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Discussion: The Meaning of Life1)
Imagine you're a droplet of water. Picture yourself stranded in some desert of an unnamed planet and it's getting really hot. So hot, indeed, that you begin to vaporize, and you ascend to the cloud district where you are carried forth and join many other atoms and molecules that once formed water but now find themselves in the gasenous phase of water. Eventually it's getting really packed and you are finding yourself at an impasse. Eventually you will be so heavy and jam packed with other water molucules that you are forced to convert back into liquid water and, too heavy to remain airborne, drop to the ground via gravity.
Here, however, you find two things: Many, many more drops of water, and you can't help yourself but flow closer towards the center of the planet due to gravity. You join up with hundreds, millions, billions, quintilzillions of other water droplets keeping you company on your journey. The weight of you and your companions punches holes into the geometry of your environment, you start forming a little creek - no, a river - no, a flood. Your environment responds to you, landslides, changes in the planet's climate, the shape of the planet changes as you form oceans and seas where you too will eventually end up in and restart the process.
You are now a real, living, breathing thing that's alive, with your own ecosystem2), your own body, changes in the environment to adapt to and so many more things. But what's your purpose?
Flawed Premise
Well, you will find that just the question is flawed in itself. What purpose, why should there be a purpose? Water just flows, the cycle of water is a result of the physical laws governing it.3) And I get it, calling the global ecosystem of water a “living” thing may be a stretch, but why does it have to be living? Just because a thing is alive means it must have a purpose? The question “what is the meaning of life?” assumes that there is a meaning. Simple rules can let complex mechanisms emerge, this is true for the cycle of water, this is true for those cool, hexagon-shaped basalt columns4) and this is ultimately true for human life as well5). If we agree that all those oxygen molecules don't have an intrinsic meaning and “just exist”, then we have no meaning either. We just are and even just the idea of groups of atoms (like those making up your body right now) having “meaning” is absurd.
History has a long and rich tradition of humans thinking of themselves as special, until they realized that they are not the center of their own star system, that even their own star system isn't the center of the universe and the realization that each and every - individual - human being has to make… That we are not the center of the universe either. It's hard to accept and I am still disappointed as well and probably in denial, but we all have to get there. I, the individual, me specifically will live and die in vain just like billions of people did before me, all of which I don't know or care about just as much as the people in 200 years will not know or care about me. We are but one droplet in a river of droplets, slowly carving a path and shaping the course we take - governed by the rules of physics6).
What about a purpose, then?
Well, what is your purpose? “Purpose” and “meaning” are social constructs. Meaning is perhaps a spiritual construct, purpose is a result of goal-oriented planning. To survive a human needs to eat, so the “purpose” of cooking is to survive. But then again, this will change based on perspective. Someone else may do it primarily because it is an event for social interaction. It's a matter of perspective and the idea of a perspective is human (ot at least “living”) in nature. Who imparts on you a “meaning” or a “purpose”, forcefully?, and why should you accept it as yours? And, ultimately, what the fuck are we even talking about? We're atoms, doing atom things!
Some other People's Perspectives
I have established my perspective on this topic - hopefully I did so well. What should be clear is that I find this question to be kind of moot. From my perspective, everything another person will claim about being their “meaning” or “purpose” is “made up” and, well, I don't have many problems with it. Belief in belief means that believing in something can help a person as a coping mechanism and, as long as it is used that way, who am I to complain? Obviously it gets difficult if those believing in belief are trying to sell their stuff as truth or fact, but we will come to that later.