What is the meaning of asking what the meaning of life is?

Question

What is the meaning of asking what the meaning of life is?

Answer 1

To know the meaning of life.

It is -

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.

Popular beliefs

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success

...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you

...to be always satisfied

...to live, go to school, work, and die

...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race

...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life

...to compete or co-operate with others

...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance

...to gain and exercise power

...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book

...to eat

...to prepare for death

...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.

...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)

...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)

...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially

...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent

...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate

...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means

...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)

...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life

...to seek and find beauty

...to kill or be killed

...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge

...to master and know everything

...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions

...to expand one's perception of the world

...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers

...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes

...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom

...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos

...to lead the world towards a desired situation

...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical

...to express compassion

...to follow the "Golden Rule"

...to give and receive love

...to work for justice and freedom

...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment

...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment

...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual

...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God

...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context

...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace

...to become like God, or divine

...to glorify God

...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)

...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)

...to be a filter of creation between heaven and h**l

...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)

...to reach Heaven in the afterlife

...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life

...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement

...to understand and follow the "Word of God"

...to discover who you are

...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced

Philosophical

...to give life meaning

...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)

...to know the meaning of life

...to achieve self-actualisation

...all possible meanings have some validity

...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:

...to die

...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)

...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)

...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"

...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever

...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )

...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other

...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")

...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general

...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe

...to make conformists' lives miserable

...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)-

Answer 2

The meaning for this is for everybody different.

Some might yearn to really find answers so to why they live and what their purpose is,

others might take this question as a means to get entertained, to have some interactions with others.

If you do not know what the meaning of asking what the meaning of life is, this questions might be for you simply not "meaningful".

Answer 3

Ha! Tricky. The meaning of the action you've mentioned is that we don't know what life is.

Answer 4

the person unclear from his ownself will ask this ques...

Answer 5

Humans, by nature, are always seeking something.  So why not seek the ultimate truth - why are we here - why does life exist - what is the meaning of life.  

There is no real meaning to the question, only the existence of the question itself.

Seek and yet we shall never find...

Answer 6

It's got a very good meaning.know what?It means the asker has believed(or at least has doubted) that universe is not manged as easily as he thought before.that Man does have  important aims.It means he is seeking for them.

Answer 7

Asking what the meaning of life is lets the rest of us know who the NOOBS are.  Then we can torment and humiliate them, as is our right, having suffered similar abuse in our turn back when WE were 12 years old and there was nothing on TV and we annoyed smarter people by asking stupid questions.

But WE didn't have the internet back then! We had frickin' Commodore 64's with only a few KB's of RAM!  Or a 386 and Telnet, if we were LUCKY!

Darn kids and your music...

*cough*

*other old-person noises*

Answer 8

"We need to stop asking the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

"These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment....'Life' does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete."

Viktor Frankl--"Man's Search for Meaning"

Answer 9

There is a reason why people ask this question, and more people are asking it now than in previous generations.  This question arises out of a very particular lack, where one cannot justify what he exists for.  Fortunatly there is a method where I and many others have found the answer.

"Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, “What is the meaning of my life?” In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest, who is it that enjoys them? Even more precisely, to whom do I give delight?

It is indeed true that historians have grown weary contemplating it and particularly in our generation. No one even wishes to consider it. Yet the question stands as bitterly and as vehemently as ever. Sometimes it meets us uninvitingly, pecks at our mind and humiliates us to the ground before we find the famous ploy to flow mindlessly in the currents of life as yesterday."

Baal Husalam, Introduction To Talmud Eser Sephirot

Here is a short video clip that introduces the authentic wisdom of Kabbalah and everyone is welcome to study:

http://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/kabbalah...

Answer 10

What do you mean?...

(sorry, but it was one of the better comedic responses possible and your next reply would be , "What?" to which this one would reply, "Exactly!"  Yuk, yuk, yuk.)

Many persons seem to need to live under the delusion that there must be some ultimate purpose to life other than simply being as one lives in the present moment.

Their ego is telling them that they must have more "value" than all else that exist so as to separate from the same causing them to choose to be divided rather than to be one with all.

The Western mind is very interesting...

Be well.

Answer 11

There are no meaningless questions, only meaningless answers.  If everyone knew the meaning of life, no one would have to ask it.

Answer 12

The asker has a philosophic turn of mind and is likely to pursue questions about the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning as far as they can take it, in order to examine the nature of reality and attempt to comprehend the nature of relationships.

Two-year-olds characteristically ask "Why?"  I once knew a 2-year old who began asking "How?" since he was dissatisfied with the answers he got to the first question.  He might very well have grown up to become a formal philosopher.

Answer 13

The meaning of life as we all know is of course 42. So asking what is 42 would be a math question.

Answer 14

Our human nature quite forcefully demands that we have a life worth living:

"There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." Albert Camus

But worth comes naturally only from having a purpose and meaning.

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

Both Camus and Russell were atheists, BTW.

So purpose, meaning, and worth are all tied together to our Creator.  If our Creator exists, He must have put our need for meaning into our human nature to get us to seek Him.