Meaning of life

Post Reply New Topic

Meaning of life?

I think people give a meaning TO life by finding something "bigger than themselves" to believe in.
So some people find their meaning by being a soldier. or a priest, or a communist or a greenie, or a parent.

I am afraid there is some truth to the saying "life sucks and then you die".

But I have found that people who care about others are happier than selfish people who care only for themselves.

When I was little, I thought that the meaning of my life was to uphold a number of ideals and to gather knowledge, but now I'm just living for my pleasure, 'chasing temporary highs to satisfy me', as Stacie Orrico put it in that 2003 ditty of hers.

But how many girls can you seduce? How many parties can you go to? How many drugs can you take?

If that is your object then your days are truly numbered.

Well, the temporary highs don't involve sex/drugs/rocknroll... they're a lot more tame. It takes very little to please myself for a couple of minutes, and it isn't much of a goal in itself, either. I just feel that, everything I wanted to accomplish when I was a child, is already being done by others, and done better. I'd feel like I'd just be in the way if I tried my hand at it, because I'd probably be mediocre and I can't stand being mediocre. So, I settle for living my life which doesn't have that many inconveniences anyway except for the presence of my OCD alcoholic father, and doing my thing trying not to bother anyone and not letting anyone bother me. I don't really have a purpose.

You've said it all. Do what you love. Laugh, sing, draw, ride a roller coaster, or post on a message board. Whatever makes you forget the passage of time.

I don't think a person can find life truly "meaningless" (ie we're all just dust and even that dust is an illusion) and survive the experience. If we truly believed in the meaninglessness we'd be entirely justified in acts self-destruction (the most logical endpoint of a pointless existence given that extinction is inevitable). However, we persist in this life and so there must be a meaning in each of us as individuals (even if that meaning is represented in a fear of death). One interesting prospect was put forth by a physicist/computer scientist (maybe Frank Tippler?) that Matrix like worlds could be built that have the computer power to take the place of our minds and our surroundings, in essence, the computer immortalize ourselves or relive the past. In this case we can find hope of immortality (truly only of the mind) by the prospect of becoming incorporeal (at least beyond our human life-spans) and perhaps we can go so far with future technologies as to infuse our thoughts into energy and matter (immortality).


The meaning I ascribe to life is to seek contentment (which some define as happiness itself). The challenge is that I cannot be contented knowing that others are suffering. I hold the rather odd philosophy that the overarching purpose of individual existence is for the majority of us to provide the morale and physical support structures for the engineers, physicists, and other other scientists who are designing the ultimate "compassion machine", a device capable of destroying the universe and preventing it from ever reforming. The end of life is the end of suffering (however I'm not content to merely end human or Earthly sufferings).

I don't think there is a meaning of life.
If there is, I would've found it by now.

To look at what we were and have become and extrapolate from that to become what we will be.

There is no meaning to life. You have to find a purpose.

This is also relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0

the answer is 42