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Meaning of life

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The question "what is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?", and "Why does one live?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

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[edit] The Question

The Question "what is the meaning of life?" can also be simplified to say "why live at all?" or "why should I keep living?" The answers below simply offer a guide to what is the purpose in life, not what is the purpose of life. "Life" itself must also be defined. For example, it could refer merely to the state of existing, or how badly you shall die or the achievements of an individual. This can also be applied to an entire species, a planet, or even the universe.

[edit] Scientific approaches and theories

Where scientists and philosophers converge on the quest for the meaning of life is an assumption that the mechanics of life (i.e., the universe) are determinable, thus the meaning of life, if meaning exists, may eventually be derived through our understanding of the mechanics of the universe in which we live, including the mechanics of the human body.

There are, however, strictly speaking, no scientific views on the meaning of biological life other than its observable biological function: to continue. In this regard, science simply addresses quantitative questions such as: "What does it do?", "By what means?", and "To what extent?", rather than "For what purpose?".

[edit] Science and the five questions

Science tackles each of the five interpretations of the meaning of life question head-on, of biological life, to determine what makes us tick. The questions "What is valuable in life?" and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?" are staples of the social sciences. These questions are explored by scientists every day, from the perspective of the life forms being studied, in an effort to explain the behaviors and interactions of human beings (and every other type of animal as well). The study of value has resulted in the fields of Economics and Sociology. The study of motives (which reflect what is valuable to a person) and the perception of value are subjects of the field of Psychology.

[edit] Schrödinger

Schrödinger’s book What Is Life? was a major influence on Watson and Crick, the discoverers of DNA's helical structure. Schrödinger second theme was a "stream of order," thereby resisting the universal tendency for things to fall into disarray, into thermodynamic randomness and atomic chaos (Schrödinger 1944, 20-21)…. …Life's ability to maintain itself, expand, and reproduce in a world subject to the second law of thermodynamics is a paradox explained by the fact that live beings, open to and dependent upon energy via light or chemical reactions, release heat and other thermodynamic wastes into their environment. Organisms do not maintain their complexity, and become more complex, in a vacuum. Their high organization and low entropy is made up for by pollution, heat, and entropic export to their surroundings. Although the proportion of entropy they add, and which would not be there without their intervention, is small compared to the vast quantity that would be produced in any event, and ultimately without them, their ability to behave as natural entropy-producing machines helps explain their—our—existence…. Like other NET (nonequilibrium thermodynamics) systems, life's complexity is a natural outgrowth of the thermodynamic gradient reduction implicit in the second law of thermodynamics: where and when possible, organizations come cycling into being to dissipate entropy as heat. Gradients, such as that between the sun and space, may be huge, and draining them may take literally eons. Nonetheless, the complex systems that come swirling into being near gradients are natural. Although they may sometimes seem to be organized by an outside force, no "agent deliberating," as Aristotle put it over twenty centuries ago, is needed (Physics 2.8 [McKeon 2001, 251]).

Schrödinger warns us here to take this mechanism idea with a grain of salt. Throughout his lecture, he reminded his audience time and again that life was not a mechanism, like a clock or the motions of the planets. We now recognize that intelligent mechanisms, technology, flow outward from intelligent, gradient-reducing life. Machines are not "built-in" to life in some superhuman way. Rather, the more-than-mechanical equilibrium-seeking intrinsic intelligence of energy-based material flow systems produces living matter in all its cunning, including the machine-making global consumer society of modern humanity. "Yet I know by incontrovertible experience," writes Schrödinger in What Is Life? that I am directing its motions of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take full responsibility. The only possible inference from these two facts is I think that I—I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt "I"—am the person, if any who controls the "motion of the atoms" according to the Laws of Nature . . . it is daring to give to this conclusion the simple wording that it requires. In Christian terminology to say "Hence I am God Almighty" sounds both blasphemous and lunatic. But please disregard these connotations for the moment and consider whether the above inference is not the closest a biologist can get to proving God and immortality at one stroke.
As one can well imagine, such a Vedic epilogue shocked the Catholic Church and Schrödinger's sponsoring institution, Trinity College. He was asked to remove his private subjective thoughts from the manuscript. With his characteristic stubbornness he refused to change the epilogue; in turn the publisher refused to publish the book. The small green book of ninety-one pages was published the following year, in 1944, by Cambridge University Press, in a much more secular England.

