like, according to who? And how did they determine that? Would you be sad if it turns out there isn’t any underlying meaning?
Absurdism - How to Party At the End of Meaning
I very much love exurb1a but I think I particularly love this one most of all.
"Why am I here" is the question that precedes "Why is ANYTHING here?!", and I think that to answer both (or even consider them as valid questions, as you pointed out!) with any degree of 'objectivity' (because if not you can always just go with "it's whatever you want the answer to be!") you're gonna need to go through that external uncreated intelligence...Y'all know where I'm going with this. 😅
The questions “why am I here” or “why is anything here” are irrelevant. They are also unanswerable, you might as well ask “why is green seven?” And adding a supernatural deity into the mix won’t help either, because then you need to ask “who created Zeus?” And “why is Zeus here?” - it doesn’t answer the (irrelevant) question, it only adds a layer of complexity.
You mean "who created Odin" and "why is Odin" here ofc.
They've been asked since we started thinking BIGLY until today, so they don't seem that "irrelevant"... 😉
Life doesn't come with a meaning, you are free to find one that speaks to you
I dissagree, I don't think about death on a day to day basis. When I'm procrastinating I don't think "I'm going to die some day I should get this thing done" Maybe it's just me but the thought of death does not give me motivation to keep living my life.
I bet you are under 40.
Life doesn't need death to be worthwhile, neither does it need diseases or the urgent need to take a dump.
The meaning of life is to give life meaning
For me it’s succeeding in ways that are important to me. For instance for me it was getting sober from drugs and stable from bipolar. And then using my experience to help others do the same. The point is to help others have a life that is stable.
Congrats and thank you!
Hedonic threadmill: it's the theory that we tend to a baseline level of happiness and on average, after some time, people who have won the lottery are as happy (or unhappy) as people who have gone bankrupt.
Look at us, we are apes, barely out of trees. We were fighting predators and cold and diseases that no longer exist. Just by being alive, we are the winners of millions of years of genetic lottery, through evolution, fights, love and ingenuity.
We have access to most of human knowledge through devices that fit in our pockets, can visit other countries that were legendary to our forefathers, instead of hunting wild beasts we have satellites that guide us step by step to the nearest McDonald's.
Imagine time-traveling a few generations back, describing our life to our grand-grandparents, seeing their eyes grow wide. Now imagine, at the end, telling them how ennui got to us and we can no longer find meaning in our life.
Life has no inherent meaning. It doesn’t need one. That doesn’t make it pointless either. These judgments are human constructs, not qualities of life itself.
But if someone needs a meaning in life:
The meaning of life is to give your life meaning.
Find it yourself. What feels important to you? What makes you unhappy? What makes you happy?
I tend to be on the empathetic side. I feel a lot of pain and desperation about the state of the world, and the way we humans treat one another so cruelly. That's why I am trying to find my own way to contribute, so that life, for us and those who follow, becomes permanently better.
Other people.
Make connections in your little circle/tribe; make people happy. It's our biology, it's what we evolved to do, and it's what you leave behind.
42 is the optimum human tribe size imo
Whatever you want it to be. If that's nothing, cool. Trying to find some external thing to bestow a meaning upon you is religion.
That's the fun part! It's meaningless! All of it. It means you can do anything you want to do!
Being a good friend, finding what makes me happy while in some way better off, and trying to do those things.
Failing that, doing very bad things to very bad people.
Being alive is the only time when you can influence something, and as such, when your actions mean something.
When you're dead, it's over. There could be an opportunity for you to make something better for others or for your own enjoyment - but now all chances are gone.
So, why letting go of this amazing ability?
Man, could you imagine if there was a single meaning to life? That would be miserable. Every single action you do would have to be for fulfilling that one single purpose and if you were doing anything else you'd be failing. Want to play video games? You're not fulfilling The Purpose. Eating, sleeping, taking a shit, sure, it's to keep you going for The Purpose, but it's also failing to work on it in that moment. Taking a vacation would be blasphemous.
Meaning is something applied to things better by people, and I think I prefer it that way.
Everything is meaningless, nothing matters. Therefore whatever you decide is important is all that matters.
You can look up optimistic nihilism if you want
Absurdism is another (IMO better, but that's just me).
It can have meaning, like in helping someone in need.
But for the rest you're quite correct IMO.
