Jun
18
The Meaning of Life
Filed Under Blogroll, Motivation & Purpose | 18 Comments
Are you a web programmer familiar with LAMP stack and want to work from home? Please fill out an application here! Full time job, salaries range from around $1,000-$6,000/month.
This is an age old question that everyone has thought about at some point. Logically, I come to the conclusion that the meaning of life is to exist. I will use set theory for this argument.
We will start by picking anything (call it y) that exists and adding it to a set X. Then, we can ask some question of y, such as “why y?” The answer to that question would either be in X or not in X. If the answer to that question is not in X, then we can put the answer z into the set X and ask a question of z, such as “why z?” Repeat this process until infinity, and we’ll get a set X of everything that exists.
Since everything is in X, that would include the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of existence?”, or “Why X?”, since X represents the entire set of all things that exist. However, since everything that exists is in X, that would mean the answer to the question is also in X. That would mean existence can be defined by itself! Hence, existence IS the ultimate meaning.
Making existence the meaning of life makes some commonly fuzzy terms very definable:
Good – Things that increase existence
Bad – Things that decrease existence
Of course, a lot of things are still subjective, such as what does increasing existence mean? or How exactly do we define existence? The answers to these questions determine how people perceive life and how they live it.
If you feel that this post has been of value to you, please leave a donation to show your appreciation and allow me to bring this value to other people as well!
Ask a question or discuss this post in the personal development forum.
Related Posts
Personal Development by an INTJ
Napolean Hill’s Keys to Success
A Death In The Family Brings Motivation And Focus
The Meaning Of Love
How to Find Out What You Really Want
The Life Pursuit Of Money
Why The Desire To Exist Is the Basis Of All Meaning
Why You Should Show Appreciation
What Commiting To Something Means And Why You Should Do It
A Little Google DeIndexing Puts Things In Perspective
Free Personal Development Email Updates
Not sure when the next article will appear?
Why not subscribe to email updates and get articles delivered to you instead?
[...] As INTJs, we love to build things and increase efficiency. However, why do we want to do these things? This is of course, related to what our perception of the meaning of life. [...]
so the purpose of a pink and purple gorilla is to exist as well since i can put pink and purple gorilla into set x…
and the purpose of my car is to exist as well? last time i checked, it was more useful than that
I think the subjective answers you are talking about are values.
Negative threats to what one values would possibly diminish the joy of existence; including our self-concept and threats to domains which we perceive as being central to our identity.
Kevin: Yeah, pink and purple gorillas don’t want to die either and likes to have sex as far as I can tell.
Yeah, the car’s purpose too is to exist. Somewhere, some time, somebody built the car, and that person very much wanted the car to exist.
Ian: I completely agree with everything you said here. People’s values and emotions dictate their perceptions of these negative threats, self-concept, and threats you mentioned. Hmmm, since society (including your family) shapes your values and nature shapes your emotions, that would seem to be pretty consistent for good evolutionary development.
[...] The Meaning of Life [...]
[...] Since resources are what we need to exist, and people’s ultimate want is to exist (see the meaning of life), money is an important part of any person who [...]
[...] that’s exactly the point! From the meaning of life, we know that people want to exist. When a script like that is followed and you might as well not [...]
“Meaning” is, I think, something that lives only within the mind of the individual. The universe around us is only facts. Therefore there can be as many “meanings” to life as there are individuals.
One should guard against equating meaning and fact, as this can lead to a troubled life. Marcus Aurelius cautions never to ascribe meaning, but to keep to the bare facts. The mind is endlessly creative in producing terrible outcomes (a prediction of the future is nothing more than ascribing meaning to facts) and our ego finds it difficult to admit that we can err, at all, even in something life predicting the future.
@Mooche:
Yeah, I completely agree! This meaning of life is just from my perspective, which can definiately change over time. Everyone has their own perspective though and none of them are more right or wrong than any other inherently (although from any particular perspective, some other perspectives are “wrong”).
Although, “fact” is interesting. There kind of are no facts. Like everyone has a perspective and how you view the world (including the “facts”) is dependent upon that perspective. So it’s always colored in some way…
[...] a previous post the meaning of life, we’d examined a logical argument for why the meaning of life is existence. However, as I [...]
I’ve enjoyed reading most of your articles:)
But here you say that X is the set of things that exist. So the answer to “Why X?” is only in X if there is such an answer. Certainly the statement “there is an answer to ‘why X?’” is in X, because I just said it, so it exists. However, unless you can identify the answer to your question ‘why X?’, you cannot be sure that such an answer exists.
I have a lot of time on my hands.
This is an incredible theory for the meaning of existence. However, there is only one catch in this theory that I do not quite understand.
You said “[...] since everything that exists is in X, that would mean the answer to the question is also in X. That would mean existence can be defined by itself! Hence, existence IS the ultimate meaning.”
If X is everything that exists, then the answer to the question of the meaning of existence is to be found as part of existence, not as the entirety of existence itself. Right?
you’re making it to hard, the theory is alright actually, I’ll use kevins example: and the purpose of my car is to exist as well? last time i checked, it was more useful than that
so the car exists, then the question is asked again, why does it exists, because you can drive it around,
and this part of the theory can be used again for it:
Good – Things that increase existence
Bad – Things that decrease existence
as for the question then, why do YOU exist, that’s an answer that you as X can only answer because you are existing at that moment, and then you can add these things again into the question:
Good – Things that increase existence
Bad – Things that decrease existence
etc…
[...] to build things and increase efficiency. However, why do we want to do these things? This is of course, related to what our perception of the meaning of life. [...]
Nicely explained Warren.
You can check a post written by me ob my blog which talks about similar subject.
The real happiness in life
Nicely explained Warren.
You can check a post written by me ob my blog which talks about similar subject.
The real happiness in life
[...] Since resources are what we need to exist, and people’s ultimate want is to exist (see the meaning of life), money is an important part of any person who [...]
what I feel is that the meaning of life is not to exists but to clear the reason for existence. By stating existence we imply that there is a negation of existence. that means we are not here ,there or anywhere else. meaning of life is to achieve that.