Position:Home>Philosophy> If there is no purpose or meaning to life, what is it all for ?

The philosophical 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!?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life!?"!. These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations!.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects!.
Popular beliefs
"What is the meaning of life!?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life!?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question!. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
!.!.!.to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
!.!.!.to be always satisfied
!.!.!.to live, go to school, work, and die
!.!.!.to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
!.!.!.to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
!.!.!.to compete or co-operate with others
!.!.!.to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
!.!.!.to gain and exercise power
!.!.!.to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
!.!.!.to eat
!.!.!.to prepare for death
!.!.!.to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly!.
!.!.!.to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
!.!.!.to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
!.!.!.to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
!.!.!.to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
!.!.!.to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
!.!.!.to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
!.!.!.to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
!.!.!.to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
!.!.!.to seek and find beauty
!.!.!.to kill or be killed
!.!.!.No point!. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness!. Animals do not need a point to live or exist!. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words!.
Wisdom and knowledge
!.!.!.to master and know everything
!.!.!.to be without questions, or to keep asking questions
!.!.!.to expand one's perception of the world
!.!.!.to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
!.!.!.to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
!.!.!.to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
!.!.!.to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
!.!.!.to lead the world towards a desired situation
!.!.!.to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life
Ethical
!.!.!.to express compassion
!.!.!.to follow the "Golden Rule"
!.!.!.to give and receive love
!.!.!.to work for justice and freedom
!.!.!.to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
!.!.!.to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
!.!.!.to serve others, or do good deeds
Religious and spiritual
!.!.!.to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
!.!.!.to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
!.!.!.to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
!.!.!.to become like God, or divine
!.!.!.to glorify God
!.!.!.to experience personal justice (i!.e!. to be rewarded for goodness)
!.!.!.to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i!.e!. to seek objectivity)
!.!.!.to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
!.!.!.to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
!.!.!.to reach Heaven in the afterlife
!.!.!.to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
!.!.!.to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement
!.!.!.to understand and follow the "Word of God"
!.!.!.to discover who you are
!.!.!.to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced
Other
!.!.!.to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
!.!.!.to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
!.!.!.to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Religious views aside, there is purpose & meaning to everything we do here, maybe one of the reasons we are here is to find that elusive purpose & strive toward achieving it ~ now I'm really going to mess with your head (NOT PURPOSELY, just what I believe) Whether we achieve it in one lifetime or many through reincarnation!.!.!.
If there were no purpose/meaning to life, I don't think we'd be born into this world!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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we all have a purpse in our lives!. God created us before we were even in our momma womb!. We as his children always try to do what we want to do or what we think is what we should do instead of us asking God for guidence!. He will never steer us wrong we just have to let him know we are wanting to walk in his path instead of ours!. If it's not Gods will to do something then dont do it cause it's not important!. Hope this helps :) God loves ya!. He would not have brought you into this world if he didnt have a meaning or purpose for it!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

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What you're actually saying is that you couldn't handle life if someone else hadn't made a purpose for you!. What you're saying is that you can't conceive of having hope or having faith if someone else hadn't come along and given you a reason to have hope and faith!.

Presuming God exists and created us, etc, why did he create us with all this potential!? Creativity, compassion, love, intelligence, initiative, curiosity, etc etc and all that!. *I* can't believe that we were created solely to blindly serve!.!.!. surely if we were created with these wonderful brains we should use them, no!?

"Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" and all that!. We all have a choice!.!.!. and the only person that can judge us in our choice is God, again presuming God exists!.

So if there is no preordained purpose for life!.!.!.!. then I'm sure we have the ability and the potential to create one!.


SaulWww@QuestionHome@Com

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According to existentialism, a rather objective view aside from biased religious and cultural viewpoints, there is no actual meaning to life aside from the meaning that we create for ourselves!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

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The meaning of life is to live your life to the fullest Www@QuestionHome@Com

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