[edit] Erich Schneider

... Linking our purposeful behavior to life's function as a gradient-reducing complex system seems to be another move in the scientific tradition of increasing our knowledge while deflating our arrogance. Copernicus's view that Earth was not the center of the solar system was upsetting to those wed to the notion of humans as literally at the center of the universe. Making the sun central was a blow to our ego but a mathematically more elegant description of our position and movement in space. Darwin did not help matters when he pointed out that we evolved from common ancestors with the apes. This was another blow to our ego. Molecular biology and microbiology continue applying pressure by showing, with genetic evidence that is difficult to dispute, that our "animal" cells contain remnants of bacteria—symbiotic bacteria that merged to form the cellular basis of all amoebae, algae, plants, fungi, and animals, including, of course, humans. Our end-directedness, our planning can be seen in this same light. NET (nonequilibrium thermodynamics) systems organized to reduce ambient gradients and funnel their energy into our own growth, we are like nonliving NET systems that increase their complexity in areas of energy flux. Just as the matter of life (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus atoms) has been found distributed throughout the universe, so the process of life (local pockets of increasing organization) is not unique. We are connected to other energy-flow systems that have functional organization....
....Why life? Does life, scientifically viewed, have an overall function? Our answer is yes. A barometric pressure gradient in the atmosphere, the difference between high- and low-pressure masses, leads to a tornado, a complex cycling system. The tornado's function, its purpose, is to eliminate the gradient. Life has a similar natural purpose. Only instead of quickly destroying a pressure gradient and then disappearing, it tends to reduce, over billions of years, the huge solar gradient between hot sun and cold space, growing in complexity as it does so. The growth of complex, intelligent life can be directly traced to the effectiveness of life as a cycling material system adept at reducing gradients. The original and basic function of life, as of the other complex systems is to reduce an ambient gradient.

Culture critic C. P. Snow, disapproving the increasing gap between the sciences and the arts, suggested that any educated person should know the second law of thermodynamics. Not knowing the second law was, he said in his Two Cultures and Second Law (1969)--an early warning shot in the ever-changing battlefield of the culture wars-equivalent to not having read a work by Shakespeare. The second law is neither a guarantor of cosmic death nor an arcane mathematical equation of interest only to polymer chemists. Rather, the second law helps explain the creation and elaboration of complex systems run by energy flow. The second law also directs our attention toward the directional processes we see in many sorts of developing complex systems, including those of our own evolution in short, the natural phenomena of the second law not only destroy, but create-by destroying gradients…. [1]

[edit] Gene-centric view of evolution and the meaning of life

In the book River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins devoted one chapter to explain the meaning of life in Darwinian context. He named the chapter God's utility function, meaning "that which is maximized by nature", or simply, "the meaning of life". It would seem that there is a purpose to life, as each animal is built in every way to survive long enough to reproduce and pass on its genes. Those families whose genes are unfit for suvival and reproduction can not extend their family and die. For example, if one family has more fur/hair than another, and the planet's temperature drops for some reason, then the ones with more fur will survive and the species will spread and "adapt" to their enviroment. This creates the illusion that there is some reason for life, animals continue living and reproducing, and those who can't die.

[edit] Philosophical views

“Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong,
Order without disorder,
Does not understand the principles
Of heaven and earth.
He does not know how
Things hang together.”

—Chuang Tzu, Great and Small

[edit] Value as meaning

In that they attempt to answer the question "What is valuable in life?", theories of value are theories of the meaning of life. Famous philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others had clear views about what sort of life was best (and hence most meaningful).

