What is the point in living?

Oddish On Fire

Recently, I have been pondering my life quite a bit after a very deep conversation with someone who I thought lacked depth. And, I keep asking myself, "What is the point in living?" Since I could not come up with an adequate answer -other than procreation- I thought I would post this as a topic to discover some different views, hopefully prompting one of my own.

So, what in your opinion is the point in living?
 
Oddish On Fire said:
Recently, I have been pondering my life quite a bit after a very deep conversation with someone who I thought lacked depth. And, I keep asking myself, "What is the point in living?" Since I could not come up with an adequate answer -other than procreation- I thought I would post this as a topic to discover some different views, hopefully prompting one of my own.

So, what in your opinion is the point in living?
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The point in living is what you make of it. If you're too indifferent to create your own purpose, there are most assuredly people out there who would love to tell you what it is.

My purpose in living is to act nobly and morally to the best of my ability, and stamp out injustice and tyranny of either the self or from afar whenever I am able to. To work decently and honestly on my own path and to shun busybodies who want to intervene "for my own good." Rarely do such vultures and vermin have my interests at heart.

There is no objective purpose for living. As they say, nobody makes it out alive.
 
I live to be stimulated, as often and as thoroughly as possible. I prefer to do this either by just enjoying the sun and warm breeze on my face, or through the brush of fingertips on my cheek from a lover, and hearing the laughter of friends tickle my ears. For me, life is about getting as much enjoyment and pleasure out of it as possible, and although I may not actively search for such opportunities excessively just to satiate myself, I do try to seize as many opportunities that do happen to come my way!

Even pain isn't all that bad--it's a reminder that I'm still alive, that my body is still pulsating with blood and my limbs can still get to me to wherever I'd like to go to. I really, really do enjoy most people in general as well, and I am passionate about creating and maintaining relationships. Although there are people out there who can do so, I can't personally imagine going throughout life and enjoying all the experiences it has to offer, alone. A significant other is ideal to share my magnificent life with, but I still want to communicate with people at every bump and turn in the long long roooaad. I do better appreciate and love people with whom I have very close/intimate bonds with (S.O aside, friendships) and I would greatly prefer those to just being someone with zillions of acquaintances and familiar friends, but all the same, I do so (mostly) love interacting with my fellow human beings (you know, the ones that aren't really annoying and sucky).
 
Biologically, you're living just to pass on your genes, so that your species may live longer.

However, the wonderful thing about us humans is that we can assign other meanings to just about anything, including our lives. Some of us derive meaning in life from the idea of a legacy, of knowing that, when we are gone, there are those who will remember us and the things that we've done. Some of us derive meaning through experiencing as much as they possibly can. Others just want to be.

The point is, you have to find or create your own reason for being. It's very easy to become a nihilist when asking yourself why you want to keep on living, but having come out of a period where I lacked meaning in my life I'd say it's rewarding finally having a reason to live. I personally want to experience a lot before I die. I want to keep on learning and experiencing until my final breath. That is why I live.
 
wer said:
Biologically, you're living just to pass on your genes, so that your species may live longer.
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Evolution tends to produce beings that have urges to reproduce, but it's nonsensical to say that they live "to" pass on their genes. They are likely to behave in such a way that they will, but there is no obligation nor any pressure for them to do so. All purpose is subjective, but there is no meaningful subjectivity you can associate to nature or biology.

Personally, I find that I'm living for legacy. I tend to give less importance to what my life is than to what will be left of it in a few hundred years. Achievement is immensely more important to me than experience. In a sense it is somewhat stressful, because it's a lot harder to build than it is to live.
 
Brain said:
Evolution tends to produce beings that have urges to reproduce, but it's nonsensical to say that they live "to" pass on their genes. They are likely to behave in such a way that they will, but there is no obligation nor any pressure for them to do so. All purpose is subjective, but there is no meaningful subjectivity you can associate to nature or biology.
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Find me something living that is not programmed to make more of itself, and I will concede your point. Hell, there are even non-living things that do this (viruses, for example).

I'm not saying that reproduction is a conscious effort (I for one don't wake up in the morning and think "I sure do hope I knock someone up today"), but there is a drive for it. I agree that it's bullshit that someone's success in life be tied to whether or not they've reproduced, but from a purely biological standpoint that may as well be the case.
 
