Meaning of Life

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

What is the meaning of life?

[Ele'ill]

There is no meaning.

[Sinister Intents]

There is no meaning except the meaning you create. Creamus veritatem proprium.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Wasn't there another thread about this?

But seriously, what Sinister Intents said (sorry, too lazy to figure out the keys for that new name!). At least that's the answer I've grown comfortable with and that comes to mind.

Now that I actually think about it, though, as great or romantic as that kind of existentialism sounds, "you" as an isolated individual don't really "create", your life's meaning, do you? It's a social thing we don't just create out of nothing, outside of all the things that determine or make up our lives. To put it another way, to what extent is it subjective? For example, is the meaning you think a peasant's life in medieval Europe had, or a Native American's life prior to colonization had, more or less or just as valid as their own views of their lives' meaning?

I've wondered lately exactly to what degree psychologically 'healthy' people are meant to ponder that question. People are bound to ask it, but at some point we all get caught up in far more 'mundane' things.

So, it's a bit of a tentative answer, as I guess I was arguing any answer might be, but I'd say there is no meaning, we're just here, and at some point we have to just satisfy ourselves with an incomplete answer and live.

To paraphrase a good friend, there are so many possibilities and it's liberating yet unnerving.

[The Feral Underclass]

To give me money and drugs.

[Sasha]

42

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

hakuna matata

[Red Son]

"Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

(But seriously, I don't think there is any purpose or meaning and certainly no end goal that's prescribed by a superior being / god. The quote above isn't far of the mark really; just try and leave the world better than you found it, be happy, don't be a fuckhead / asshole etc)

[(A)]

Judo.

[cyu]

* The state that follows birth, and precedes death; the state of being alive and living.

* The span of time during which an object operates.

See also http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/life

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

There is no meaning.

Even worse; the question doesn't really make sense.

[Rafiq]

What is the meaning of life?

Because human consciousness did not precede the mechanisms from which human consciousness was developed, to posit that there is a conscious meaning to our existence is ridiculous. We don't exist for any designed reason, we actively define our existence through things like history, and as any Marxist knows, not as we please.

One thing that distinguishes Marxists from existentialists is simple: Our existence is rational whether it can be fully explained by the present standards of reason or not (which It arguably can). We can identify why we exist because we can conceptualize the universe as existing before, and independently of us. We do exist for a reason, what we need is to re-approach our understanding of our relationship to the universe. In that sense existentialism is painfully and almost disgustingly arrogant - it pre-supposes that there is only one possible posited explanation for our existence (in religious terms, of course, no matter how they want to slice it), and then denies it like a confused anti-Christian would worship satan and deny that god is just. Marvelous.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I appreciate all responses thus far. I will also want to be asking this, what exactly is 'meaning'?

[Slavic]

So many living people in this thread; so biased.

The very word life necessitates death for it to even exist, so you can go on to say that the meaning of life is to die which would prove that you had in fact lived. You can not live unless you die.

"Meaning" is a human's inability to exist for existence-sake. The universe is nothing but a collection of particles that we arbitrarily impose boundaries on in order appease our consciousness and tell ourselves that "we" have a "self" instead of a collection of particles.

[VCrakeV]

The meaning of life is simply to exist and to operate, or basically, to live. But as in operate, do what? Well, that doesn't matter. That's up to us to decide. Humanity can define its own meaning, or rather, the meaning of life, but no matter how deep we think about or look in to things, the only reason why anything lives is because it lives.

[Црвена]

To use your amazing creativity and entrepreneurial skill to start a business and employ people to produce money for you, exploit them as much as you can to generate more profit, expand your business, rig the market by buying up more businesses, get rich, donate huge sums of money to political parties in favour of privatising everything, send your kids to private school to be indoctrinated into members of the ruling class, use discrimination to divide the workers underneath you and of course, be a dutiful citizen to your country by consuming, consuming, consuming!

[consuming negativity]

I am not sure if it is possible for us to know if there even is a meaning, but if anyone alive knows for certain, I doubt they visit this website. However, my answer would simply be love. It is much more complex than that, but the most complete conceptual single-word explanation would be love. And this is a hypothesis I share with a lot of people I consider very intelligent. And also with a lot of people I think have done way too many drugs. So you can probably trust us to either be onto something or completely out in the dark.

[motion denied]

Serve and build the Party.

[RedWorker]

"Meaning" is not even applicable here. That is a human-invented notion which has no connection to reality. Furthermore, it is completely subjective, there can be no objective "meaning". We're human beings who are enticed to pursue certain activities by impulses and later feel good because of a reward circuit, which came into existence because of natural selection. That's all. There's no secret here.

[Palmares]

General: Well, of course, warfare isn't all fun. Right — stop that! It's all very well to laugh at the military, but when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself. And without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could, quite simply, disappear. That is why we'll always need an army, and may God strike me down were it to be otherwise.
[A lightning bolt destroys the general. Cut to outside, where the Hand of God rises into the clouds. Outside, a Sergeant Major stands before his troops.]
Sergeant Major: Don't stand there gawping! Like you've never seen the Hand o' God before.

Chairman: Item six on the agenda, the Meaning of Life. Now Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.
Harry: That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One, people are not wearing enough hats. Two, matter is energy. In the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
[Pause.]
Max: What was that about hats again?

But on a more serious note:

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.