I read something recently that explained every moment was like a mini death (referring to how Change is the only constant) and as such everything we do is to understand and integrate death-like processes and to see them as one cohesive whole, if we extrapolate this pattern to the process of death as a human we begin to realize that our death is so much more likely to be some pattern like that where we must question if the life we had was ever so subjectively experienced to begin with, at that point we begin to realize that our death is not to be feared any more than we should fear taking off our clothes to change them when they are dirty.
It doesn't have a meaning. "Meaning" is just a concept we made up to forever have something to chase after. You can endlessly ask "why" so it's like chasing one's own tail. It's the motor of the mind, fueled by the desire to finally be still.
Pretty much, unironically. Meaning is also a false hope you put into the future. But you're better off paying attention to what's happening now, within your sense-field. Is there something in there that you genuinely want to take care of there? There's all the "meaning" people need. But the why-motor is really, really good at convincing you to chase after exponentially increasing complexity. And most people need to do it until they die, some need to despair at it so they get disillusioned with the mind (and the lucky ones find sensible wisdom traditions to get them to navigate that space without causing harm, like Zen Buddhism).
Sidebar: And as most people have their why-motor running until the end, we of course live in cultures that are built around catching the tail of stillness, giving you so many different avenues to explore. You can have fun while doing it but you'll stop one way or another eventually.
I really recommend you check out Waking Up App . Ignore Harris if needed, it has tons of other respectable teachers of meditation and philosophy with interesting conversations.
Edit: Reading the thread I feel like many people here are at the "despair" but fall to nihilism. Which seems to be the natural result of intelligence meeting lack of wisdom. Abrahamic religions really dropped the ball on that one.
Why do you believe life has meaning?
I personally don't believe life has any meaning, other than the one you choose for your own life. It's rather terrifying and freeing at the same time. If there is no meaning, and if there is nothing else, no higher power, then this is it. You get the time you get, running around as self aware stardust, and then it ends. Everything that is "you" flips off one day and there is nothing but oblivion as the stardust you were slow seeps away. But, that also means that you don't have to live up to anyone else's idea of what your life should be. You can make your own path, your own meaning, and fuck the people in funny hats who try to tell you otherwise. You are you and no one else gets to define what that is.
If this is all there is, if oblivion is on the other side of the door, I'll scrabble for every day existing that I can get, thank you very much. Sure, I have my own beliefs and things I would willingly accept oblivion for. But, if those aren't on the table, I'm gonna keep on existing as long as I can. It's one of the few things I'm pretty good at.
Oh but you do. Unless you want the men in funny hats to take you off and put you in a funny jacket in a padded room, or place you in a room with bars instead of walls.
EVERYONE else's idea of what your life should be is the standard, and if you deviate more than the standard deviation you will suffer the consequence of eeking out existence with very few choices.
Read "The Politics of Experience" by RD Laing.
(Not who you were responding to but...)
While this is true, it's not an argument against doing exactly what you want provided that people understand that everyone else has the exact same liberty. We collectively tend towards certain values and people who deviate from those values too much eventually get sorted out one way or another. As one value most people tend towards heavily is safety, it's in everyone's best interest to find common ground with others for everyone to have safety. But it is necessarily a process with errors and learning - on everyone's side; which begets more errors and learning. Thus we will never have a perfect solution. Of course, you "conforming" to majority is also you doing exactly what you want, ultimately. Because you value your safety.
Question the presupposed truth behind every statement.
Point? Like most gifts, there is no point. You just got it.
Thats how I treat my life: as a gift. Because what makes me me, existed as matter for eons. Inert. And by an insane oddity it got "infused" with life, thought, wonder but only for an extremely short while. And after that short period it will go back into that inert state. So i do nice things which are within my reach. Things that makes me feel good. And modern (western) society gives us a lot of time to do that. I know it doesn't always feel like that but if you look at it historically we have the most off time ever.
Nice things can be anything. Maybe meaningless on the Grand scale of things, but I like making my family happy. I love cuddling my stinky old dog(well, not that old), I hate gardening but love the outcome of it. And yes, I love wasting time on movies, reading, gaming, theater. Or hikes. Or travel in general. The smell of the sea. The feeling of being in a forest. That first time you played "The last of us". that one specific movie. Or read that one fantastic book. That feeling when you finished it. Or when you went to that insanely funny comedian. Or just hanged out drinking beers (or whatever )with friends or colleagues. Its all fantastic.
