Ierrellus

"For those who think, Life is a comedy;
For those who feel, it is a tragedy."

I can't remember the name of the essayist who wrote this. My life is tragicomic surrealism.
Comedy flies by; tragedy lingers. Robotic clock time seldom applies. So, IMO of the meaning of life, I'll quote John Lennon: "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."

I was born with a set of paints; so my life's purpose is to add hues to happenings.

Ierrellus
PAX

Infinity Lover

I guess I could only elaborate on what others have already posted here.

The meaning of life is to make one's life as meaningfull as possible. So it depends on what you deem meaningfull.
There are those that find it meaningfull to try and figure out what the meaning of life is, but to me that sounds like never finding happyness because you're too busy chasing after it.

But to make some intelligent guesses for others to (dis)agree with...

1)to make the most of the potential within your limitation.
2)to find out what you like to do, and create the opportunity to do those things.
3)to make yourself usefull
4)to peacefully coexist with others
5)to make your legacy (the way you are remembered by others and what you bring forth) into a thing of beauty and value
6)to be a creative intelligent individual and a work in progress from beginning to end
7)to approach yourself, others, and life in general with love
Those are some relatively sane answers I can come up with from the top of my head.

If the question is, whether there's a practical reason for the existence of living organisms (or to put it differently whether an existence without living organisms would be incapable of functioning), I'm void of answers.

Marcel.

Edited P.S. though an existence without any form of life in it, capable of ascribing meaning to it, strikes me as a complete waste of existence, so I can actually say with full conviction, that an existence without such life in it is completely meaningless as far as I'm concerned.

You could say that answers what the meaning of wanting to know the meaning of life is.

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Infinity Lover ]</p>

Mickey

Steven,
on another thread on another board this question received the reply "He who dies with the most toys,wins!"A common ,if subjective view.

Those who claim to give you a definitive answer are not to be trusted.

I suggest a further question.Don't just think in terms of human beings.What is the meaning of the life of a blade of grass or an ant which crawsl upon it?

Mickey

Steven1987

I have sometimes thought that maybe there is one person who is this chosen one for which everything in the world is in this world for the purpose of doing something to him (i.e. someone breaks a window and has to get it repaired so drives on the road to the glass repairman and parks in the last parking spot at the mall where the glass shop is so the people can't park at the mall drive to a different mall, and there is a lot of traffic as a result, and the chosen one is stuck in traffic and he gets mad and misses a turn and etc. etc. kind of a dumb example sorry, I hope it gets the point across) The examples can get more simple or more complicated and the hierarchy can be endless. I hope this makes sense.
Steven

Evil Milkman

Continuation of the species, I would guess, is the ultimate goal of any living organism.

Infinity Lover

Suddenly I'm wondering what the meaning of being an evil milkman would be.
Superglueing the caps to the bottles?

And now back to the serious discussion.

Kent Stevens

Maybe, it is easier if you redefine the question so that the question becomes what are your goals in life.

From observing systems, the simplistic answer is that the goal is to pursue happiness. This does not exclude morality or achievement. But having morals and achieving things can be seen to be part of what constitutes being happy. We may spend much of lives pursuing happiness and only in certain ways actually obtain it.

I suggest that all animals which include cats, snails, and ants are basically concerned about being "happy". Even something like a robot such as Data or the terminator may be mainly concerned about being "happy".

We might have this tendency to pursue replication. So we try to stay alive and then try to have partners. This can be seen as part of this tendency to replicate genes, as well as the rest of the body. We also subconsciously promote the replication of certain ideas or memes, such as certain religions and philosophies. We also could loosely can be said to contribute to the surivival and replication of our tribe.

But what we are mostly concerned about is about pursuing "happiness". The pursuit of replication is not directly our major concern.

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Kent Stevens ]</p>

Infinity Lover

Perhaps "the meaning of life" embodies a concept, that defines the reason for the existence of (intelligent) life, on which we could then base our life's goals.

Personally I think such a concept would be a weird thing to base one's life's goals on, and it ultimately remains something that's open to individual interpretation, rather than absolute definition.

We're here to be... together.
Marcel.

Starboy

Those were the days.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I could tell you the meaning of my life, but that would tell you nothing about the meaning of your life.

You gotta figure this one out for yourself.

Keith.