What is the meaning of life?

[johnson1010]

What is the meaning of life?

Does that question have an answer? It depends on what you intend by “meaning”.

It tends to imply a consciousness which has assigned some meaning to life. And that implication needs to be verified for the subjective connotations of “meaning” to be relevant. Usually that consciousness is attributed to some mysterious god, but those have never been evident. What is evident is that we exist and we reside in the universe.

And what are we? We are made of atoms. Atoms are made of sub-atomic particles: protons, neutrons, electrons. We are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, iron etc.. Heavier elements like oxygen have been created in the hearts of massive stars as they fuse hydrogen atoms together through thermonuclear fusion. Hydrogen atoms are pressed together under tremendous force to fuse into heavier and heavier elements, without which we would not be what we are. Those elements in our bodies came to us through the explosive deaths of those stars. We are literally star dust.

And hydrogen, where does that come from? E=M(C*C) revealed to us that energy and mass is fundamentally interchangeable. It still happens in particle accelerators, and it was rampant in the big bang. Very high energy photons, just quanta of light, crystallize out into protons and anti-protons. They formed briefly, recombined and annihilated back into pure energy. Back into the photon from which they sprang. But one in a hundred billion high energy photons produced just a proton, without an anti-proton, leaving behind matter. The first hydrogen nuclei. Those same hydrogen nuclei still roam the universe 13.7 billion years later. Condensing into new stars, fusing into heavier elements, being dispersed into the universe through stellar nova and enabling the formation of planets like ours, and life like ourselves.

So what are we? We are living things, made of atoms and we can trace our ancestry to the birth-light at the beginning of our universe. We are capable of introspection, and the search for knowledge.

Can you think of anything more potent than this? We are the light of existence, bubbling into consciousness and trying to understand. You are the universe trying to find out about itself.

[LevV]

Heady stuff Johnson1010.
Getting back to the original question and on a more personal level, I thank those stars every day that I live at a time in history and a place in geography and had the opportunity to develop a personal philosophy that affords me the luxury to create ( within the parameters set by genetic inheritance, culture etc) any one or more of a thousand meanings to my life.

[KarelVanCanegem]

This one is very tough to answer and different for every person.

I wonder though about the meaning of life. All around me I see suffering, so is that the meaning of life? You can say there is a plan for everything, but I don't believe that. The meaning humanity has given to life through all the ages is dead. I'm not sure if this comes out right, but if you look at what we have done to eachother and to every living being (god's creatures), we have killed billions and billions of them willingly.
So for all of them there was no meaning to life.

[johnson1010]

The universe itself will cease to be one day, Karel. Don't let that fact get to you.

Is your choice between eternity and meaninglessness? Anything less than infinity is a pointless waste of time and effort?

Meaning is only relevant to consciousness. Your meaning is the result of your interaction with your fellow consciousnesses, all of which eventually fade. You can be alive, or you can be a stone. One is forever, the other is temporary.

[KarelVanCanegem]

I had to read your comment a few times as this is a new territory for me and especially in English

I do know that the universe will cease to exist, but most other living beings don't know that. They all live in the moment and for most of them it is a road of endless suffering. So again, I don't think there is any meaning to life for those as they live so much closer every day to the opposite of life.

We all cease to exist as well and we can say we should live life to the fullest as much as possible. Personally, I'd rather be a stone holding all of my knowledge and that way give meaning to my life and those to come until the end.

[johnson1010]

I had to read your comment a few times as this is a new territory for me and especially in English

That was a pretty compact post. Thanks for taking the time!

[Robert Tulip]

How I formulated the answer to this question is 'The meaning of life is the good of the future.'

The concept of good is subjective, purely a matter of values based on axioms, rather than objective facts. I define good as conducive to human flourishing.

"Meaning of life" can never be an objective statement like "meaning of a factual statement". It is more about the purpose that we imagine for the future. Some actions are conducive towards a better future, while other actions are destructive. So I interpret the meaning of life as promoting things that make for a better future, with the deepest meaning seen in the longest term vision.

[Madscribbler]

Each individual has a different answer for this. In a broad sense a devout Christian might respond with an automatic, "To glorify God and enjoy him forever." That's a phrase I was taught once in church, and I no longer attend for a variety of unrelated reasons. I look at this question with the idea that I will only be able to truthfully answer it after I'm gone. Until then I can only guess. And my guess is love. There are other things that matter, other things take priority now and again, but in the end the only reason humans are still around and the only reason life has a valued meaning is love. I mean this in the healthiest and most decent sense of the word. Something more than goodwill, compassion, empathy, conscientious behavior, peaceful living....maybe all of these. Knowledge is power, work is productive, competition is essential, relationships are inevitable, but love is the glue that both binds us together and motivates us. It's the one common thread that traces our course, and at the same time it's the, 'background radiation,' that we cruise on in our pathetically inadequate ships.