And most of the times I like my job and try to forward my little society with it. (I work for a municipality) Within my own little means.
So... meaning? Of life? Experience shit. Make up your own mind.
And please: don't use big tech socials. They're made so you don't feel good, get addicted to them. Get you hooked. It and it's goals (sell ads!) are evil.
I've been inert for eternity. I will not waste that little time I have. Experience something. Anything.
I am the universe, and therefore the universe has a purpose in giving me consciousness for a lifetime. We get a lottery for what life-form we get created in (whether we're a human or a fish or a leaf) and most of that life will go just chasing the continuity of life (consuming energy, burning energy, reproducing), the rest is all made up rules of engagement in society (school, work, career, politics), all of which is "Leela" - a very believable illusion, like a game of monopoly or a very engaging play or a movie - believable, but not absolute truth. So back to the universe and why it gave me consciousness in the first place? It's just so that I can experience the universe, and see the beauty and oneness of all universe - not just the stars and the planets, but also the living forms of it - the flowers, the bugs, the pets, the wildlife, and all of the other humans on this planet, each one a unique fucking marvellous magical version of the same universe.
In my view, we are here because the universe wants to understand itself.
I find solace in that.
I hope this helps your existential dread.
IMO, yes. But just calling it "entertainment" is a bit reductionist, I think.
But yeah. And I don't see anything is wrong with that. Having a cat is cool, video games are fun, and good company is fulfilling in a powerful, indescribable, way.
To experience that kind of stuff, and for others to do the same, as much and as often as possible, is what I live for.
Yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff in the world. But I'm able to make my corner of it quite liveable. And not just for myself, but for friends and family.
I can't save the world, but I can decide to make the sliver of it that I'll interact with throughout my life, a little bit nicer.
The part I struggle with, is finding a way to make living, that makes things better, not worse. Jobs that don't contribute towards people having less and less time for the things that make life worth living, are non-existent.
"Do good, die great"
That's the beauty. Given that there is no goal, you are able to define your own.
The “meaning of life” is dependent on the scale.
On an intergalactic scale, practically nothing, unless you’re someone involved in some way in intergalactic travel (like Musk, potentially). On a planetary scale, your life as a political or corporate leader or humanitarian could impact generations of others. If you’re a doctor or lawyer, your life may impact tens of thousands or even generations of people. These are scales based mostly on space.
You could also look at a scale based on time. If / when the planet explodes, maybe someone like a Musk will be the only one alive today who genuinely has an impact on the human race long into the future. If you want to look at the time span of a country’s existence, someone like a Julius Cesar, a George Washington, or Adolf Hitler will have certain meaning for hundreds of years.
Your life’s meaning may yet to be realized. The point is to live your life day to day in a manner that has a positive impact on the lives that surround you. If you don’t have the impact of someone like political or corporate leader or someone like a Greta Thunberg, maybe the point of your life is to be a supporting player for someone else.
It gets difficult to find meaning if you live an isolated life. Without a family of your own, a fulfilling career, without traveling to engage with others outside your regular week’s schedule, it’s easy to say your life is meaningless. Because you haven’t made an attempt to give it meaning.
Your life doesn’t have to have meaning. But if you’re asking this kind of question and expecting someone to tell you there’s some inherit “meaning” bestowed upon you at birth, you’re not going to get a hopeful answer. That’s not to say you need to go out and look for it. It’s to say that “meaning” comes from the impact have on something, by choice or otherwise.
Musk is in no way involved in intergalactic travel.
Thank you. I was getting worried that some pedantic twat hadn't yet cherry picked my careful and specific wording.
My understanding of what you said:
I may not leave a legacy, but I WILL leave a mark.
At a macro level, it's the preservation of our species. On a micro level, it whatever makes you happy and doesn't hurt others (because that would conflict with macro).
it's your life, you decide. You can also decide not to give it meaning.
the bad news: there is no inherent meaning. the good news: this means you get to create your own. each of us do! the harsh reality is we exist against our will. nobody chose to be here and the "purpose" appears purposeless. if you ask me, there is no such thing as destiny and there is no afterlife for a soul to ascend to, so the existence you are experiencing here on Earth is profoundly unique and should be treated as your one and only. you might spend your entire life searching for a grand meaning, but the saerch is part of the discovery, because along the way you are progressing as a person, and aging and maturing through life, so you're not remaining stagnant and unchanging. it's okay if you never truly "know" who you are or where you're going--just keep doing it. you'll end up somewhere, you'll become someone.
