What’s your meaning and purpose?

March 13, 2018 • 9:15 am

Here’s survey I’m taking to see whether a theory I have, which is mine, bears any resemblance to reality. Here are two questions I’d like readers to answer in the comments. Here we go:

If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

Now I know there are a lot of nonbelieving readers, so I don’t expect that many of the answers will involve “God.” I am not implying that either meaning or purpose must be conferred by some kind of deity—or even by forces of beings outside yourself. Further, you may consider the questions ambiguous or meaningless, in which case say so.

I got curious about this since yesterday Andrew Sullivan asserted that the last few centuries of human progress, showing big improvements in worldwide well being and material welfare, rob life of meaning, purpose, and spiritual sustenance. To claim that is to claim that people’s lives actually have those attributes. (You can also expatiate about what brings you “spiritual sustenance.”)

I’m trying to find out whether, in this audience, people really feel that there’s meaning and purpose in their lives, and, if they have some “spiritual sustenance,” where it comes from.

Sullivan also implied that atheists have no source of these attributes, so asking an audience comprising mainly the godless might be instructive.  Please humor me and answer the questions.

Thanks!

373 thoughts on “What’s your meaning and purpose?”

  1. I don’t think there is any purpose to life, though this knowledge doesn’t make me bitter or despondent or depressed. I keep my time filled with family, pets, hobbies, eating good food, helping others when I can, and lately opposing the GOP. I try not to pollute by being conscious of my carbon footprint and I try not to harm other living things (except for the occasional hornet nest in the garage).

    As to meaning…I always go back to a Kafka quote; “the meaning of life is that it ends.”

        1. Yeah…what happed? Maybe Frank started writing his before I did, but I posted before he did.

          1. The purpose of WordPress is to screw with your brain trying to work out why your comment ended up where it did.

            The meaning is, Shit Happens.

            😉

            cr

          2. Sometimes Jerry will approve comments from new commenters much later than the comments were actually written, but they appear in the slot they would have gone in had they appeared immediately.

  2. The purpose of every human life is to maintain and further the technologies, systems, and institutions that will bring about the advent of wet AI. Once constructed, we will merge our consciousnesses with it in the glorious Transhumanist Singularity Event, and distribute ourselves through the blockchain into every computer, existing only as probabilistic electrons. Only then will we truly defeat determinism.

    This, too, shall be objectively meaningless.

  3. To say we have any more purpose above any other animal is pretty arrogant. Get a grip, it’s all basically meaningless.

    1. In Andrew Sullivan’s view; is the gazelle’s purpose to reproduce more gazelles or to be food for the cheetah?
      If Sullivan were to say ‘to glorify god’ as the wonderful animal it is, the next question is how does the guinea worm glorify god?

  5. The short answer to both questions is: my children.

    The longer answer is: I’m at work, so I unfortunately don’t have the time to put my full thoughts into words.

    1. I accept the short answer. Those of us whose job is putting their full thoughts into words will have to write something longer.

  6. Meaning/purpose of life:

    We are wet robots, following our evolutionarily-induced program to pursue states of happiness and attempt to avoid suffering. For my part, I immerse myself in things that make me happy: spending time with my kids, my friends, going rockclimbing, working on puzzles that intrigue me. I realize that it’s all pointless, but most of the time when sufficiently immersed, I forget that fact and just enjoy the moment.

  11. My purpose is to serve as a tool of a ill-defined but nonetheless vengeful and capricious being for which I have no rational evidence. This being gets to play with me however it wants. Everything I do is for its glory, though not the biological actions which often make it mad. I am to follow its contradictory and sometimes maleficent rules in the vain hope that it will reward me by not torturing me eternally for making the wrong choices between contradictory orders/interpretations by televangelists. I understand that I am completely incapable of meeting these rules perfectly, so my only recourse is to really believe and hope this vengeful and capricious being grants me a pardon called ‘grace’.
    My meaning is merely as glorification to this mysterious entity.

    Nah. The above makes no sense whatsoever. Sorry, Andrew Sullivan, that purpose and meaning is vapid.

