Asklemmy

I'm a big fan of positive nihilism. Everything has occurred by random chance and there are no inherent truths or any purpose to anything. Nothing we do actually matters in the grand scheme of the universe. So, since nothing matters, I am free to exhert my free will and give value to what I choose.

I want to live a life where my perspective is, on the whole, a positive, happy one, and I want to create as many opportunities for others to do the same as possible. I do not want to tolerate those that use their freedom to steal the freedom of others or who seek pleasure at the pain and cost of others. I want to utilize my freedom to seek pleasure and joy and bring pleasure and joy to others without causing pain and suffer.

Nothing matters, so choose the life you want. There is no right or wrong way to live.

The only objective purpose in life is to spread your genes. You share that same purpose with every other living thing.

Other than that, it's up to you. My purpose in life is to keep my girlfriend happy and destroy as many jobs as I can. My career in industrial automation is the key to both.

Life IS the purpose. If you're alive, you're already fulfilling your purpose whether you are aware of it or not.

We yearn for answers to why we're here, there's a reason religion has been such a huge part of there human consciousness for so long, our brains are hard wired to find reasons for everything.

Since there is no known objective answer to this question, I'll answer it subjectively, recognizing that my life experiences have tainted my views.

Life has no purpose. People who do immense "evil" will not be punished. People who do immense "good" will not be rewarded.

Your existence is a beautiful, flighty phenomenon. You are a heap of octillions of atoms that somehow gained self awareness. Your happiness is merely a chemical exchange in your skull meat, it's fine to strive for happiness but it's fleeting.

I personally strive for serenity, accepting reality for what it is and making peace with it. Nothing matters, we're all going to lose the gift of consciousness through inevitable death, and that's okay.

There's no purpose. Do whatever you will do. There was never another option.

Hey, it could be worse. There's no failing per se and this is neutral (rather than hostile) towards whatever personal goal you make up.

I personally think the purpose of life is to reproduce. Everything we are is just because it made us better at surviving and multiplying. We are merely animals.

I dont think we need to have kids just because that's what we exist for. We're intelligent enough to go against our basic instincts if we wish. In that optic, we all need to find our own purpose!

A very philosophical question, so I'm going to ramble a bit:

I think there cannot be an objective purpose to anything, because any purpose can only go so far. E g. if the purpose of life is to be happy, then what is the purpose of being happy? And what is the purpose of that purpose, and so on? It never ends, there will never be a final answer giving everything before it objective purpose, because that is not how purpose works.

Purpose is a human concept, designed to structure our lives and to help us come up with sub-tasks for bigger goals. And it only really works if we fill in the final goal by saying "because I want that, for whatever reason". For many someone else fills in that goal and we just follow it, maybe feeling a little empty inside.

So I think the real question is, how do you find that final answer, and the only thing I can think of is: Whatever feels right to you. And right doesn't have to be happy, right means true to yourself imo. If you had a nice day then it might mean happy, but if you had a shitty day then it might mean seeking comfort or some distraction.

The one thing that can make this very difficult is having expectations about what you should be or feel, and those expectations not matching up with your subjective reality. We all have them, from our upbringing, our peers and experiences, and they can often be very subtle and subconscious. But they are only useful if they help you find your true self imo, otherwise they can be very misleading and painful.

I've always felt that life's purpose should be pursuit of knowledge and self expression in roughly equal proportions. So 50% science, 50% art. That's just what feels right in my brain, I guess.

I think most brains are just going to have their own idea of what life's purpose should be and most of them will be more or less fine. A majority will have said purposes stifled by the limitations of society and biology, though

The purpose of life (imo) is to discover humanity in yourself and what "the best human" means to you. People get their ideas on "the best human" from many inspired examples. The Buddha, Mohammed the Prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, Julius Caesar, or Jimmy Buffet. Some people need no such idols and can form their own understanding of what it means to be human, but all of these scale.

Your humanity plays into the identity of your family, plays into the identity of your city/town, plays into the identity of your region, plays into the identity of your nation, and at the top is the true meaning of life: the culmination of every dream and desire, the moral fabric of our species, and the embodiment of the only such entity in existence to our knowledge. The purpose of life is to find that, reconcile with it, and use the wisdom you gain in doing so to help shape our species into a happy, healthy, and mature civilization, or die trying.

Purpose is merely a human construct. Please don't take this post too seriously. 🫠

I'd first ask you to define happiness.

Temporary pleasures will always be fleeting, unreliable, and fraught with danger. Drugs and alcohol feel great in the moment, for example. So does eating junk food and watching TV. But we all know the problems with these things.

Is happiness the pleasure brought by fulfilling hobbies? That's probably a little more productive, but also will never be continuous. And often, if you try to make that your entire life, it loses its joy. The recreation is often the joyful part.