The sad part of existence is not having the choice. I literally wouldn't cared if I died tomorrow. I just don't want my friends and family to be sad. That's literally the only thing keeping me here.
same, my friend
No meaning to life besides try to live your best one. We’re all just earthlings floating on a space rock sitting in a giant void surrounded by more exploding stars
There's no point and the meaning you have to make yourself.
nihil novum sub sole
I like to recall some wise words of Christmas in these dark times:
Here’s the deal, newbie. You can stuff your stocking with shiny little toys from now until you grow some testicles, but until that stocking is filled with friendship, loyalty, love and devotion, well.. it’s just plumb empty.
And no, you can’t purchase those things at Laura Ashley. And no, you can’t win them in the red book giveaway extravaganza. And, gee, I’m sure if these aren’t things that you can wind up and watch spin for eight hours.
Let me make this exceptionally clear. Christmas is about love. You can’t live without other people’s love. Not during Christmas, not ever.
So go spend this time with your friends and family. And if they laugh at you, laugh with them. And if they laugh at you again, hit them and go find some new friends. But for the love of god, jesus, Mary, and Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat, don’t ever ever forget this, newbie. You have to give love to get love. So start giving. Now.
Why live? What's the meaning of life? What's the purpose of life? I hope I don't have to explain that people have been asking this question since we first were able to form words and start thinking. You're going to get as many different opinions to answer this question as there are people to write a response. You could spend a lifetime studying philosophy and not find a definitive answer. And in the end you just have to decide for yourself which answer most speaks to you. Are you atheist, materialist, spiritual, philosophical? Take your pick.
Personally, I like Buddhist philosophy for these kinds of questions. And I suspect the Buddha would say that we are here because of craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance of our true nature and the true nature of reality. We live because we want to exist, we want to have experiences and feel the things that are available to us as living beings. Whether it's food or sex or money or adventure or admiration or love we feel like getting the things we want will make us happy. The flip side of craving is aversion, where we feel like achieving separation from those things that are unpleasant will make us happy.
Volumes have been written about this and it's impossible to summarize well in a single post. But if it speaks to you there's a lot more to say about it.
Why not?
There is no intrinsic meaning to life, we are a random chemical reaction that is really, really good at propagating itself, and we've evolved to be so good at pattern recognition that we psychologically need to see patterns like meaning where none exist.
My response to that state of affairs is that I get to define the point of life for myself. Some days the point is to advance human knowledge. Some days it's to protect people I care about. Some days it's smoking enough weed to make a cloud visible from space. None of those have to sound even remotely reasonable to you because they are things that I've seen as the point of my life at various points in the past. Yours can be different, but I bet if you spend some time analyzing your values and what you believe in as a person you can probably identify a few things you find important enough to consider the point of life, even if only temporarily
meaning comes from us
Yes. That's arguably neither a good nor bad thing; a life with a prescribed meaning or prescribed expectations would be scary in a different way.
There's been philosophers that got famous arguing it's actually great and we should be excited, even, but "your mileage may vary".
There is a thing called quality-adjusted life years. To make decisions about certain things like transplants, and to measure the effectiveness of health policy, they absolutely will factor in how much time you'll get from treatment and how much it's worth living.
Nations like mine will also help you peace out gracefully.
It has same meaning as summer breeze, or warm rays of sunshine. We make things to be more complicated than they really are. Enjoy experiences you are given, live thru pain, be a human. Existence is a weird, yup.
Literally? There is no reason for life. Which scares people, so they develop superstition (theology) or ascribe it to emotions (happiness, suffering, etc). There is no reason, for life. The reason for life existing or how it came to be is certainly up for debate, but there is no why. We are alive, we are conscious. Eventually our bodies give out on us, and our life ends.
Happiness.
Philosophically, I think the pursuit of truth and the exercise of compassion are worthwhile endeavors.
But when that's too abstract, I remind myself that I have people who rely on me and benefit from my presence in their life. I work to make the world around me better than it was before, so that others can immediately, and in the future, have better lives.