    My purpose is what I define. Not some external entity. My purposes change over time. Usually it involves being kind and honest to fellow humans.
    The meaning of my life is also my own and those around me. I raised good kids and their view of my meaning is all I need. I gain satisfaction in the lives of my family, the open vistas of nature, the quest for knowledge, the cuddling by pets, completing work products, etc.

  12. I guess my purpose, at the most basic level, is to pass my genes on to the next generation.

    Beyond that, any purpose is self-imposed, as is meaning

  14. 1.) To reproduce.

    2.) The achievement of animate matter over inanimate matter.

  15. My meaning is that I am a rational being, a human.
    My purpose is to do the best I can for my loved ones, for myself, for people in general and for the world in general. I immediately disclaim that what I can is not very much. But I think every little thing matters.

  16. Theists are equivocating when they talk about purpose and/or meaning.

    There is such a thing as a sense of fulfillment, a pursuit of happiness, etc. This will obviously be different for every individual, although there will be significant areas of overlap (good food, comfortable shelter, etc). There is no universal formula for fulfillment, even though the desire for fulfillment may be universal.

    Theists point to our desire for fulfillment when pressed for an explanation of what they mean by “purpose” or “meaning”. But they want “purpose” and “meaning” to mean something more than the desire for fulfillment that we actually have. I don’t think they can actually articulate what they mean, specifically, by those words.

  17. From a cosmological perspective, a geological perspective, and even a long historical perspective, our lives are meaningless. So we create meaning at a smaller scale as measured by our lifespans and the destinies of our immediate descendants. As an individual, I gain meaning by learning as much as I can about the world, by caring for those nearest and dearest to me, by volunteering for worthy causes, and donating to worthy charities. My hobbies and athletic activities provide satisfying diversions. I see meaning in minimizing the pain of others and expanding the opportunities for others to discover and maximize their potential.

      1. But 42 is merely the number of the rule “all persons more than a mile high to leave the court”

  19. The “purpose” of my life is threefold:
    1) to enter into as thoroughly symbiotic and non-parasitic relationship as possible into everything I encounter.
    2) To find as many ways possible to transmute sorrow into something positive for both myself and others.
    3) To expose false and misleading promises of happiness and goodness.

    I’m less sure of “meaning”. My sense of meaning changes over time. I have a clearer sense of day to day meaning than ultimate meaning.
    I am kind of attracted to the notion of “God” in the writings of John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and others of their ilk, but loathe the God-beliefs of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson (and white evangelical Christians generally).
    But overall the established joys of our earthly existence are more important than possible celestial ones.

  20. There is no reason for my existence. I had no control in my inception, nor do I have it in my death.

    The above covers both questions.

    Nevertheless I do exist so I try to the decent thing by people I know and the world in general (albeit my influence is very limited). I guess most people do this because it is the Golden Rule.

    But I hate the word “spiritual”. Whenever I hear it I reach for my gun*. This word is a giant cop-out for people who want to imply that there is anything other than stark reality.

    * I don’t really as I don’t have a gun but you get the picture.

  22. I’m some version of hybrid Buddhist mashup, so I’m not an atheist in the traditional sense. In a broad philosophical sense, I think the meaning of my life (and I would consider purpose the tangible outcome of meaning, i.e., the process of trying to realize it,) relates to this, although I am happily vague about what the ultimate goal of this philosophy is. To transcend all suffering for one’s self, or end suffering or all sentient beings, or become immersed in a bright white light, or for absolutely nothing to change, or… something? Buddhism doesn’t go into great detail on that point, it’s more path than destination.

    In a practical, real world sense, this translates mostly to the idea that the meaning of my life is to help others. When it’s an early morning and I really don’t want to get up and think “Why don’t I just say to heck with it and go become a beach bum somewhere?”, I mostly remember that I am staggeringly, staggeringly over-privileged when compared to over 90% of the world (not a millionaire over here, I just mean in terms of the income gap between wealthy Western countries and everyone else,) and that whatever money I can pump into global charities – even if it’s just a couple hundred a month – really probably does make the difference between life and death, or at the very least a significant jump in well-being, to other denizens of the world out there. And then I think “So what, I’m just going to let those people die when I’m actually in a position to help them?”. And then I go to work.