Personally for me, my interactions with patients and being able to use my intellect to help people medically is so deeply satisfying that I'm motivated to go to work despite there being so many things to hate about my job. So that's an interesting wrinkle on the idea of happiness.

I'm not really trying to get at an answer here. We just had a whole meditation retreat at my church about this exact topic: What is the purpose of life? But maybe some ideas to help you clarify your own thoughts about the subject.

This is quite the existential question! Of course, there’s really no “right” or “wrong” answer, and there are so many different ideas on what the meaning of life is.

My opinion? There isn’t one. The fact we exist at all is a wildly random event, and the fact we are conscious of it even more so. Life is meaningless, so we create our own meaning. For me, the meaning of life is to strive for happiness (not BE happy, we can’t be happy 100% of the time), bring happiness to those around me, and leave the world better than I came into it. I don’t give a shit about legacy, since I won’t be around to enjoy it. The only legacy I care about is that I made life better for the people I love.

Treat others with kindness, be mindful of the world you live in, and do more of what makes you happy.

The meaning of life is a blank page. Good luck filling it out!

I think it kind of depends on how you define 'happy'. I do believe that if life has any point, it is to be happy. It's definitely harder than it sounds, and the path is usually long and differs from person to person.

I have spent a long time doing things I thought would make me happy. Often they did, in the short term, but not in the long term. Sometimes what makes me happy changes!

You can also intentionally change what makes you happy. Try new things, develop new habits. Maybe it's exercise, maybe it's feeding hungry people or political organizing. Maybe it's a hobby group.

It's your life, do what you want with it.

I'd like my purpose to be to have many experiences and to embrace.

The purpose of life is what you make it.

Society in my area says the purpose of life is to get a job, get married, and have some kids. All of these are optional but each one increases your perceived value to the government and to individual people. Some people work their entire lives conforming to societies expectations for them and still live what they would describe as unfulfilling lives.

Instead, or in addition to, I would suggest you focus on creating your own purpose. I would describe a purpose as a overarching objective for your life. I'll list some purposes that you could adopt.

• Provide companionship for those who you deem deserving.
• Care for others by providing a stable living environment.
• Guide people to make informed choices.
• Help others to use their resources wisely.
• Inspire peers to think about their purpose in life.
• Join and help an organized group that has an overarching purpose you want to contribute towards.
• Entertain other people and yourself.
• Make something you can share with others.
• Organize others to help achieve a shared purpose.
• Form your own opinions on how life should be lived and apply them.

These are a small sampling of purposes people adopt and you need not limit yourself to one. However be mindful that your attention is limited and each purpose can take a considerable amount of time. With that in mind try to pick goals and activities that help you achieve your purpose(s).

In pursuing your purpose, you will find moments of happiness. Embrace them. You will also find moments of frustration and anger. Understand why you feel this way and learn to embrace them as well. Understand when your emotions are clouding your judgement and learn to resist it when necessary.

Happy travels.

Personally the point to life for me is to find something I love and add to that space. I love music, so my purpose in life is to make music, be that playing live or mixing and mastering or composing songs or recording stuff. It's something I dream about, even though I already do some of these things.

But I'm just one guy. My personal subcribed to philosophy is absurdism. Nothing has meaning unless I give it meaning, so fuck you Im going to eat a pineapple with chopsticks.

The point to life is whatever you want it to be. If you need help finding that I would try tap into what you would love to create or what you would like to achieve.

Life is just a bunch of chemical processes. There's no more purpose to it than to meat rotting or wood burning.

The purpose of each person's life is for them to define.

It's not something that is assigned to you, and it doesn't have to be the same as anyone else's purpose.

And it can change over time as your experiences and circumstances mold the person you are.

That's a pretty high bar. In fact exaggerated focus on "am I happy" can sort of fuck you up. Focusing on what you appreciate is supposed to be better and make you happier. The cliché is "the meaning of life is to give life meaning" which is disgustingly Hallmark, but still has a fair point. Just do whatever - a good idea is to not get too existential if you can avoid it.

As a hedonist my answer is yes. Life doesn't have an actual point. It wasn't "made" on purpose but because it got the chance. What you make of it is your decision but since we have a brain that rewards us and a nociception that punishes us depending on how we use our life I suggest you choose your own purpose. Mine is to be happy. Even when I'm altruistic I'm secretly egoistic because I feel better when my environment feels good too.

No. Happiness is nice, when you have it, but you have to create meaning in life.

And purpose? You can have a purpose but Life in general does not.

Not all life can have meaning or greater purpose, that happens in fiction mostly anyway.

Find things that make you comfortable, content and feel safe, and fill your life with them. It's ok to just be.

My purpose in life is to be happy. My primary challenge in life is to find the things in life that make me happy and try to find ways that those things can make other people happy.