[edit] Atheistic views

Main article: Atheism

Atheism's strictest sense means the belief that no god or supernatural overbeing (of any type or number) exists, and by extension that neither the universe nor we were created by such beings. Atheism pertains to three of the five interpretations of the meaning of life question: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?" Because most atheists reject supernatural explanations for the existence of life, lacking a deistic source, they commonly point to abiogenesis as the likely source for the origin of life. As for the purpose of life, some atheists argue that since there are no gods to tell us what to do, we are left to decide that for ourselves. Other atheists argue that some sort of meaning can be intrinsic to life itself, so there is no need for any god to instill meaning into it. Some simply believe that life is nothing more than a byproduct of insensate natural forces and has no underlying meaning or grand purpose.

[edit] Existentialist views

Main article: Existentialism

The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer offered a bleak answer by determining one's life as a reflection of one's will and the will (and thus life) as being an aimless, irrational, and painful drive. However, he saw salvation, deliverance, or escape from suffering in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and asceticism. Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher of the 19th century, invented the term "leap of faith" and argued that life is full of absurdity and the individual must make his or her own values in an indifferent world. For Kierkegaard, an individual can have a meaningful life (at least one free of despair) if the individual relates the self in an unconditional commitment to something finite, and devotes his or her life to the commitment despite the inherent vulnerability of doing so.

[edit] Humanist views

Main article: Humanism

To the humanist, life's biological purpose is built-in: it is to reproduce. That is how the human race came to be: creatures reproducing in a progression of unguided evolution as an integral part of nature, which is self-existing. But biological purpose isn't the same thing as human purpose, though it may be a factor thereof. Human purpose is determined by humans, completely without supernatural influence. Nor does knowledge come from supernatural sources, it flows from human observation, experimentation, and rational analysis preferably utilizing the scientific method: the nature of the universe is what we discern it to be. As are ethical values, which are derived from human needs and interests as tested by experience.

Enlightened self-interest is at the core of humanism. The most significant thing in life is the human being, and by extension, the human race and the environment in which we live. The happiness of the individual is inextricably linked to the well-being of humanity as a whole, in part because we are social animals which find meaning in relationships, and because cultural progress benefits everybody who lives in that culture.

When the world improves, life in general improves, so, while the individual desires to live well and fully, humanists feel it is important to do so in a way that will enhance the well being of all. While the evolution of the human species is still (for the most part) a function of nature, the evolution of humanity is in our hands and it is our responsibility to progress it toward its highest ideals. In the same way, humanism itself is evolving, because humanists recognize that values and ideals, and therefore the meaning of life, are subject to change as our understanding improves.

The doctrine of humanism is set forth in the Humanist Manifesto [2] and A Secular Humanist Declaration [3].

[edit] Nihilist views

Main article: Nihilism

Friedrich Nietzsche, though he himself was not a nihilist, characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. The term nihilism itself comes from the Latin nihil, which means "nothing". Nietzsche described Christianity as a nihilistic religion, because it removes meaning from this earthly life, to instead focus on a supposed afterlife. He also saw nihilism as a natural result of the idea that God is dead, and insisted that it was something to be overcome, by returning meaning to the Earth.

Martin Heidegger described nihilism as the state in which "there is nothing of Being as such", and argued that nihilism rested on the reduction of being to mere value.

Nihilism rejects claims to knowledge and truth, and explores the meaning of an existence without knowable truth. Though nihilism tends toward defeatism, one can find strength and reason for celebration in the varied and unique human relationships it explores. From a nihilist point of view, the ultimate source of moral values is the individual rather than culture or another rational (or objective) foundation. The characteristic that distinguishes nihilism from other skeptical or relativist philosophies is that, rather than merely insisting that values are subjective or even warrantless, nihilism declares that nothing is of value, as the name implies.

[edit] Positivist views

Main article: Logical positivism

Of the meaning of life, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivists said: expressed in language, the question is meaningless. This is because "meaning of x" is a term in life usually conveying something regarding the consequences of x, or the significance of x, or that which should be noted regarding x, etc. So when "life" is used as "x" in the term "meaning of x", the statement becomes recursive and therefore nonsensical.

