what is the meaning of life ?

[sd1974]

what is the meaning of life ? and please don't say it's 42.

[tchu_yhoo]

It's a great Monty Python film. Not to be missed!

www.imdb.com

[thegoodtomchi]

To answer this question, you need to step back. You'll notice that most fish and frogs do not ponder life's meaning. In fact, as far as we can tell, most animals live life the best they can and don't waste much time pondering the "meaning" of it all. Given that we are descended from them, then an appropriate preface to your question is "why do we even ask about meaning?"The best answer that anthropologists have to date is that sometime around the time that our brains started to recognize our own mortality as a concept, the behavior of ancient societies started to change. We began to bury our dead, and we began to have animistic proto-religions.This was all sparked by the human ability to recognize cause and effect. This was essential for tool-making, and it set up the mental construct -- if this, then that. Which set up the possibility for the construct called meaning: (i.e. if I observed that, then it means that this happened). Now this type of simple causal reasoning allowed us to do all manner of things... from building stone tools toward developing science, technology and forming societies with rules, etc. But that same reasoning applied to the question of existence becomes a lot less clear. Causal reasoning would say: if I am here, then it means that some other thing must be true. If also say, if I do something, then it is more useful (and easier to understand) if it has a meaning than if it doesn't. Now the problem is that life does not have any meaning in particular. For a while human kind got along pretty well by creating artificial systems of meaning... usually around religion or work, but the existentialists came along and pulled the rug right out from under this type of thinking.Given that life has no absolute top-down meaning, we are left with just a few options. We can get meaning by subscribing to one of the old constructs (religion, etc), or we can do what Nietche suggested and have each individual define a system of meaning for themselves. This is easier said than done, but is probably the only way to estable meaning without subscribing to the illusions of others.Outside of these approaches, which are decided Western in their origins, we can take an Eastern approach. This is simply to state that it not important to have meaning. Life simply is. Whether we reach this non-meaning state by flowing with the Tao, or do it by transcedental meditation that allows us to escape from our sense of self (and thus our personal need for meaning), we simply leave meaning on the doorstep. This is helpful, because the question of the "meaning of life" may actually just be an absurd question... and a well considered answer to an absurd question is simply absurd.Anyhow, I hope that helps.

[Yuval]

I would consider being the meaning of life what one makes it to be; meaning that it is solely depends on each and everyone to define what makes him/her happy.I believe that my own propose here on earth is to leave a good and happy life, therefore it is only up to me to define what it is for me to be happy and to have agood life

[Jeremy D. Zawodny]

41, plus or minus two.