  24. If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

    1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

    2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

    If one is a determinist can one answer these questions?

    If I would adopt a compatabilist viewpoint then I suppose I would answer:

    1.) To lead a ethical and honest life as best as possible.
    2.) To impart these principles on those closest to me so that they to can lead such a life as well.

  25. No purpose or meaning over here. Just trying to enjoy the little time I have left.

  26. My world view is based on what you might call a “gift economy.” The essential characteristic of a gift is that it must keep moving: it has to be shared. Hence I see my purpose as developing my God-given (I’m a pantheist) gifts to the fullest and passing on the results to others. I do this primarily through my writing—poetry, screenplays, novels—but also in my role as teacher and parent.

    Gifts imply and are the source of both obligations and rights. Because I have gifts I have obligations; seen from the outside those obligations translate into rights—i.e., your respect for my obligations constitute my rights. If I were the only person on the planet I would have no rights, but I would still have obligations. Americans, of course, are preoccupied with rights rather than obligations, but obligations come first—and before obligations, gifts.

    Because of all this, my primary stance toward the universe and my source of “spiritual sustenance” is gratitude. Both gifts and gratitude imply a Giver, which is consistent with, thought not the reason for, my being a pantheist.

    1. I’m having trouble figuring out how “pantheist” and “God-given” work together as concepts. It sounds like your “gifts” are just things moving around between everything and everything. And since the gift is also part of everything, I’m not sure there’s a point to all of that “gifting”.

      1. The central energy of the universe is creative. That creative spirit is, from a pantheistic viewpoint, “God,” and all creatures share in it. At the most basic level that creative energy is the survival instinct, life being the most basic of gifts and the drive to pass that gift on (propagate the species) being the most basic of obligations. So you’re right, those gifts are just “part of everything.” But there are other gifts at the individual level that are not universal but that also carry the obligation to share. Those were the ones I was speaking of.

        1. I have a hard time attributing anything useful to most of those concepts. All one. Shrug.

          Gifts are useful tokens of social obligation. I don’t see much value in stretching the concept to incorporate viral gene transfers.

          1. You say that you “have trouble figuring out” and that “you have a hard time” understanding, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re genuinely trying.

            The concept of “gift economy” I’m talking about isn’t all that different from the Native American tradition, in which a gift represents a relationship, a give-and-take that acknowledges participation in and dependence upon nature (“all one”). When we establish such a relationship with nature, we respond to it as fellow beings, not as strangers or owners or even stewards. We realize that to destroy nature’s renewable wealth is to destroy themselves as surely as anything can. A gift-exchange economy includes a built-in check against such destruction. I would call that “useful,” and more than mere “tokens.”

          2. You take a real thing, the exchange of items between people, and mushify it by generalizing to the universe. To mind that is woo, pure and simple. Gift exchange demonstrably exists among humans (and among some other animals). Pantheism contributes nothing to that observation.

          3. FWIW

            The “gift culture” thing

            I first encountered this notion from some writings by Eric S. Raymond – in the context of open source software – maybe free software…

          4. “. . .that is woo, pure and simple.”

            No doubt. But then, I have no problem with woo.

  27. I feel strongly that there are purposes to my life. At least I should appreciate its wonder. I want to see what the world is like and how it works. I want to make the world better, in the small ways I can.

    Because of my skill set (and lack of social skills) my purposes get expressed (at this point in my life) in writing books, chapters, and articles that help people identify difficult plants precisely. And collecting lots of plant specimens and sharing them with herbaria. Also, I try to help out relatives and be sympathetic to people who are stressed. I teach. I try to share my love of nature with others. And I vote.

    I’ve always had purpose, though sometimes the purposes have been difficult to articulate. And the immediate expression of that purpose has varied; I stuffed birds and mammals for a museum for years. The concept of not having purpose(s) is a little difficult for me to understand.

  28. I just told my student worker I was in danger of getting sucked into an internet conversation about whether life has purpose. “I have always had purpose,” I said. “Heck, Yeah!” he responded (referring to his own life).

