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Seen a few Ask HNs where people asked that question: `What is the meaning of life?`. Well one thing I believe is: `The meaning of life is to find meaning in li

Seen a few Ask HNs where people asked that question: `What is the meaning of life?`. Well one thing I believe is: `The meaning of life is to find meaning in life` Another quote I live by is, by Bukowski: “Find what you love and let it kill you” – Charles Bukowski I mean it makes sense right? Many people just haven't found their passion and go round like headless chickens!

codr7 5y ago
The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience, not meaning. The stories we make up inside our fish bowls most likely have very little to do with reality.
- finfinfin 5y ago
  In a way I see experiences as a distraction, escapism, something that helps to postpone the search for meaning.
  - aloner 5y ago
    You could also make an argument that search for meaning is an escapism from experiencing life.
    - 101011 5y ago
      It's almost like there's no clear answer here.
      - leoxv 5y ago
        “The purpose of life is not to be [superficially] happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” - R.W. Emerson “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller “Through love alone can man find the kingdom of heaven for which he has sought since his beginnings. Only through living love as a principle can he find the happiness, peace and prosperity which lie in his heart as the greatest of his desires.” - Walter Russell
- lm28469 5y ago
  > The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience On the flip side I think the very modern take on "life = experience" can be badly interpreted. The trend is more about consuming experiences and destinations rather the living experiences, you could describe them as commercialized experiences (Disneyland, holiday resorts in very touristic countries, &c.)
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Yup, exactly. My current take is that "pursue experiences instead of things" is primarily a meme that's being spread by countless businesses that want recurring revenue. Experiences are fleeting, so you have to keep buying them all over again - where a well-chosen thing is something you buy once, and it keeps yielding value (including, possibly, experiences) for a long time.
    - codr7 5y ago
      The money machine will embrace and corrupt whatever works. Not looking for meaning doesn't mean spending the rest of your life at Disney Land. Life is fleeting, love is fleeting, everything that means something is fleeting; framing and clinging destroys its essence.
- 123pie123 5y ago
  >The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience, not meaning. the older I get the more I see the point of living as basically the same as everything in nature - propagate your genes as much possible and give them the best chance of them propagating their genes. Everything else is try and and fun and help humankind
Koshkin 5y ago
By the way, this question has been the simplest one to answer since ages ago. Love gives the meaning to life. That is, if you love something or someone, your life has a meaning, if not, it does not (yet). You know it when you acutely feel the desire to live, and, in fact, the very question only arises when you don't.
alexashka 5y ago
You've just moved the goalpost, now instead of people not knowing what the meaning is, you've asked them to find it. Ok, how do you find it? Oh, we don't know again :) The right answer to 'what is the meaning of life?' is to ask for definitions of terms. What do you mean by 'meaning'? How do you know life has or ought to have such a property, that you'd go looking for it? In other words, the only right answer to 'when did you stop beating your wife?' is to point out that it is a loaded question aka invalid question, instead of scurrying to try and answer it :) Meaning of life is a variation of when did you stop beating your wife. One presupposes you did beat your wife, the other presupposes there exist meaning and it is important to find. Those are unjustified presuppositions.
- leoxv 5y ago
  knowledge - https://wikischool.org/human_life https://wikischool.org/human_life
eevilspock 5y ago
I recommend reading Viktor Frankl's take on life and meaning. A good intro is Maria Popova's "Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning", which I just added to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28899325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28899325
das_keyboard 5y ago
Pretty off topic, but this quote is most certainly not from old Buck: https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/find-what-you-love-and-let-it-kill-you.7288/ https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/find-what-you-love-and-let...

codr7 5y ago

The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience, not meaning. The stories we make up inside our fish bowls most likely have very little to do with reality.

finfinfin 5y ago
In a way I see experiences as a distraction, escapism, something that helps to postpone the search for meaning.
- aloner 5y ago
  You could also make an argument that search for meaning is an escapism from experiencing life.
  - 101011 5y ago
    It's almost like there's no clear answer here.
    - leoxv 5y ago
      “The purpose of life is not to be [superficially] happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” - R.W. Emerson “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller “Through love alone can man find the kingdom of heaven for which he has sought since his beginnings. Only through living love as a principle can he find the happiness, peace and prosperity which lie in his heart as the greatest of his desires.” - Walter Russell
lm28469 5y ago
> The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience On the flip side I think the very modern take on "life = experience" can be badly interpreted. The trend is more about consuming experiences and destinations rather the living experiences, you could describe them as commercialized experiences (Disneyland, holiday resorts in very touristic countries, &c.)
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Yup, exactly. My current take is that "pursue experiences instead of things" is primarily a meme that's being spread by countless businesses that want recurring revenue. Experiences are fleeting, so you have to keep buying them all over again - where a well-chosen thing is something you buy once, and it keeps yielding value (including, possibly, experiences) for a long time.
  - codr7 5y ago
    The money machine will embrace and corrupt whatever works. Not looking for meaning doesn't mean spending the rest of your life at Disney Land. Life is fleeting, love is fleeting, everything that means something is fleeting; framing and clinging destroys its essence.
123pie123 5y ago
>The older I get the more I feel that the point of living is experience, not meaning. the older I get the more I see the point of living as basically the same as everything in nature - propagate your genes as much possible and give them the best chance of them propagating their genes. Everything else is try and and fun and help humankind

Koshkin 5y ago

By the way, this question has been the simplest one to answer since ages ago. Love gives the meaning to life. That is, if you love something or someone, your life has a meaning, if not, it does not (yet). You know it when you acutely feel the desire to live, and, in fact, the very question only arises when you don't.

alexashka 5y ago

You've just moved the goalpost, now instead of people not knowing what the meaning is, you've asked them to find it. Ok, how do you find it? Oh, we don't know again :) The right answer to 'what is the meaning of life?' is to ask for definitions of terms. What do you mean by 'meaning'? How do you know life has or ought to have such a property, that you'd go looking for it? In other words, the only right answer to 'when did you stop beating your wife?' is to point out that it is a loaded question aka invalid question, instead of scurrying to try and answer it :) Meaning of life is a variation of when did you stop beating your wife. One presupposes you did beat your wife, the other presupposes there exist meaning and it is important to find. Those are unjustified presuppositions.

leoxv 5y ago
knowledge - https://wikischool.org/human_life https://wikischool.org/human_life

eevilspock 5y ago

I recommend reading Viktor Frankl's take on life and meaning. A good intro is Maria Popova's "Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning", which I just added to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28899325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28899325

das_keyboard 5y ago

Pretty off topic, but this quote is most certainly not from old Buck: https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/find-what-you-love-and-let-it-kill-you.7288/ https://bukowskiforum.com/threads/find-what-you-love-and-let...