"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone's gonna die....come watch TV"
It seems to me like you are of the opinion that the finiteness of life robs it of meaning. If so, why not contribute to longevity research? It's only been a couple decades since we learned how telomeres relate to senescence. If enough people work on the problem or donate to it, we very well might be able to crack immortality before you croak. At the very least, that will give you a few more centuries to figure out what the meaning of life is.
You might object that immortality would lead to great wealth inequality, and you'd rather live a finite life than an unfair life. You can only believe this if you believe that the finality of life does not ultimately make life worthless. In which case, why not contribute to the cause of socialism?
I'm asking why people fight to live longer, and you think I'm concerned about the finiteness of life? No. I didn't say it would have meaning if we didn't die. My point is, what does life mean? Why want to live forever?
You don't even begin to address the question.
Then why did you cite that "nothing lasts" as evidence there is no meaning to life?
None of our accomplishments. The great things we do as humans.
World trade center. Library in Alexandra. etc.
Seems likely to me the lunar lander will be there for aeons to come. The pyramids are also still there. The library of Alexandria may have burned, though I don't think that was inevitable, and many of the written works and treatises from that era still survive. Euclid's elements is still mathematically correct.
Consider also the negation though -- the burning of the library of alexandria still affects us to this day. Aristotle's views on women and Christianity's views on homosexuality still persist. Colonialism and slavery over the past millenium has negatively shaped the lives of billions. These are all actions by humans with enormously negative consequences that reverberate in the present. Surely we must admit that these agents had meaningful lives.
And there may have been countless more such catastrophes averted, which we don't know about because the lack of something bad happening is not terribly newsworthy. But people who stopped such far-reaching catastrophes must surely have had meaningful lives.
Understand that most of the answers you’re going to get on Lemmy are self righteous. “There is no meaning of life.” As if they can also know there isn’t. I encourage you to look at the philosophy of this question over the ages and how others have answered it. You won’t find many other thoughts on it here since they believe that if you can’t see it, it’s not true. We know so little in all of existence that it’s incredibly arrogant to think we can answer this with any certainty.
Essentially I think you're right, we are amusing ourselves. The point is that we seem to be built to do that - we come with a nice set of compulsions that give us happy feelings when we do certain things, and if those feelings are an illusion so what? They feel real.
You get to create your own meaning. It becomes challenging when your meaning isn’t the default societal milestones, in the western world it’s - college, promotion, marriage/kids, house, retirement, death. If that progress doesn’t resonate, then it means that you have to connect to yourself on a deeper level to figure out your purpose/your life theme.
My purpose is organizing my internal world for self alignment, I do it through self expression using art, language and diagrams. I live for self expression.
Optimistic Nihilism baby. Basically, if nothing we do matters in the long run, then live each day to be happy while helping to make others around you as comfortable as you can while we all take the ride.
https://youtu.be/MBRqu0YOH14
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced
For me, i like to look at Life like beeing on an adventure over time. The Goal is death, but that Goal is meaningless, as long as the journey to it was meaningless. The adventure itself could have been good, bad, regular or irregular, it does not matter. Experiencing those Things was the meaning to that adventure. As we had no choice, no say in being born, therefore starting this adventure involuntarily, we should Not try to move along the adventures voluntarily. Death will come involuntarily too, so there is no point in stopping it short (reducing the meaning of said adventure before our Goal is reached).
I work at a hospital and most of the patients there are definitely older than dirt people getting surgeries just to extend their life a few years or even months. Most of the time it is family members making those decisions because they don't want or know how to say goodbye. We have had patients that effectively died, but the family insists on keeping their organs alive with machines in the hopes that they wake up.
As for the meaning of life? I think it is 100% to entertain ourselves until death. Even if there was a greater meaning created by some deity, we're probably not able to understand it anymore than a donkey could understand calculus. I personally could never trust any human to tell me who or what god is and/or wants. And god has yet to reveal theirself to me...
First of all.
Life has no inherent meaning; there is no grand plan or objective purpose to your life or any other persons.
Thus; what you choose has meaning is objectively meaningful (to you).
On a grander scale. As far as we know currently, we are the only example of advanced intelligence in the universe. We are almost certainly not; but we have no evidence at this stage. This is objectively meaningful; for humanity as a whole, if you choose to participate in ensuring the continuation of the only example of intelligence is totally up to you. As long as some people choose to continue the species intelligence continues in the universe.