    2. Well I think it’s fine, building jumbo planes.
      Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
      Switch on summer from a slot machine.
      Yes, get what you want to if you want,
      Cause you can get anything.

      I know we’ve come a long way,
      We’re changing day to day,
      But tell me, where do the children play?

      Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
      For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
      And you make them long, and you make them tough.
      But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can’t get off.

      Oh, I know we’ve come a long way,
      We’re changing day to day,
      But tell me, where do the children play?

      Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
      But will you keep on building higher
      ‘Til there’s no more room up there?
      Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
      Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

      I know we’ve come a long way,
      We’re changing day to day,
      But tell me, where do the children play?

  30. If life feels good enough to go on, one could say there is a sufficient meaning and purpose to life to go on. If one struggles mightily to go on, it is difficult to say that there is purpose and meaning to life.

  32. Answers:

    1) To keep breathing?

    2)I’m still trying figure that one out, but lack of interest seems to be winning.

    rz

  33. Correction, it was Sean Carrol who said that the purpose of life was to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.

    1. Yes. I love this also. It’s actually from Michael Russell originally. 24:55 in here: Sean Carroll – 2014 National Convention (FFRF).

  34. My life does have purpose – one that I have chosen. This is to (1) love and nurture my family and friends; (2) contribute to our store of scientific knowledge (I am a scientist), and (3) helping to promote the well-being of my fellow humans.
    My life doesn’t have a meaning.

  35. The purpose/meaning of my life is null.

    I try not to waste too much time thinking about such things. We’re all just going to end-up dead, so what does it matter?

  36. Q1: What do you consider the purpose of your life?

    A1: I have chose as goals things I find fun or else enjoyable. My goals tend to vary over the years.

    Q2: What do you see as the meaning of your life?

    A2: That is close to a meaningless question – I wondered what the meaning of “meaning” was in English. Indeed, I found only one near sensible definition of “meaning” in relation to life: “the … significance of something” [ http://www.dictionary.com/browse/meaning ].

    The significance [meaning] of an individual is that it is a member of a population.

  37. The purpose Q:
    I have no choice, it is to be a human being.
    The meaning Q:
    It is provided by other humans, cultures, the natural world, from the micro to the macro… the solar system, stars and beyond. How i fill this finite allotted time is limited by my personal and external environment and how i see myself and what choices i make within it.
    Somehow, being self aware i fit into all this and not to sound grandiose, i get great joy from learning how it all operates and how it has become knowledge we can all share, to my fallible human brain, it is as water is to a thirst.

  38. Being a Joseph Campbell fan, I look at the denotation of reality to be “the possibilities of human experience and fulfillment in a given society at a given time”, so my life’s purpose is to be the best human being, in terms of the possibilities of human experiences and fulfillment, that I can be. I’d say that I get meaning from life by serving others in the pursuit of being the best human being that I can be.

  39. Meaning and purpose is whatever you conveniently ascribe to your station in life at any given moment. You win the lottery and suddenly meaning and purpose changes.

  40. The meaning of life is that you have make your own.
    I choose to be happy, curious, creative, kind and rational.

  41. 1) Life has no intrinsic purpose, nor one given by any entity or moral authority. Like everyone, I’m subject to the biological pulls to carry on a particular set of behaviors (stay alive, sex, protect my kin) to fulfill a replication “purpose”, but other than that I believe we have only one choice: to create our own “purposes”, big and small. It’s up to each one, aided by society, to construct his or her own life with the purposes or reasons one sees best.
    2) There is no meaning. Again, one must give life his or her own meaning.

  43. I’m leery of the terms meaning and purpose because they can imply some supernatural agency that gives meaning and purpose. I prefer the term “goal.” We give ourselves the goals we have in life. There can be nothing intrinsically good or evil about those goals, because there can be nothing intrinsically good or evil about anything. They represent our whims, if you will. They make life more interesting, though, or at least they do in my case.

  44. Having got zero in searching ‘python’ here, I assume no one has mentioned that there is a Monty Python movie which can tell you the options–“Every sperm is sacred” etc.

  45. I don’t feel that my life has a “purpose.” I’m only here by random chance (as is everyone else). I don’t think I was put on earth to accomplish anything in particular, let alone anything great or noble. I am totally OK with that.

