The Meaning of Life?

[R34L1TY]

We are full of elitism. We look at chimps, dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes, ants, larvae. And we think.. we are more important than they are. But why? Is it because we have developed brains that can do quantum mechanics, understand biology, can drive, build and destroy? While in reality, we are built with the same nucleotides found in every living creature.

I posted a comment replying to a member named "InChrist" which I think explains my point quite well ;

Humans are lower than God because they are not God

To even think that there is something more or less important in the needs of human existance, is extremely questionable. To say that we are "lower" than something is the same as to carry a sign that says "ignorant."

How can you even fathom the idea that you are more or less important than something else? Would you look to a dog and say, "you are not as important as me!" Actually I am sure you would, and it is that thinking which causes turbulence in Mother Nature. You and I are extremely insignificant, we are not more significant than anything else just as we are not more insignificant than anything else. I can say that a Doctor is more significant than a Squirrel. Which may be true if we look at the impact each animal has on its surroundings. But even if this were true, a squirrel shouldn't look at a Doctor as if it were a god.

The term "god" is so melodramatic and really shouldn't even be used. To even get on your knees and identifiy yourself as a lesser human..speaks volumes upon how you view your own existance.

 

[Orias]

Naturally, we have the instinct to survival, thus survival would be the meaning of life; but coming to the realization that we all die anyway, we all went to Hedonism.

Not necessarily, survival is not really something we do now days. And hedonism is a hackneyed term considering a lot of the the term cannot be used to describe a pleasurable situation. Especially when thinking about day to day life, pleasure seeking is something that most of us don't really have time for. That is not say that we do not find joy in things, it just means we don't actively have to seek pleasure to enjoy something. Hedonism is a concept that is often more specious in what it gives versus it actually applying to a person or more specifically a group of people.

Even then, if survival and self preservation is the ultimate machine and driving factor to our perception then it too, is apart of our awareness and understanding of the universe. Which all goes back to my point that the meaning of life is to understand. Even if to others it is simply defined as..."being". To survive is to understand.

 

[R34L1TY]

Every living thing is surviving right now, what you mean to say is; we don't have the same pressures to survive that we used to (natural selection). However..we do have pressures (job, bills, food, life) etc..

 

[Orias]

Every living thing is surviving right now, what you mean to say is; we don't have the same pressures to survive that we used to (natural selection). However..we do have pressures (job, bills, food, life) etc..

But survival is a word that describes action. If we are not actively seeking self preservation, then we are doing something else. The difference between working and not working.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Survival is not predicated on understanding anything. Survival is a function of consequences only. I do not understand quantum physics (to say otherwise is a patent lie). My ancestors did not understand quantum physics. My brain and organs do not understand quantum physics. My cells do not understand quantum physics. My genes do not understand quantum physics. My DNA, RNA, and other prescriptive features of cell construction do not understand quantum physics (Everything that makes me: Me; does not understand).

And, yet, despite all this, I survive in a world where quantum physics is not only true, but makes determinations for the overwhelming majority of processes in the universe. I do not need to understand something in order to be able to make useful predictions. It helps if I understand something (usually a great deal), but survival is predicated on getting to the right answer first; not who gets the why behind it correct first.




Meaning and Purpose are often related, but they are distinct in their meanings. Things have meaning: if and only if, they are interacting with sentient actors (things capable of awareness of influence upon their own existence). As such, life only has meaning in as much as it has influence on us (so far as we are concerned right now at any rate).

The purpose of life, on the other hand, is beyond the scope of human endeavor (possibly beyond the scope of all endeavor). We, quite simply, cannot know why life develops. We are not even certain that life originated on Earth; it might very well have first developed on Mars and then spread to the Earth, and if we are not able to know something as comparatively basic as where our life originated, then how can possibly hope to know why life exists at all? (This is a bit like trying to speculate on the "mind of God" Was the universe created? Did it have a design? Is it even useful to talk about design when speaking about reality being created?)

MTF