In other words, things in a person's life can have meaning (importance), but a meaning of life itself, i.e., apart from those things, can't be discerned. In this context, a person's life is said to have meaning (significance to himself and others) in the form of the events throughout his life and the results of his life in terms of achievements, a legacy, family, etc. But to say that life itself has meaning is a misuse of language, since any note of significance or consequence is relevant only in life (to those living it), rendering the statement erroneous. Language can provide a meaningful answer only when it refers to a realm within the realm of life. But this is not possible when the question reaches beyond the realm in which language exists, violating the contextual limitations of language. Such a question is broken. And the answer to a broken question is an erroneous or irrelevant answer.

Other philosophers besides Wittgenstein have sought to discover what is meaningful within life by studying the consciousness within it. But when these philosophers looked for a holistic definition of the “Meaning of Life” for humanity, they were stone-walled by the Wittgenstein linguistic model.

Logical positivism asserts that statements are meaningful only insofar as they are verifiable, and that statements can be verified only in two (exclusive) ways: empirical statements, including scientific theories, which are verified by experiment and evidence; and analytic truth, statements which are true or false by definition, and so are also meaningful. Everything else, including ethics and aesthetics, is not literally meaningful, and so belongs to "metaphysics". One conclusion is that serious philosophy should no longer concern itself with metaphysics.

[edit] Pragmatist views

Main article: Pragmatism

Pragmatic philosophers suggest that rather than a truth about life, we should seek a useful understanding of life. William James argued that truth could be made but not sought. Thus, the meaning of life is a belief about the purpose of life that does not contradict one's experience of a purposeful life. Roughly, this could be applied as: "The meaning of life is those purposes which cause you to value it." To a pragmatist, the meaning of life, your life, can be discovered only through experience.

Pragmatism is a school of philosophy which originated in the United States in the late 1800s. Pragmatism is characterized by the insistence on consequences, utility and practicality as vital components of truth. Pragmatism objects to the view that human concepts and intellect represent reality, and therefore stands in opposition to both formalist and rationalist schools of philosophy. Rather, pragmatism holds that it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories and data acquire significance. Pragmatism does not hold, however, that just anything that is useful or practical should be regarded as true, or anything that helps us to survive merely in the short-term; pragmatists argue that what should be taken as true is that which most contributes to the most human good over the longest course. In practice, this means that for pragmatists, theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices--i.e., that one should be able to make predictions and test them--and that ultimately the needs of humankind should guide the path of human inquiry.

[edit] Transhumanist views

Main article: Transhumanism

Transhumanism is an outgrowth of Posthumanism, which is an extension of Humanism. Like its ideological ancestors, it proposes that we should seek the advancement of humanity and of all life to the greatest degree of differed feasible equation. Although transhumanism makes no distinctions regarding anything as grandiose as "the meaning of life", it is different from humanism and posthumanism in its emphasis on the proposition that science should take the foremost role in the improvement of life. To the transhumanist, the meaning of life is necessarily indefinite and ambiguous, and should be left to the philosophical inclinations of the individual. Nevertheless, whatsoever an individual chooses to believe, transhumanism insists that there does exist a moral imperative common to all intelligent agents to improve their lives and, moreover, to advocate for the universal recognition of freedoms regarding an individual's choice of life enhancement. All living things should be free to choose, to the extent of their capacities, to improve themselves or not in any way they so desire, and no living thing should ever be given the opportunity to interfere in the personal development of any other living being unless for that being's own good (such as if the being's ignorance of some otherwise well understood principle or fact were driving it to unwitting self-injury).

To transhumanists, these principles extend greatly beyond more conventional lifestyle choices and freedoms of thought, and encompass such experimental and highly controversial subjects as morphological freedom and procreative beneficence. These are, respectively, the freedom to choose the shape and function of one's body and mind, and the freedom to do the same for one's descendants, excepting when to do so would in some way injure the descendants or the descendants' freedom to make the same choices (which are considered to be the same thing in certain senses). Transhumanists therefore advocate that all life forms have the freedom to access the tools and knowledge necessary to improve their lives however they see fit (and that these things must be made universally available), whether this be in simple manifestations such as the options of meeting basic medical and dietetic requirements, or more complex examples such as the options of genetic engineering or cybernetic augmentation. Transhumanists argue that improved people will necessarily have improved capabilities to seek out and answer questions regarding "the meaning of life" as they see it, more so than even humans do currently. The transhumanist programme, then, is essentially the programme that insists that all living things be granted the basic option to inquire after their own personal or social "meanings of life" (including meanings that human beings are currently incompetent to comprehend) as much as it is physically possible to do so, and no less.