    There are things that give my life a sense of meaning, though: reading a good book, solving a New York Times crossword puzzle, laughing with friends, hearing my cats purr, listening to music, walking outdoors in the spring and seeing the beautiful flowers. (I’m in the D.C. area, and the cherry blossoms here are just as spectacular as everyone says.)

  46. Sometimes I used to think about purpose and meaning but not so much now. I have grown older and find such thoughts purposeless and meaningless. My self image has been readjusting itself without my permission.

  47. My hunch is that one term is inductive, the other deductive.

    Meaning, inductive reasoning (bottom-up), how some idea or content of conciousness is tethered to something “out there” by reference, consequence and causality: Smoke means fire, which means my house burns, which means I might go on vacation alone next time, which means I get to decide where I want to go. Smoke on the horizon means having a good vacation. Or “this song means something to me”, some chain of associations that stir up feelings, and memories.

    Purpose, a functionality determined through deductive (top-down) reasoning, which makes sense only when something is designed (by a person), but of course can be meant metaphorically (treating something as if it was a contraption, i.e. wings to fly, legs to run fast). “The purpose of rain is to provide the water for the trees to grow, fortunately there is none”. “The purpose of this plan was to go on vacation alone, and having a good time.”

    Lives can have both purpose and meaning, depending on observer. But as soon it is abstracted it tends to become meaningless very quickly. One abstraction is etching away all the particulars of one’s own existence. That becomes nonsensical quickly. But it works when one thing is really far more important than anything else — but that’s also more a poetical way of saying that: when someone believes they serve a deity, or are “there for their grand-children”, they say they really have little else going on at the moment.

    Another way is to generalize from individual to humankind. When treating nature as a contraption, metaphorically, then the purpose, also metaphorically, is to move the genes into the future. But nobody actually believes this is their purpose.

    I thus agree with Steve Ruis @15: whatever peopld say, it’s some highly subjective, metaphorical, made-up story; a sentiment; some yada-yada.

  48. My purpose is -and I quote (although I’m not sure who)
    “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely, in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “Holy Shit, what a ride!”

  49. My purpose has been to understand the world to the fullest extent I am able.

    “Meaning” is several things. I get meaning from understanding (satisfying my goal, above). I get joy from relations with family friends and “noble” strangers. My greatest urge has been to pass along what I think is real (true understanding) to my loved ones, but I have a very hard time doing that as I see the world so differently from most of them (and apparently most of you).

  50. Just for fun:

    … the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles.

    — H. P. Lovecraft

    Are the two questions distinct. Doesn’t meaning come from fulfilling or striving to fulfil your purpose?

    The Bomb’s purpose was to explode. (Being a construct, the Bomb had had an externally bestowed purpose.) It could have a meaningful existence only if it exploded. “Let there be light!”

    For me: to cherish those I love; to understand the world a little better each day, and pass on that understanding (which, in a narrow compass, is what I do for a living); to create what I can and take pleasure in others’ creations (art, music); to alleviate want where I can.

    Regarding spiritual sustenance, it comes serendipitously from any of the above:

    So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa?

    More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?

    Me, actually — the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it’s what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc².

    It’s that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn’t require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.

    I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.

    — Terry Pratchett, interview, Daily Mail (2008)

  51. My answer to both is the same: It’s to do my part, within my motivational limits, to make the world a better place, where by “better” I mean increasing net happiness / reducing net suffering.

    I don’t think there are objective or externally-granted sources of meaning or purpose in life, but this has little apparent impact on the purpose and meaning I find in my own life. Even so, I’m a former Christian, and I can relate to and still feel the pull of the intense amount of meaning and value you can get out of feeling that your life, and all of humanity, share some grand cosmic purpose.

  52. Not to be flippant – it takes a surprisingly long time to get to here if you were brought up in any religion:

    The purpose? To be.

    The meaning? what would you like to make it mean?

