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Overview#

• "What is the meaning of life?" This question is equivalent to the following questions in popular experience:
  • What is happiness for a person/me?
  • What does the best life look like?
  • How should a person/I live their life?
  • What should a person/I pursue the most?
• Whether asked or asking, "What is the meaning of life?" is a particularly important topic, so we will analyze the legitimacy of related propositions around this topic, which will lead to some interesting conclusions and help us better understand subjective and objective, while providing logical analysis for some readers who are still confused.

  However, we must first point out that we are analyzing the vast majority of cases, which certainly do not apply to everyone.

Analysis#

Motivation for the Question#

• When this question is asked, there are generally the following situations:
  1. The asker simply has doubts about the definition of the concept of "the meaning of life."
     • If one simply asks what the Chinese character ' 是 ' means, since it is a morpheme, we can only point out its usage and cannot define it. Similarly, in the first case, since meaning is a morpheme, we cannot define it; we can only understand it through usage. Therefore, "the meaning of life" can only be understood through continuous use, or simply put, without complete context, we cannot derive its meaning.

       Some readers may associate this sentence with another meaning of finding answers through continuous practice, but please note that it is not.

     • If taken out of context, the obvious answer would be "unknown," but we can continuously enumerate its usages to help people understand. However, in most cases, the asker is usually not asking this question but is inquiring about an equivalent expression in their view, namely the following two situations.
  2. The asker has doubts about the legitimacy of the actions in their contextual environment.
     • Here, the context already has a meaningful context, and the content of the action plan can be either the action plan or the current action; the asker usually has doubts about at least one aspect of the content. For example, "Is this the best?" or "Is this correct?" and "Why the hell?" etc., at this time, the answer depends on the question itself that the meaning refers to.
       • Sufficient experience and logical reasoning combined with a bit of adventurous strategy can yield the current best answer.
     • Here we must point out that, due to humanity's current knowledge not fully grasping all the operational laws of reality, facing partial or completely black-box situations, we inevitably cannot derive the best answer, only the current best answer. Each decision will be a one-sided gamble, unless we know everything, can we get the "best."
  3. The asker is led by associations related to this question and asks in the next moment.
     • This is easier to happen when away from complex information sources, such as: away from electronic products, in the restroom, sage time, etc. In most cases, it brings an atmosphere of questions rather than the questions themselves, and the problems arise from the atmosphere of questions, which can be summarized into the above two situations.
• Thus, we can find that, in fact, the "meaning" in "the meaning of life" is an inexpressible usage, and in most cases, what we really want to inquire about is not it, but what lies behind it, or rather, the question is not important; the answer is what matters here.

Nature of the Answer#

Existence, Morality, Beauty, and Art#

• Now, we can find some patterns by continuously listing answers and analyze them.
• We have many relatively popular general answers: such as "live in the moment," "enjoy life," "contribute to the collective," "seize the day," "endure hardships and strive," "pursue truth," "pursue art," "go to the dock for some fries," etc. They are all summaries of actions and plans, or rather, they are what people expect from a certain nature of life/living. For those more specific or rare answers, such as "I want to form a band with you for life," "my goal in life is to lose my virginity," "I want to liberate these sad souls bound by gravity," etc., it can be found that in the vast majority of cases, they are essentially still pursuing a certain nature/association inherent in the specific content.
• These associations can be appropriately classified using Maslow's hierarchy of needs as motivations, leading to the characteristics of the universally "meaning of life," which can be divided into three main categories:
  1. Survival needs, all needs arising from human instincts, such as survival, appetite, sexual desire, desire for social interaction, sense of security, etc.;
  2. Moral needs: needs arising from adherence to morality, such as fairness, justice, freedom, dignity, compassion for others' suffering, etc.;
  3. Artistic needs: needs arising from the pursuit of things that evoke a sense of beauty (aesthetic), such as love and belonging, perceptual beauty.
• Almost all answers can be categorized into these three types of needs upon analysis, sometimes mixed, sometimes singular. We can even make a bold statement: the greater the proportion of artistic needs in a person's answers, the higher their level of civilization; conversely, the greater the proportion of survival needs, the lower their level of civilization. Now, regarding the question we are discussing, we can state one of the natures of the answer: it can certainly be categorized into these three needs.

Nihilism and Negation#

• However, at this point, someone might question, saying: "We all die, and after death, there is nothing, so everything is meaningless, so the meaning/answer of life is that it has no meaning."

  "Because humans eventually die, and after death, there is nothing, so everything is meaningless, so whatever you do now is meaningless, so asking this question now is also meaningless."