Good, different perspective. I like it
To laugh at the absurdity of it all.
And if you ask Vonnegut; to fart around.
This is a fun question to ponder, and you'll get a thousand different answers from a thousand different people.
I think the more important question (and much harder to find an answer for) is What's the meaning of the universe? Why does the universe exist? How was it created? Why was it created? What was before the universe was created? What comes after the universe?
And you can join those two questions together. Are the two related? Is the universe's purpose to create life? Is life's purpose to experience the universe? Would the universe exist if there was not life to experience it?
Things exist outside of our observation, but they aren't interpreted until we see them.
This is the first post I've ever seen that's gotten twitter-style ratio'd. There are more comments than votes.
Yeah, interesting, isn't it?
Idk if there is really a meaning. I think it's all kinda chaos. So much of life is out of our control, and I think meaning is something people assign to themselves to gain a sense of control.
Try to be grateful for whatever you have, embrace the things you enjoy doing and maximize your time with other people that get you. When you find yourself doing something that you enjoy doing try to really be present in moment. Think about how you're feeling and why you're feeling that way. Even the way your body physically feels in that moment.
If you want to find an easy meaning or purpose try to remember even little waves can travel pretty far. Try to be kind and patient with others when they make mistakes, leave things a little better than they were when you found them, that kind of thing.
There's no right answer.
By that, I mean everyone dies with regrets: regrets about living too wildly, regrets about living too conservatively, having kids, not having kids, missing out on an opportunity, or risking too much.
You're going to reach the end of your life and believe it's unfinished, it seems.
I have no advice. Make the best choice at the moment, with all you know at the time, and then forgive yourself for it, I guess.
TBH, yeah, that's what I consider the point of my life - amusing myself until death. Whatever I do will not matter in 100, 1000 or 1000000 years which is all just a blip in the scale of the universe. So basically, I'm just trying to have fun and help other people have fun. Of course I realize that I'm incredibly privileged to live a life where I don't have to worry about too much and I can think about fun and not surviving. I experienced difficult periods in my life and the answer to this question was much, much harder back then.
Rational hedonism rocks.
The answer is that there's no one answer. Since people find it, since people make it, and some people don't think it exists. I'm that last one, just killing time until sweet oblivion finally claims me.
Absurdists unite!
Procreation and survival. That's what all living beings have as an instinct and that's the only meaning behind it. It's merely a mechanism to prevail and improve.
This.
I realize not everyone wants to procreate, especially in this day and age, but that is a function of our advanced and overdeveloped brains. All, if not the extremely vast majority of life on Earth clearly illustrates that this is it. What we do in the in-between is neither here nor there. This of course is from a purely biological standpoint. Add any spirituality or religion into the mix and it's a whole other ball of wax.
It's what you make of it. Some people don't make anything with theirs.
Personally, for me it's to form community and to leave a positive lasting influence on others. Except fascists, they can rot in hell. For others, it might be to learn as much as they can or to impart their wisdom onto their children.
If you have a worldview that includes gods, spirits, fairies, the universe as an entity, etc., that worldview often also provides you with the "meaning" bit. It can be stifling, reassuring, motivating, or depressing, depending. That was me for a few decades. Without that set of beliefs there is no built-in meaning afaik. You can study the stars or atoms or human behavior or plants your whole life and those things will not reveal a purpose or meaning for you, the universe, or humanity.
In the absence (for me) of any built-in meaning or purpose, we make our own meanings. If your meaning is "nothing matters so fuck it," that is the meaning you are choosing or accepting as some kind of default. Like many other people I choose meanings around happiness: the greatest good for the greatest number, as Spock (and probably some lesser figure) said. In this mechanistic universe we somehow came to be, and we can think and feel and understand and learn. That is almost unimaginably amazing to me. We are people, not just idk viruses grinding away. I choose a set of meanings that value people and their happiness. Life is miraculous and apparently rare. In that special group we, humans, are the most phenomenal thing we know of in the universe. I choose to value us.
Lots of interesting answers here. I figured I'll pitch in too.
IMHO there is no one true, universal meaning of life - just as there is no one meaning of any piece of art. I think the idea that everything around you must have a single meaning is a relatively modern one, which came from the requirements of efficient communication (which should indeed be precise and not open to interpretation).