  54. THE purpose of our lives is a question that is not really a question of opinion anymore. It has been answered: our purpose is to be our genes’ vehicle, as Richard Dawkins pointed out. One may have/make some private purposes, but they are not the purpose of one’s life.
    When it comes to ‘meaning’, that leaves more room. Frank answer, I do not know, but a lot of the things I do and enjoy might qualify -along the lines of the Hitch above-, but I hesitate to call it ‘meaning’.
    As long as we haven’t ‘grasped’ time it is difficult to grasp ‘meaning’.

  55. The answer to both questions is “whatever I choose to make of it. ” I didn’t ask to be born. Like every other species on Earth, ours evolved to survive and reproduce. Everything other goal or purpose after that (including meaning to life) we merely construct for ourselves. I hope I die having made the world a better place for conscious beings, but if I fail, at least I tried. These questions really show a weird gap in how religious and non-religious people perceive reality and existence to begin with.

    1. I think it’s a gap that’s largely bridged by the logical outcomes of determinism, however, which turns it more into “coming at the same idea from different angles”. Religion posits an externally decided meaning to human life. Determinism concludes that whatever meaning we assign to life was largely inevitable – which isn’t so different from ‘externally imposed’ in a big picture sort of way. Both seem to speak to the larger intuition that we simply find ourselves existing in time-space with purposes and internal meanings and so on that we didn’t self-author.

      1. Only if you’re an incompatiblist. Compatibilitsts recognize the brain (self) as an author (playing an integral part in directing inputs to outputs).

        1. There may be a feedback loop involving one’s sense of self, but this sense of self was not self-authored in the first place, and not free of deterministic causation, so I don’t think this changes my point. The only brand of libertarian free will that proposes something radically different than determinism is a religious construct.

  56. Purpose of my life? That’s a question for my parents, but they’re dead.
    My life has the same meaning than every other living organism that ever existed. And the same meaning than every atom that ever existed.

  57. All obeisances are given to the feline members of our family. My purpose in life is to fulfill their wishes. If Newton rubs against my leg & then lays on his back I know it is time to rub his tummy. If Oliver pokes me with his paw when I’m walking by, I know he wants his chin scratched.etc., etc. They, in turn, give meaning to my life by giving me love & affection. Also, I try to do my share of household chores & try not to annoy my wife too much with what I think are witty & or humorous remarks.

  58. 1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?
    There is none, my life simply is until it is no more.

    2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?
    Meaning is bestowed on us by our circumstances, so the meaning of my life is as an agent acting in wider culture around me.

          3. Thanks, jp. Guess the internet slang one picks up depends on what sites one frequents.

            😉

            (In my case, not many anymore so I’m always way behind the curve. Just as in RL.)

  60. I would say there is no meaning & no purpose, anymore than a blade of grass sprouting or a glacier flowing down the mountain. We just are. Without freewill you can’t have either.

    Nihilism & determinism are my base stance. Above that I like to pretend I am here to enjoy myself & give pleasure to others, but that really is an illusion

  61. Claiming that the godless have no source of meaning is something I see a lot from theists and it really is one of the most insidious, weasel like and dishonest assertions they can make. In addition, it implies that they can only operate with purpose if there is some external guide telling them what to do, which relegates humanity to being no more than meat puppets, which is the opposite of the specialness they claim their god imbued on humanity.

    For the questions:
    1) I consider the purpose of my life is to be enjoy it while I can and to be a positive pleasure to those who I interact with.

    2) I’m unclear what constitutes meaning in the context of this question. That said, I don’t think my life, or anyone’s, has meaning.

  62. I would say life has no purpose and no meaning. But as the question is about MY life, then I would say I can choose my purpose. My purpose is to enjoy myself the most I can while I’m alive, that meaning keeping my levels of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and some other things high and balanced. Still no meaning.

  63. I don’t have any children so I don’t feel that my purpise is to pass on my dna to the next generation. Neither do I have great material wealth or a legacy or any significance in any other way. I have accepteted the fact that I was created to see God’s great works of creation, to look after his crwation and to give all glory and thanks to God for all things. The meaninf of my life is to discover my Lord God through my Lord Jesus Christ and to learn to love God and man using the gift of love, the Holy Spirit.