[edit] Theistic beliefs

Main articles: Religion and Religious humanism

There are many different intepretations to the Word of God, and therefore many intepretations to the meaning of life. However, reaching Heaven in the afterlife can be seen as a universal meaning of life or goal for followers of Abrahamic religions. Also a universal teaching, or meaning, to be followed in virtually all religions is The Golden Rule.

[edit] Relationship to God

Most people who believe in a personal God would agree that it is God "in whom we live and move and have our being". The notion here is that we respond to a higher authority who will give our lives meaning and provide purpose through a relationship with the divine. Although belief is also based on knowing God "through the things he has made," the decision to believe in such an authority is called the "leap of faith", and to a very large degree this faith defines the faithful's meaning of life.

[edit] To "be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it"

An example of how religion creates purpose can be found in the biblical story of creation in the Old Testament of the Bible: the purpose for man comes from his relationship to God and in this relationship he is told to "Be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it" Genesis 1:28. This indicates that subsequent to the goal of being in personal relationship with God, the propagation of the human race, the care and population of the earth, and the control of the earth (but as man sinned, he lost the full ability to do so, characterized by the fact that animals are not under full control) are the first three commandments God has set for man.

Another Biblical example is given in Micah 6:8, which states "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." However, instructions given by God and the meaning of life (or the purpose of one's existence), are not necessarily the same thing.

[edit] To love God and Neighbor

Another example, this one also from Judaism and Christianity, which agree broadly on two of their most important imperatives for life:

  • "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength'." This is the 'first commandment' according to Jesus (Mark 12:28-31), and is also a quote from the central prayer of Judaism, known as the Shema (Deut 6:4-9).
  • "And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'." (Christianity: Mark 12:28-31). Judaism records this both in the positive sense (Leviticus 19:18: "Love thy neighbor") and the negative sense (Hillel, ""What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Law; the rest is just commentary")

Both of these commands are relational and are primarily concerned with knowing God in order to equip the believer to maintain a loving relationship with other members of the human race. According to Benedict XVI, the ultimate reason for loving God and men is that "God is love" (Deus Caritas Est) and men are made in his image. The Christian God, he says, is the Logos, (the Word: meaning and reason).

[edit] Reformed Theology: glorify and enjoy God

The Westminster Shorter Catechism looked at the history of what God has taught man, and summarized it at its outset: "man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever". [4]

[edit] Worship God

Islam's viewpoint is that God created man for one purpose only and that is to worship God: "I only created jinn and man to worship Me" (Qur'an, 51:56). Worshiping in Islam means to testify to the oneness of God in his lordship, names and attributes. All acts of worship should be exclusively for God, not through any intermediary nor with a hidden worldly intention. The term worship may be divided into two categories. That is the partaking of religious rituals, sanctioned by God or through working, producing, innovating and improving the quality of life, thus striving for the Creator. To Muslims, life was created as a test. Patience is seen as an integral part of the Muslim faith and character. How well one performs on this test will determine whether one finds a final home in Jannah (Heaven) or Jahenam (Hell).

[edit] Sapiential Meaning of Life

In many esoteric strands of world religions, one encounters the meaning of life as "play".

The most notable of this is Hinduism's notion of lila (literally, "play"). This is the suggestion that the meaning of life is not a final goal which can be arrived at in time, but rather a sort of game in which every being is unwittingly playing. Although it is pleasurable or fulfilling to 'win' the game of existence (at the end of one's life or at the end of time), the game itself, like music, dance, or sport, creates meaning as it moves through time.

Similar ideas are contained in the hidden treasure referenced in hadith qudsi: "I (God) was a Hidden Treasure and I desired to be known. Therefore, I created creation in order that I might be known". In this esoteric Muslim view, generally held by Sufis, the universe exists only for God's pleasure. However, because the happiness of God is not dependent on anything temporal, creation works as a grand game with the Divine serving as the principle player and prize.