The point of life is whatever you want it to be. I agree with Brain about the urge to propagate, but that's something I'd rather leave to those who actually enjoy such arguments. Given that there is no point, it's up to us as individuals to set our own goals and work towards them. You're born; you live; you die. It's a lot more complicated than that, obviously, but at the end of the day that's the process you're going to go through, along with everyone else. That's how I pulled myself out of the obligatory existential crises I've had, by realising I have (hopefully) quite some time ahead to fill in, and there's no reason there should be a point. But if having a point helps you, as it does me, then make one for yourself as you're free to. I find it rewarding, personally.

As a child I was very strongly willed and wanted to live to impact, so that I would also have a legacy. I don't think I've ever really minded dying, though maybe it'll hit me one day and I'll panic. I think my poor health and interest in history have both drummed the inevitability of death firmly into my head. However, since I had a breakdown and have been depressed for six years, I've been reevaluating my circumstances. While I'm too driven and neurotic to live hedonistically, I've set to achieve happiness and maintain it as my goal. Obviously I don't expect to be happy all the time, but I want to try to be as happy as I can be. I also want to help people achieve that.

I have a lot of interests and a strong desire to learn, so I want to accumulate as much knowledge as I can and do with it what I can. I plan to go into virology, which particularly draws me, and in that I hope my work helps people. I still want to live on through contributions to the great mass of knowledge humans have gathered, but it no longer drives me. I just want to partake of that and hopefully contribute to it.

In its simplest form, though, life enables us to experience pleasure. I don't just mean from doing whatever you want. Lots of people find pleasure in structured, 'ordinary' lives. Simple things can be enough to make you feel happy. Living the way you believe to be right can be enough to give you a sense of pleasurable fulfillment. Life also enables us to experience pain and unpleasant things. You can take them as they come, for they are also interesting experiences, or you can seek to reduce that aspect. I guess the tl;dr version of this is that it's your choice.
 
I think a lot more humans come from either a decision made by other humans to have sex and make a new human. Or two humans having sex and creating an unplanned human.

EDIT: a lot more humans come from that than some internal desire to make more.
 
wer said:
Find me something living that is not programmed to make more of itself, and I will concede your point. Hell, there are even non-living things that do this (viruses, for example).
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There are many examples of individuals that don't reproduce, one prime example of which is gay people. One theory advanced to explain male homosexuality is that the genes encoding for it also encode for higher fertility in women - so essentially gay people might exist as a byproduct of the process. That is, a higher number of reproductive agents in society being produced at the expense of a certain percentage of non-reproductive agents, to which the "species" is at best indifferent. The point is, not everybody actually has a drive to reproduce (and I would go as far to say that it is to be expected that not everybody has one), so you can't make a blanket statement saying that we live to do that.

I agree that it's bullshit that someone's success in life be tied to whether or not they've reproduced, but from a purely biological standpoint that may as well be the case.
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There is no "biological standpoint" to success or failure. Biology, as any science, is about fact, it doesn't have any basis to make judgements of values, and even if it did, these judgements would be extremely difficult to make. For instance, if we define an agent's success as how well it did at promoting the spread of their genes, a man without children could have more success than a man with a child, if he spent all his time helping his siblings (who share a great percentage of his genes) with their own offspring. It's also hairy to define how successful propagation is - incest, for instance, increases the likelihood that your genes will be transmitted, but that's only a short term gain. If one looks at the species at a whole, inventing bear traps might have a greater impact than having children, and so might giving a hand to people with better genes or even refraining from reproducing if your genes are problematic.

Edit: "biologically speaking", it makes much more sense to speak of the success or failure of a gene than of the success or failure of an individual. An individual is nothing more than a gene carrier. It does whatever it wants. The propagation of an agent's genes is mostly independent of what the agent does, unless it is the only one to have them (unlikely for anything but a very small percentage).
 
Because if I die before One Piece ends I will be really pissed off at whatever or whoever killed me.

Although a little nonsensical, it holds true for me. I have things I still want to experience. I want to be here for the next generation of technology. I want to see what content is produced soon by our culture industries. I want to see how the world evolves. Sadly, I only get to see it in the frame of a few decades. Dying is going to suck =(
 
I live:

1)To live for God and stand by his word.
2)For myself, to gain knowledge, to gain a better awareness of the phenomenon that actively occur around me.
3)To see the idiocy of the world around me, contrasted by the geniuses around me, further contrasted by the actions of those motivated by what they love most.
4)To see people succeed in their endeavors, whether it be in sports, academics, or more.
5)For a future revenge and vengeance for my previous years. I want to redeem myself
6)Finally, to find out who I really am. Am I just another pawn in this world, or do I have a greater purpose? Where am I from? Am I truly Korean, when my own countrymen reject me for not following their steps. Am I Canadian? What does it mean to be Canadian? Am I just a citizen of this world, aiming to help ameliorate the world or to further bring it down the drain (without knowing)? Who am I? I have not found the answer, and I seek a place where I can find it.