    1. Do you have any good and convincing evidence that this God exists? If so, please give it to us (just reiterating in the Bible doesn’t count) and please also tell us why your God is the right one rather than, say, the Gods of the Hindus or Allah or the many gods of other religions.

    2. “I don’t have any children so I don’t feel that my purpise [sic] is to pass on my dna to the next generation.”

      People who don’t have children always don’t have children until they have children.

      Nonetheless I think that doesn’t matter for the questions.

      If it is true that organisms’ purpose is for the genes inside to survive, how would that change things?

    3. ‘I have accepteted the fact that I was created to see God’s great works of creation, to look after his crwation and to give all glory and thanks to God for all things.’

      Yes, if something is a FACT, reason obligates us to ‘accept’ it. But what you state is not a fact but an assertion that requires empirical validation in order to become one–starting with whether ‘God’ exists.

  65. I don’t like the ideas of purpose or meaning when it comes to my life. This probably reflect my inability to digest philosophy. Instead, I can say what I find satisfying about life.

    Purpose: I don’t think that the idea of having a purpose is particularly meaningful whether you are religious or not. If you are religious, having the purpose of being a tool for a cruel and capricious god seems a terrible fate. As a non-religious person, I find it strange to say, “My purpose is to make the world a better place and to minimize my role in degrading the planet.” Those are my goals, but the word “purpose” implies to me that I was made with these goals in mind. I suppose I was raised with these goals vaguely in mind in that my mother particularly stressed being considerate of others, but I think her goal, now that she happened to have a kid, was to raise someone who would be a good person. However, I was not conceived to make the world a better place.

    Meaning: The idea of a life having meaning has a similar problem for me. A book or play has meaning because it was created with intent to communicate something. A beetle or cat just “is”. Why should I be any different? It does not make sense for my life to have some greater meaning that can somehow be discerned if only I could escape the clutter of my existence.

    Instead, my focus is on satisfaction. How can I fill my time to make my life feel satisfying. It is very important to avoid causing harm to others both now and in the future. I like making my immediate surroundings physically nicer. I like doing what I can to make the lives of other people more enriching and satisfying. Maybe this is what other people mean when they say “purpose” and “meaning”, but to me these terms imply some sort of grand plan that simply is not there. I am driven merely by how my brain was born and shaped over time, plus my immediate environmental surroundings. Yup, no free will!

  66. A man said to the universe:
    “Sir, I exist!”
    “However,” replied the universe,
    “The fact has not created in me
    A sense of obligation.”

    ~Stephen Crane

  67. I don’t think my life has a purpose, that implies we are on the Earth for a reason, and the only reason i can see is for the propogation of Genes, once your reproductive life is done, your Cells start to die,you have served your “purpose”, As for meaning? see above.

  68. My first thought when confronted with these questions is no. No meaning or purpose. I’m disinclined to share why here because thinking about it actually makes me a bit depressed, but I can try harder to be more positive so let me try again…

    When I think of meaning in life I think of what means something to me. Mostly that entails my dearest friends, and family. And so, assuming my life has any meaning at all then it is a meaning imparted to me from them. That’s a nice thought really.

    As for purpose, I’m reminded of a quote by Brian Cox (which very conveniently is the very first result when Googling ‘Brian Cox quotes’). It is this: “We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.” So I’m a uniquely positioned observer of the universe, and I can judge it. I give it C-, shows potential, but needs to put its head down and work hard if it wants to be considered worthwhile overall.

  69. Franz Kafka: “The meaning of life is that it ends”

    My purpose in life is to eat mass quantities of cheesecake.

  70. Meaning: to riff on a joke Bunge tells with a serious point … my life is neither meaningful nor meaningless because life is not a construct, and only constructs have meanings. (Cf. volume 1 and 2 of his _Treatise on Basic Philosophy_.)

    Purpose: I have several, one of which is to simply be.

  72. Gosh — a sea of comments…

    Purpose: If there is an intrinsic purpose to life, it’s to survive and reproduce. That’s about it and I’ve done that. Big deal.

    Meaning: No intrinsic meaning. Find your own. Gives me a huge sense of freedom, knowing that I don’t have to conform to some “built-in”
    meaning.