The Book of Job begins with God applauding over the piety of Job. Satan, one of the heavenly host, says to God that Job is only faithful because he is rewarded accordingly, and asks permission of God to test Job. In his tribulation, Job suffers again and again without ever finding out the cause of his life's horrors. Instead, only God and the reader are allowed to know that the sorrows of life are merely a game played on the cosmic level. The game itself is incidental, yet at the same time the will of God in the creation of life.

A contemporary example of the sapiential approach to the meaning of life can be found in an online essay: "Soon You Will Understand...The Meaning of Life"

[edit] Spiritual and mystical views

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Mitch Albom wrote about his dying professor Morrie and their last lessons together in the bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie in which some interesting questions were raised. Albom's life as a writer was until then in vain because he chased the wrong things in life: bigger houses, bigger cars, and bigger paychecks. No matter how big they were, they still could not fill his emptiness. The reality that we all have to confront eventually is the same thing Morrie realized when he learned he had Lou Gehrig's disease: that the world was as green and as alive as before he contracted the terminal illness. The world does not stand still nor come to an end just because you do. The professor's experience haunted the author in his ego-centric view of life, and inspired him to change. Albom learned from Professor Morrie that the true meanings in life are in the giving, the loving and the sharing of what you've had, which in turn live on by being passed down from generation to generation.

The Book of Life <ref name="Michael Sharp"> The Book of Light: The Nature of God, The Structure of Consciousness, and The Universe Within You e-book accessed July 2006 </ref> presents the nature of God and the purpose of creation. According to Michael Sharp, God is consciousness and the purpose of creation is to have fun (alleviate boredom). Creation exists "as a dream inside the mind of God" and we are all Sparks of the One Creator Consciousness. The Book of Light is a copyleft and available from [5]

The Urantia Book offers a point of view on the vast meaning of life by reconciling humankind's innumerable problems with discrepancies between creationism, evolution, cosmology, modern science, philosophy, history, theology and religion.

James Redfield gave his perspective on the meaning of life in his book The Celestine Prophecy, suggesting that the answers can be found within, through experiencing a series of personal spiritual insights. In his book God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution (2002), co-written with Michael Murphy, he claims that humanity is on the verge of undergoing a change in consciousness.

Another answer was given by Neale Donald Walsch in his trilogy Conversations with God, in which he asserts that the purpose of this present creation is for That-which-Is (God, Spirit) to know itself experientially rather than merely conceptually, by creating of itself a billion billion individuals who interact, and learn, and thus can rediscover, through actual experience, their divinity by experiencing and exploring it in this world.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell, in his famous The Power of Myth interviews with Bill Moyers, answered the question in the following way:

People say what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive so that the life experiences that we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within, that are those of our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive..

The purpose of life in the words of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, renowned spiritual leader and founder of the Art of Living Foundation:

One who knows, will not tell you! And anyone who attempts to tell you, please know that they don't know! But this much I can tell you... this very fact this question has arisen in your mind, you are lucky! Many people just live life without asking what is the purpose of life. This question itself is like tool, a vehicle for you to go deep into life... the quest for reality!

[edit] Mystical views

The view of mysticism varies widely according to how each speaker describes it. In general the view is broadly that life is a happening, an unfolding. There is no duality, it is a nondual worldview, in which subject and object are the same, the sense of doer-ship is illusionary. This view is central to Buddhism, and is also found in certain non-dual sects of Hinduism. Atheists such as Susan Blackmore and Sam Harris have recently advocated mysticism through rigorous meditation as the only reliable way of attaining sure knowledge of our subjective experience.

For a clear summary of one mystic's view on the meaning of life, see the article on Ramesh Balsekar, or the article on Mysticism.