Edit: Sorry, staying up at 1:40 in the middle of the night makes me melodramatic, emotional, and just tired as hell.
 
Wondering is all well and good but many a individual have spent an absorbent amount of time wondering about the point of living. You are only guaranteed this moment and should treat it as such. To me the point of living is to, well just live.
 
I enjoy life. I want to make a difference in the lives of others. Right now, the best way to do that is to become an engineer, because I like problem solving, so I'll be able to enjoy life while helping others too. It's all fun and good.
 
Brain said:
There are many examples of individuals that don't reproduce, one prime example of which is gay people. One theory advanced to explain male homosexuality is that the genes encoding for it also encode for higher fertility in women - so essentially gay people might exist as a byproduct of the process. That is, a higher number of reproductive agents in society being produced at the expense of a certain percentage of non-reproductive agents, to which the "species" is at best indifferent. The point is, not everybody actually has a drive to reproduce (and I would go as far to say that it is to be expected that not everybody has one), so you can't make a blanket statement saying that we live to do that.
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I'm gay because I've been raised to not acept the bitchy behavior that women ahve, simple as that.
 
I have decided life is meaningless and like it better that way. If there were any point to it other than just living then there'd be something expected of all of us. We'd be sacrificing our freedom just by living <___<
 
I do believe that we know we're spoiled when we have anough time to worry about WHY we're alive then just living and surviving.

Really the why doesnt matter, its the how :) do what you can every minute you can
 
I live to make a difference in people's lives and to ensure my family is secure.

Right now, I am pretty satisfied with what I'm doing in my life, as I feel I have accomplished both, to a limited degree. I work with individuals with developmental disabilities and I KNOW I make a difference in their lives. Yes, the group I work with is very small, but eventually I'll expand my efforts and, hopefully, will be the difference in a lot more lives. Honestly, the best feeling in the world (despite the frustration that precedes it) is having someone you've been working with master the skill you've been supporting them to learn.

As for my family, my current employment affords me the time and the income to be able to support them when necessary. But, I'm not anywhere near satisfied with this as I want to make sure my nephews/nieces all have the opportunity and financial support to attend college and right now I wouldn't be able to support them to do so. Hopefully, however, I will have it solved within the next 12 years (when they will be graduating from high school).

But yeah, so far... that's my point of my life, to make a difference in as many lives as I can right now, and hopefully to expand it in the future.



Coincidentally, my uncle sent me an e-mail earlier today that made me smile and will be a good lifter-upper for those of us with the "smaller" goals:

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of the
'Peanuts' comic strip.

You don't have to actually answer the questions.*Just ponder on them, read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five female*Wimbledon trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss*World competition
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World*Cup winners.

How did you do?*

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies... Awards tarnish... Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:*
1. List five teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special!!
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?*

The lesson:The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials….the most money...or the most awards.
 
I like distractions. If something is distracting, it elicits a response or at least an interpretation. I seek distraction. Indeed, distractions may be what keep us going; if there were no distractions life would be the epitome of the mundane. If you're bored with your life, go get some ADD and come back; you'll like what you see around you, or at least think it's interesting. You might even not like it, and then you should do something about it.

Other than that, the classic response would be that the purpose of life is to live. We are the derivative of existence, those who are able to perceive it; let's do our jobs and look around us, play with the world.

and reproduction. Make some more life, but not too much, just enough to keep balance, keep traffic flowing.
 
Mike B said:
I'm gay because I've been raised to not acept the bitchy behavior that women ahve, simple as that.
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Yes, your personal antecedote completely makes all scientific research illegitimate. *rolls eyes*

To the OP

The answer is: Whatever you want it to be.
 
the answer: there is no point in life.

life is an accident, some crazy link of events that brought us here. Eventually we will die, out kids will die, the earth will be engulfed in flames and every single thing we ever achieved will be erased from the universes 'memory'.

I mean life is fun and all, but its just a pointless adventure
 
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