[Penelope]

The world
is your exercise-book, the pages
on which you do your sums.
It is not reality,
although you can express reality
there if you wish.
You are also
free to write nonsense,
or lies, or to tear
the pages

'Illusions' - Richard Bach


In order
to live free and happily,
you must sacrifice
boredom.
It is not always an easy
sacrifice.

'Illusions' - Richard Bach

[TheHiddenTruthBook]

When I was researching the material that would eventually become the basis of my book, The Hidden Truth: A logical path through compelling evidence to discover the nature of reality and the meaning of life, it became clear to me that life certainly has purpose and meaning. And that purpose and meaning is well beyond esoteric and intangible concepts such as “to love God” or simply to test our strength in belief in [fill in any religion]. We are born on this Earth to serve a purpose and experience some aspect of life, though it may take decades – if ever – for the average human to come to identify their own purpose in life. And still that purpose may not even be defined well enough for the meaning to be apparent to us (i.e. our normal waking conscious self) from our Earth-bound perspective. Rather, our purpose in life was defined by our self and for our self before life ever began.

This likely sounds like a religious, faith-based statement, but I would like to argue that the statement is based on some rather rigorous, scientific evidence. The precept for understanding the meaning of life requires first an understanding of the nature of reality. This is because there is more to reality than meets the eye. For example, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and conclusions of the Space-Time Continuum led scientists to an early realization that life in a three-dimensional world was only an impression of reality from a larger four-dimensional description of space-time. An odd scientific conclusion of the four-dimensional space-time continuum was that all time continued to exist in a single point, Now, and thus humanity experienced only an impression of forward time progression by the movement of conscious experience through the continuum. Some sources quoted in my book noted this was required in order for humans to be able to gain experience through cause and effect, which is attributed to an illusion of the forward progression of time. At a rigorous scientific level, even physicists noted they could not explain this phenomenon satisfactorily at a human level other than to note the theory has been proven mathematically.

This is not a conclusion we would normally conceive in everyday life. But it goes farther, in that physical reality itself has an underlying matrix. While quantum physicists were trying to find the smallest components of physical reality by smashing atoms against one another, they came to an astonishing conclusion that physical components of reality were not actually comprised of physical components; i.e. Physical atoms are actually nothing but energy, as highlighted by Einstein’s famous equation E=mc². Through a series of scientific findings I discuss in my book, we also see that energy is equivalent to light, and light is equivalent to consciousness, thus showing that physical reality has an underlying support structure: a universal consciousness of which we are an important part. The scientific evidence on which this assertion is based is presented in my book, the first half of which is available for free online at www.thehiddentruth.us, if you’d like to consider the evidence further.

Once the nature of reality is understood, the meaning of life becomes clearer at a macro, societal level. We, as humans, were born for a purpose. That purpose was to experience. The “what” of the experience is the micro-element, which is highly individualized according to our own needs. This realization can provide amazing stress relief if you consider it long enough, such as through meditation. For example, there is nothing wrong with you or your situation. You are exactly as you (the soul) intended you (the human) to be. Thus, there really is no reason to compete with anyone else. You should merely strive to achieve and experience life for the experience and learning opportunity it represents uniquely for you. Life is not a race. He who dies with the most toys, still dies, though he dies without an everlasting benefit since tangible objects cannot be taken to the next plane of reality or enjoyed at the soul level for all eternity. Conversely, he who dies with loving friendships formed in life and great learning experiences from life on Earth provides his soul an everlasting benefit that can never be taken away. Which would you prefer?

Fortunately, as my book points out, these assertions don’t have to be taken on blind faith like religions would insist must be applied for their own dogma. You can consider the scientific evidence provided on which they are based, and then follow the suggestions provided in the book to test their validity for yourself. There is no knowledge like first-hand knowledge and such is available concerning the true nature of reality and the meaning of life if you truly want to know. My book is an easy-to-follow first step in helping readers arrive at a clear understanding of the nature of reality and the meaning of life, but the second step of proving those assertions to a person’s own satisfaction is left up to the individual. I hope you’ll share in that quest for knowledge with me.

Wade, author of The Hidden Truth, at www.thehiddentruth.us.