[edit] Humorous and popular culture treatments

The very concept "the meaning of life" has become such a cliché that it has often been parodied, such as in the radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, later released as a novel, a television series, a film, and a computer game. As the story goes, an advanced race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings (mice) builds a gigantic computer called Deep Thought to find The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Seven and a half-million years later, the computer gives the answer: "42". After giving the answer to an (unsurprisingly) underwhelmed audience, Deep Thought explained that the problem with the answer was not the answer, but that no-one really knew what the question was. (It may be worth noting, that later on it is revealed to Arthur Dent, that the answer and the question cannot be known at the same time.) In reference to this series, "42" is commonly provided as an honest answer if someone feels the word "meaning" is too vague. Joe Bob Briggs miscommunicated this in one of his columns as "43". In one strip of the parody comic "Sev-space" it is inquired "why the number 47 constantly shows up on the monitor?" it is then stated that "42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything... But you get 47 if you adjust it to the inflation." This is an obvious reference to the "Star Trek" series where the number 47 is heavily featured [6].

Or maybe there is no meaning to life; that is, "What you see is what you get", as portrayed in the comedy film The Meaning of Life: you are born, you eat, you go to school, you have sex, you have children, you grow old (if someone doesn't kill you first), and you die, and in Heaven every day is Christmas. At the very end of the film, Michael Palin is handed an envelope, opens it, and says nonchalantly: "Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

In The Simpsons episode "Homer The Heretic" God himself tells Homer what the meaning of life is, but as usual the one who really wanted to know (the viewer) is left disappointed. The dialogue goes as follows:

  • Homer: God, what's the meaning of life?
  • God: Homer, I can't tell you that.
  • Homer: Why not?
  • God: You'll find out when you die.
  • Homer: Oh, I can't wait that long.
  • God: You can't wait 6 months?
  • Homer: No, tell me now...
  • God: Oh, OK... The meaning of life is...[Theme music starts and the show ends, the creator's original idea was that a commercial would come after this scene and before the credits, thusly having the commercial interrupt God's explanation to humorous effect]

In the Peanuts comic strip Charlie Brown explains he thinks the purpose of life is to make others happy, to which Lucy responds that she doesn't think she is making anyone happy, and -- more importantly -- no one is making her happy, so someone isn't doing their job.

Paul Gauguin's interpretation can be seen in the painting, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Bill and Ted end up meeting God. Before being admitted into his presence, St. Peter (billed as The Gatekeeper on IMDb) asks them what the meaning of life is, and they reply "Every rose has its thorn. Every night has a dawn. Every cowboy sings a sad sad song.". These are the lyrics to a song by Poison, a 1980s glam rock band.

Another popular belief is that the meaning of life is to die, according to comedians and other types of media. In a similar vein, antagonist Smith in the final part of The Matrix trilogy, Matrix Revolutions, tells the protagonist Neo that "it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end."

In the movie Judge Dredd (1995):

  • Warden Miller: So tell me, Rico, what is the meaning of life?
  • Rico: It ends.

Conan the Barbarian, in the film of the same name, when asked, "What is best in life?" responds, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

In his book "A Man Without a Country", Kurt Vonnegut sums up life with the words: "We're all here to fart around. Don't let anyone tell you any different!" Although it could be said that he believes the meaning of life was stated best by his son Mark whom he quotes in two books, stating, "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."

George Carlin has once said that the meaning of life is "to find a place to put all your stuff".

One popular phrase is "The meaning of life is 'to live': it's in the dictionary[7]" which, although technically incorrect ("life" is a noun while "to live" describes a verb), has both a humorous meaning, and a more serious one, implying that the answer is to enjoy the ride.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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[edit] Additional references

[edit] Philosophy

[edit] Further reading

  • Haisch, Bernard The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All (Preface), Red Wheel/Weiser, 2006, ISBN 1-57863-374-5
  • Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life, University of Chicago Press in March 2005, ISBN: 0-226-73936-8 (cloth)[8]

[edit] External links

de:Sinn des Lebens fr:Sens de la vie ko:인생의 의미 he:משמעות החיים nl:Zin van het leven ja:人生の意義 pl:Sens życia ru:Смысл жизни simple:Meaning of life fi:Elämän tarkoitus sv:Meningen med livet tr:Hayatın anlamı zh:生命的意義

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