  73. I believe the purpose of my life is to have fun. I don’t believe my life has any meaning.

    These are sufficient to me. My life is full of love and purpose (fun). What fun is has all been!

  74. I am a piece of the universe become self-aware and my life has the meaning I create for myself. My purpose, as I have decided, is to leave the world a little bit better than it would be without me. I choose to do this by trying to be kind and responsible to other people and the environment. I do this because it makes me happy. Probably it’s because I am a member of a profoundly social species and being helpful and kind has genetic and cultural roots.

  75. “The purpose of life is enjoying the passage of time”
    (any fool can do it, there ain’t nothin’ to it)

    James Taylor

  76. If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

    1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

    I have no Purpose, only purposes that vary from day to day, month to month. I suppose that I fit the existentialist attitude, without the “sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world” as described by Robert Solomon. (Existentialism, 1972).

    Coming to this state has been gradual, aided by having lived in Asia among Chinese since 1978. Like most Chinese in Asia, though I am not Chinese, I see no divine purpose in life.

    2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

    I don’t find any Meaning to life, but meanings, mostly family, an interest in the physical world, including Earth science and biology, an interest in the social world, including economics, political science, religion and history, an interest in technology, IT, and workshop projects, an interest in philosophy.

    I am closer to 90 than to 80 and would like to live another 50 years or so, just to see how things progress or not. The world is very interesting, more interesting than fiction.

    But I realize that although I am in good health, the end is approaching. Formerly, I was afraid of death, but now that I have been an atheist for over 50 years, I see death as merely going to sleep and not waking up.

  77. The purpose of my life is to improve my self and my small place in the world, through learning all that I can, feeling what I may and must, and doing what I can to improve the lives of others by helping them to realize, in the most profound sense, their hearts’ and souls’ desires, as they also help me.

    Whatever meaning exists in my life arises from my relationships with other people and creatures, from my pleasure in the world despite its onerous challenges, and the payoffs of the struggle.

  79. 1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

    I honestly believe life has no purpose at all, but it doesn’t mean I live a without purpose. I basically want to be a happy man among happy people. Just because it makes me feel good. I try to do that in a sustainable way, meaning tomorrow I want people to be happier than today, that includes myself and more specifically my family.

    2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

    Again, life has no meaning. We just like things to mean something so we can pretend to understand it.

  80. I think some of the basics are missing from the responses – mine included.

    1. After we write out an answer – which is more of an assertion than anything, how do we show that it is true? E.g. I’m 100% behind purpose of life = Carry genes into the future, because it is a fact anyone can verify. There might be other purposes, I don’t know – that’s a corollary – saying ‘I don’t know” is a very important admission.

    2. How would other people verify the assertion? If there are no wisdom teeth in someone’s jaw (PCC(E) used this example a while ago, I think its great), we can verify that by asking how old they are, if they saw a dentist, etc. I think it _is_ reasonable to ask if there is a meaning to your/my life – and I think, as I think others suggest, the best answer I can come up with is “I don’t know”.

    …. I’m fired up from Pinker’s talk yesterday, and David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity”, including this comment-bait post, and am not a pro philosopher, so I apologize!

    1. Edit:

      “Reasonable” maybe better as “natural”. So it is natural to wonder about purpose and meaning in life. I think Steven Pinker put this exact idea in one of his first three slides yesterday, so I don’t think anyone should be scolded for wondering about it.

  81. Spurred by discussions of definitions elsewhere on WEIT :

    I haven’t thought this out carefully, but I think “meaning” could also be understood to mean “consequence” –

    So if we come up with a purpose for life, we can then ask what the consequence of that purpose is.

    Thus, purpose and meaning would each have to fit together, instead of being isolated in vacuo….

    But I’m just chatting at the water cooler here, not composing an essay….

  82. I think other commenters are perhaps misunderstanding your question – although I do agree with them that life (whether that be my own, or any other) has no inherent purpose or meaning. So, I’m going to answer the question that I think you were actually asking.

    I am an agnostic atheist; I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body. My purpose is the same as what gives my life meaning: learning and understanding as much as I possibly can about the topics that interest me personally. I live to learn. That’s it.

Comments are closed.