As it stands, it is up to you to interpret the world around you and find different meanings for yourself, just as you should do with art. If you are struggling to start, consider those questions: What do you enjoy? What makes you happy? What do you think is "good", even if it makes you sad or uncomfortable? All those things are your personal interpretations of meaning of life. Or go ahead and make up something else, I'm not your dad.
As for this, I think when people realize the proximity of death and temporal nature of their life, they are much better at coming up with meanings. Maybe it is to see your partner or your children for a couple more years. Maybe it's another couple of gaming sessions with your pals. Whatever it is, when you realize you don't have much of it left, the importance of it typically rises dramatically from your perspective. If you're struggling to visualize something so dramatic, imagine that your favourite food will be completely banned and criminalized in your country in couple weeks. Wouldn't you want to enjoy it more before that happens?
Life has no meaning, no purpose. Luckily enough we are social animals, which creates a (genetic) framework in which we feel good. Enjoy yourself, when it’s over it’s over 👍🏽😊 I also believe humanity will go through a population collapse in the next 50-200 years… we may actually go extinct. But this beautiful planet with all kinds of beautiful creatures will survive 🎉😍
Yes! Do what you enjoy as long as it’s not harming others. Whatever that is
I would argue we have a whole list of purposes:
I think you got the gist.
And in the meantime also entertain ourselves, of course.
As an ace, I'd have to disagree.
You have total free will. You can choose to follow or break the laws, you can go do drugs or be a hobo somewhere if that's the life you want to live.
Life is just your will to do something. And if you lose the freedom and will to do anything, you're, in my mind, already dead.
There's so much to explore. Not just physical locations, but our own minds and each other's too. Learning about the laws of the universe, history, and seeing what's to come. Even pain is a thing to be experienced that the dead don't get to.
Is all that meaningless? All of us contain our own universe within us. Sure, it would be nice to care about all the other people (if there are other people) and what impact I have on them. But if in the long run nothing I do matters to them, fuck it. I'm mainly concerned with what's going on in here.
Everything, and at the same time nothing.
The point is to have a bigger car than your neighbour!
I’ve always preferred Wittgenstein’s distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. From that view, questions like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ don’t actually have an answer, because life itself lies outside language. It doesn’t need to be explained; it shows itself in the act of living. Trying to express it in words is already a kind of nonsense, because we’re asking language to do what only experience can. That’s why any attempt to describe it feels ‘mystical’ (not in a supernatural sense, but because it reveals something that cannot be captured by propositions). In this sense, the meaning of life is life itself; the ongoing activity of living.
None
Yes, exactly that. There is nothing afterwards, and the fact that we're clinging to the surface of a rock flying through an infinite universe where we could be wiped out any second and never be able to do anything about it does rather make everything seem rather pointless.
And whilst you could be depressed about that, there's still a lot of pretty awesome things to do that amusing with. Nature is beautiful. The world and its geology is beautiful. Evolution is beautiful. Science is beautiful. Maths is beautiful (if you have the sort of mind that appreciates it). Learning about these things and experiencing them is beautiful. And so on. Even most people all over the world are pretty good most of the time, despite what some other people want you to believe.
And honestly, accepting there's no greater purpose is remarkably freeing. When something happens, it's just bad luck. It's not some greater power punishing you, it's not because you did something wrong (within reason - getting hit by a bus because you crossed the road without looking is really pushing the concept).
On a fundamental level there is absolutely no meaning to life, it happened randomly over great great spans of time.
On a human level the meaning of life is enjoying it to the best of your ability.
You are asking as a mind alienated from its body. Your body has interests that are not your interests, and it uses suffering to bend you to advance its interests for it. We all exist in a state of conflict with our own biological inheritance.
Our bodies generate a mind to suffer on its behalf, because without awareness it isn't really capable of suffering. That is the point of your existence as a mind. You exist to suffer on behalf of something that is not capable of suffering on its own, so that by your aversion to suffering, you will make choices that are in the interests of your body.
You have to decide whether to simply adopt the interests of your body, or whether to try to hold on to your own interests and make that the point of your life.
I think the meaning of life is experience. I have a personal belief that is hard to explain because it's obviously going to sound a little wacko but I think since all matter is energy and it seems like there's really only energy I'm convinced everything and everyone is the same thing and I think that thing, lets call it the universe, is just also trying to understand what's going on just like us. So everything from the sun to butterflies to black holes are either some kind of organ or vessel or after effect of the universe trying to understand itself/what is going on but not in a conscious way exactly.
