What is the meaning of life to you?

[New DeCapito]

We would create new states to place limits.

Which would be in turn replaced.

Ad nauseam.

So is this the meaning of life? To place limitations on others?
What a sad life.

[Conscentia]

Did you even bother looking at the quote I was showing you - the one you edited out when you quoted me?

The straight forward approach makes one to believe that you were debating my personal conviction. At any rate, I apologize.

Did you think I quoted a post and then forgot to respond, like I have a 3 second memory or something?

[Fesconia]

Nothing. There is no true meaning to life. Life itself is just an illusion conjured up by us in an effort to make sense of the world. In reality we are all just a complex combination of particles that behave in a peculiar way, insignificant in the vast and immense grandeur of the Universe. Or Multiverse, though the topic of multiple universes is a different topic entirely.

[United Marxist Nations]

Nothing. There is no true meaning to life. Life itself is just an illusion conjured up by us in an effort to make sense of the world. In reality we are all just a complex combination of particles that behave in a peculiar way, insignificant in the vast and immense grandeur of the Universe. Or Multiverse, though the topic of multiple universes is a different topic entirely.

No, life is:

the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

But, by all means, continue making edgy quotes.

[New Terricon]

Nothing. There is no true meaning to life. Life itself is just an illusion conjured up by us in an effort to make sense of the world. In reality we are all just a complex combination of particles that behave in a peculiar way, insignificant in the vast and immense grandeur of the Universe. Or Multiverse, though the topic of multiple universes is a different topic entirely.

Well aren't you just a great, big ray of sunshine. Such thought leads to depressive individuals. If you have the belief that humanity is too insignificant to even bother living, why do you nihilists even bother to hold on to life? Their certainly is some scientific truth in your statement, but you act as if those factors render our existence meaningless.

[Vissegaard]

I believe that everybody tries to find his/her/whatever meaning of life, when he/she/whatever is roughly 13 to 16 years old. Then they get an awful lot of bullshit to do, then they manage to have children and afterwards they're glad, that they don't have to search for the 'meaning of life' themselves and leave it to their children.

[Herrebrugh]

I believe that everybody tries to find his/her/whatever meaning of life, when he/she/whatever is roughly 13 to 16 years old. Then they get an awful lot of bullshit to do, then they manage to have children and afterwards they're glad, that they don't have to search for the 'meaning of life' themselves and leave it to their children.

I hadn't even thought of any "meaning of life" at that age. Or at least, not nearly enough to remember it ever having any importance in my live whatsoever. Once I did start thinking about it (a couple of years ago, at most) I almost immediately rejected it.

[Vanrea]

The meaning of life is to FIND a meaning to life, personally.

To me the meaning of life is to experience as much of it as is possible, and to learn as much as one can. Life is only what we experience, and it's up to us to experience as much as possible to make life as much as it can be.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

The meaning of life is whatever you want it to be.

[Verkaria]

Well, I don't believe that there is an actual meaning to life. But if I had to attach some sort of purpose to life, I'd say that one's purpose in life would be to follow one's own individual desires and wants to pull the maximum amount of pleasure and happiness out of their existence as they could. Then again, that line of thought opens up a lot of moral dilemmas (e.g. what if the only thing that made one happy was harming another person against their will?). Even so, I think that most people have generally harmless wants and desires and methods of achieving those things that make them happy.

[Othelos]

To enjoy it to its fullest, and have a positive impact.

[The Holy Therns]

Eesh. The day my life starts having a specific meaning is the day I won't find it worth living anymore.

[Entre Rios]

I don't think there is any 'meaning of life' and I think far too many lives have been wasted on pondering the idea. Life, to me, is whatever you decide it will be. I try to live a 'good life' but a good life in my eyes, not anybody else's (living, dead or supernatural.) To me, that's trying to be happy and trying to help others be happy.

Believing some divine in hidden meaning ascribed by fate, fortune or favor is fantasy and a distraction. There is no inherent 'meaning of life' and accepting that fact will help you live life rather than waste it on the intangible.

[Pope Joan]

Each life is unique and precious. The more we can discover that in each other, the more we find meaning.

and...

We are sparks from a fire, flying upward through the dark night of mystery. This may be meaningful, or it may merely be the fact of our situation.

[New Werpland]

Well, I don't believe that there is an actual meaning to life. But if I had to attach some sort of purpose to life, I'd say that one's purpose in life would be to follow one's own individual desires and wants to pull the maximum amount of pleasure and happiness out of their existence as they could. Then again, that line of thought opens up a lot of moral dilemmas (e.g. what if the only thing that made one happy was harming another person against their will?). Even so, I think that most people have generally harmless wants and desires and methods of achieving those things that make them happy.

That's called being a slave to your pre set conditions

[Big Jim P]

To enjoy it to its fullest, and have a positive impact.

To enjoy it to its fullest, unconditionally.

[Tamoi]

There is a meaning of life.

But what the meaning of life is, we cannot know with purely logical certainty. There are three things certain about its nature, though;
-Whatever the meaning of life is, it must not be self-contradicting. It cannot be something that can end, it cannot be a positive feedback loop, it cannot be multiple values, &c. If your goal is to build a bridge, then after the bridge is built life is meaningless, and meaning must exist, so building a bridge cannot thus be a primary goal.
-Whatever the meaning of life is, it must be possible to know it objectively through logic, never resorting to emotions. Because emotions can be associated with any value, and if any concept is able to be associated with anything that means it grants us no concrete information.
-Whatever the meaning of life is, having rejected subjectivity, it must be something that all people could follow at once and still be coherant. A society of theives has no one to steal from.