• Clearly, a simple critique can identify its logical flaws, just like most "philosophies of life." In the absence of context, we cannot say that "after death, everything becomes meaningless" is true, nor can we say that because of the former, the question "What is the meaning of life?" makes no sense.
  • The first part of this argument, "humans eventually die," what is the specific definition of 'death'? Perhaps in the future, humanity will achieve immortality, or perhaps after death, we can actually know everything; we have countless possibilities, and objectively speaking, this is not certain for us, so this argument does not hold in reality; it is not legitimate in this context.
• On the other hand, we can subjectively or inspirationally provide some contradictory answers to refute, namely all answers that can satisfy "the best that transcends death." For example, love for family and partners; victories, fairness, and justice achieved at the cost of countless deaths; even universal truths that must be known even in death, etc. We cannot say that feeling nothing equates to having no meaning unless this is an irrefutable truth for you, especially since we do not know what the situation is after death.
• At the same time, objectively speaking, we have an empty set here; now you see this empty set of nothingness, but you also know the meaning of this empty set. Clearly, we cannot say that the meaning of this empty set is meaningless; it is merely nothing, and that is a fact.
  • Even at the end of time, when all particles in the physical world decay, and only the empty set remains, the events that occurred in the past are not necessarily meaningless. Or rather, the events that happened in the past are not necessarily meaningless for everyone, especially for those who are asking "what is the best."
• Thus, we can make some bold statements supporting these claims, suggesting that people who believe life is meaningless probably haven't thought deeply and have come up with these absurd ideas based solely on feelings. Moreover, you can find that those insightful life experiences and truths are often not universally applicable unless they clearly specify the conditions for applicability.
• The answers from the public are varied; some are legitimate, some are not. However, regarding the aforementioned argument "everyone will die, so nothing is meaningful," if we change it to "everything is meaningless," then undoubtedly, nothing is meaningful. Furthermore, we can further question, is logic always correct? At this point, we can discover another nature of "the best"/"the meaning of life"/answers, which is also the most important one: it can be subjective or objective.

Subjective and Objective#

• What is subjective (subjective) and objective (objective)? Here, we provide an objective explanation.

  Here, the context carries everything we have already thought about.

  • If something/concept is objective, then it is already within the context. Objective (noun) is everything that is already within the context. If something is subjective, then it is outside the context, and cannot be judged from within the context. We can use a storybook as an analogy, treating it as a context; "the storybook," the objective is the text within the storybook, the plot that occurs, and everything in the storybook is objective. On the other hand, the reader's own understanding, fanfiction derived from the storybook, the person holding the storybook, or everything beyond the "storybook" context is subjective in relation to the "storybook."
  • Whether something/concept is objective or subjective depends on the current context; in every analysis, it is determined and does not change. Analyzing objective and subjective outside of the context is meaningless. Just like when you see a problem that assumes the first term of a sequence is 13 and the rule of incrementing the sequence, then asks what the thirteenth term of this sequence is; if you simply take the value 13 of the first term out of context, we cannot say it is meaningless, but at least it is useless.
• Thus, we can say that other people's answers are objective in their own context (world), but for our own, whether it is subjective or objective, or whether it already exists or not, depends on whether it is present. We must personally understand and discover to know whether it is objective; when you discover it, you naturally know that it is undoubtedly correct, irrefutable, until you discover something new.
  • For example, for us (the authors), logical validity is an objective fact that must be adhered to in the vast majority of cases; it is the truth, and adhering to it is one of the meanings; the best can sometimes be that everything is the best, right? But for others, this may not be the case, so for such others, it is subjective. The same applies to other answers.
  • It should be noted that the context of the answer may change; what was subjective before may become objective here; when you find the answer, that which has been found "transforms from subjective to objective," or "it has always been there, and you have now discovered it." Similarly, what was objective before may also become incorrect or invalid.

Comprehensive Conclusion#

• The continuous inquiry into the meaning of answers ultimately returns to the linguistic problem of the answer itself; it is not a continuous cycle, and when we inquire about meaning, it is not because the answer itself has lost meaning, but rather depends on the context in which the answer resides.
• When we inquire about the meaning of life, in most cases, we are not actually asking about it itself, but rather using it to inquire about the truths of life, or the qualities that the best life should have, or simply sighing due to the atmosphere, or questioning the legitimacy of our current action plans. However, regardless, the answers we inquire about have certain definite natures, and we can find our own answers through these natures.
• Regarding others' answers, we often say that we cannot position ourselves as a lofty god pointing fingers at the plot while reading a story, but for our own story, our own world/life, we also cannot place ourselves into others' stories, thinking of ourselves as the protagonists of the story; we can be, but we are not in reality; whether we are or not is for you to discover. However, at least we, the authors, believe that most people firmly believe that experience and logical reasoning can judge the correctness of the answers they find, subjective and objective.

Finally#

• So when someone asks us about the meaning of life, considering the complexity of this topic, you can rationally and comprehensively express everything to them, but if they only want to know the conclusion, you can succinctly respond:
• I don't know.