I think we share a universal consciousness and being alive is just peering through a very limited perspective.
But also we're chemically designed to try and not die. Rage against the dying of the light and all.
Open individualism is extremely similar to what you've described. I have a hunch that something like this is the case, though I'd stop short of calling it a belief.
There's some good discussion on /r/OpenIndividualism.
Maybe the point is to find your own meaning of life.
Like my reason to continue may be different than yours (once found)
you are the worst splinter cell agent i have ever seen OP
There is no point, no purpose, self replicating cells appeared and evolution led to where we are now.
To me, the point of life is to give and receive love. There are many types of love and many ways to show it, and through working towards/with that, it gives my life meaning.
There is no objective meaning to life. Any meaning imposed by yourself or others is arbitrary and completely subjective.
As a human you are trapped on earth and nothing you do will affect the Universe in any way. Nothing the entire human race has done or will do will affect the Universe in any way. .... Ever
And see more of your children, maybe even your grand-children. Sounds like a fair deal to me.
You are the best suited vessel for transferring your DNA to the next generation. That is the meaning of life in the most specific sense. More generally, humans have evolved to help others achieve this goal, in the form of generosity and autism. At the purest biological level, the meaning of life is to have children and to help others of your species survive to have children.
This does not prohibit you from finding your own personal meaning of course, and I wish you the best of luck in doing so.
I don't believe life has a meaning. I don't believe that anybody has a reason to be here, in any kind of grand scheme of things.
However, if somebody finds something that they enjoy, they might find they want more of that feeling, and choose to stick around to get it.
Most living things want to continue living. Whether that's because death is scary and potentially unpleasant in a few different ways, or because they've become attached to something in the world.
That's why I think some people fight diseases to live a few more years. They might not be planning on anything specific, other than just not dying.
Unironically this
You wont last forever but your actions will
Purpose? Point? You make it sound like it's something inherently positive. Can you give me an example where it could be inherently positive? Because the purposes I can think of are all negative to me since I have goals of my own and any purpose in life would stand in the way of that. I don't want to be like a spoon (so humans can eat more easily) or a cat (To be human pets), so I'm really glad to have no point or purpose in life, as that means I am the master of my own destiny.
I have goals in life I want to achieve. That's why I want to live longer. And if people can help me achieve my goals, that's all the better.
If you want to find purpose in life, then I'm sure you can find another person in life that can give you one.
I work to make things less shitty for the people I care about and keep myself alive and comfortable. That's about it. I'm not interested in having children because I have no confidence that the world will improve for the next generations.
To explore this existence.
Lots of good answers here. You might want to read up on Existentialism, a line of philosophy grappling with exactly this problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
I'm partial to the idea that we're part of a larger organism. So essentially similar to cell parts but on a different scale. There's something above that, but we are as likely to figure it out as cells are able to figure us out.
What to do with that? I have no idea. In lieu of objective facts, I guess it's useful to pick the good instructions from religions -- usually the ones that they all share are the ones that are worth adhering to. Do to others etc etc.
There's no meaning to life, because that implies intent for it existing. It just does. However, I think it does give us an imperative to try to do good with the life we have. We're one of the few things in the universe that can experience pain and joy, and we should be trying to minimize the former and maximize the latter for the other beings capable of them.
Nothing happens if you do or don't, but it does make everything better for everyone if you do, which includes yourself for the purely self motivated out there. Life isn't a zero-sum game, so we should try to make it as nice as possible.
We are many, but we are one life. We are part of an organism that started with one cell. There is no need for meaning until we treat the world accordingly.
The fear of death is something engrained in life. For some, the fear of death is higher than the fear of suffering in life.
It's whatever you decide it to be. You are right - nothing matters in reality, but you can assign importance to things yourselves and as you said "amuse yourself to death".
I don't understand how you're both not spiritual and believe this. However, if you're right then those people are assholes and so I want to align myself opposite to their goals.
Life is/can be very enjoyable, but hedonism in itself is vacuous and ultimately unfulfilling. Make sure your existence is a net positive for the world and at least you'll not only be glad you lived, you'll also be glad YOU lived. Mmmhh. I guess in the end I can't say anything more useful than the Solomonic principle: "fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man". 🤷