There are quite a few valid concepts that forfill these conditions. Myself, I follow the goal of survival. I take this as survival on a whole ecosystem scale, though, which means limiting one's means of survival to live in such a way that I'm still subject to selection pressures since those are important means of keeping a system in balance.

[Pope Joan]

Here for your viewing pleasure are some "meaningful" lines from D.H. Lawrence in his New Heaven and Earth:

I

And so I cross into another world
shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
from this unknown that I would trespass on.

I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.

I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world, just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is nobody to know.

And whosoever the unknown people of this unknown world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I am making
which they will not understand, because it is quite, quite foreign to them.

II

I was so weary of the world
I was so sick of it
everything was tainted with myself,
skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
work, recreation, governing, anarchy,
it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start with
because it was all myself.

When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself plucking my own flowering.
When I went in a train, I knew it was myself travelling by my own invention.
When I heard the cannon of the war, I listened with my own ears to my own destruction.
When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own torn dead body.
It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.

III

I shall never forget the maniacal horror of it all in the end
when everything was me, I knew it all already, I anticipated it all in my soul
because I was the author and the result
I was the God and the creation at once;
creator, I looked at my creation;
created, I looked at myself, the creator:
it was a maniacal horror in the end.

I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
I was a father and a begetter of children,
and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving in my own body.

IV

At last came death, sufficiency of death,
and that at last relieved me, I died.
I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried myself and was gone.
War came, and every hand raised to murder;
very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
It is good, I can murder and murder, and see them fall
the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
one on another, and then in clusters together
smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead
that are youths and men and me
being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt
thick smoke, that rolls
and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the smoke-sodden tomb;
dead and trodden to nought in the sour black earth
of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden to nought.

V

God, but it is good to have died and been trodden out
trodden to nought in sour, dead earth
quite to nought
absolutely to nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing.

For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is everything.
When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out
every vestige gone, then I am here
risen, and setting my foot on another world
risen, accomplishing a resurrection
risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as before,
new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond life
proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of pride
living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor hinted at
here, in the other world, still terrestrial
myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.

[Equusia]

On the topic of the meaning of life, I am existentialistic, where I view the meaning of life is the meaning you create for it. The way I see it, Say you had a life long goal to climb Mt. Everest. That is the meaning of your life, at the current moment. Because you are so determined to acheive this goal, you train and devote every penny and ounce of work into doing it, and then, you begin your hike. Once you reach the top and have finally climbed Mt. Everest, you have fufilled the meaning of your life. Of course, this means your life can have multiple meanings, since with this definition, the meaning of your life is just a life-long goal(s), and if you complete one and find a new one, you have found another meaning of your life. To put it in basic, I view the meaning of life is subjective, and that you create your own meanings. You are free.

Exactly this.

[Conscentia]

[...]
There are quite a few valid concepts that forfill these conditions. Myself, I follow the goal of survival. I take this as survival on a whole ecosystem scale, though, which means limiting one's means of survival to live in such a way that I'm still subject to selection pressures since those are important means of keeping a system in balance.

Your efforts are futile in the long term.
The ecosystem clinging to Earth's surface is destined for destruction. In time the sun will expand as it fuses it's stock of hydrogen, and as it does so it'll engulf Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth. Long before then, it'll boil Earth's oceans. Of-coarse, that's a couple billion years off, and you might think that's good enough - but there are countless many things that could destroy the ecosystem in the mean time. Mass extinctions have occurred in the past, and will occur in the future - and perhaps one of them will be devastating enough as to not allow recovery.

[Conscentia]

Eesh. The day my life starts having a specific meaning is the day I won't find it worth living anymore.

I've seen others who don't accept that life has intrinsic purpose/meaning before, but I've never met another person who find the idea of giving life a purpose/meaning unpleasant before. It seemed like I was alone in thinking so.

[Conscentia]

The meaning of life is whatever you want it to be.

I don't want it to have some arbitrary meaning. I'm not a hammer or a table - I don't exist to fulfill some function.

[The Biased Conservatives]

The meaning of life is finding what you love in this world. It's waking up to your wife and saying "Why are you in bed, theres eggs, bacon, and pancakes all waiting to be prepared." For it is the simple pleasures in life that provide the best moments of living. It is the listening to Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel for that American feel. It's staying up for the Tonight Show, it's cooking hot dogs and burgers for the backyard BBQ. The meaning is laughing as your TV plays MSNBC because it claims to be "reporting the news" or when they say a Poll of... and you wonder "How are these accurate, I've NEVER been asked at any point any question even remotely like this"

You live for the best moments. You live for jumping for joy and freezing mid air when you graduate from your Art Major, it's finishing a book. By which I mean you read the back cover and then suggest it to a friend as if you really know what you're talking about. The moment you get married to your second wife because the first marriage was for tax purposes but you never told your mother. Its the moment at the office Susan from accounting says "hey you want to get coffee?" and then the 90s hit song by Color Me Badd "I Wanna Sex You Up" plays through your mind. It's going back to your childhood bed when you're mid 30s (which is a lie because you are 40) and sleep in it thinking at first it would be amazing but then ultimately decide it was uncomfortable and you need to see a chiropractor. The meaning is getting to the moment you can look to your grandson (or daughter I guess) and say, "Well son, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."
To which they will say, "Papa, it's 2050, what the f**k is vinegar. Or Flies?"

That is the meaning of life.

[Risottia]

[Calpina]

The meaning of life is to experience struggle

so the harder you have it, the more meaningful your life is? what an utterly shite worldview