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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 people/me?
  • What does the best life look like?
  • How should people/I live my life?
  • What should people/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 questioner simply has doubts about the definition of the concept of "the meaning of life."
     • If one simply asks what the Chinese character ' 是 ' (is) means, since it is a morpheme, we can only point out its usage but cannot state its definition. Similarly, for the first situation, since meaning is a morpheme, we cannot provide a definition but can only understand it through usage. Therefore, "the meaning of life" can only be understood through continuous usage, 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 questioner is usually not asking this question but is inquiring about an equivalent expression in their view, namely the following two situations.
  2. The questioner 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 questioner usually has doubts about at least one item in 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 inquiry points to.
       • Sufficient experience and logical reasoning, combined with a touch of adventurous strategy, can yield the best current answer.
     • Here we must point out that, since humanity's knowledge has not yet fully grasped all the operational laws of reality, facing partial or complete black boxes, we inevitably cannot derive the best answer, only the current best answer. Every decision will be a one-sided gamble, and only when we know everything can we obtain "the best."
  3. The questioner is guided by associations related to this question and asks it in the next moment.
     • This is easier to occur when away from complex information sources, such as when away from electronic devices, in the restroom, sage time, etc. In most cases, it brings an atmosphere of questions rather than the questions themselves, and the atmosphere of the questions leads to the questions, which can be categorized into the above two situations.
• Thus, we can find that, in fact, the "meaning" in "the meaning of life" is an usage that is "unspeakable," and in most cases, what we really want to inquire about is not it, but the things behind it. In other words, the question is not important; the answer is what matters here.

Nature of the Answer#

Existence, Morality, Beauty, and Art#

• Now, we can identify some patterns by continuously enumerating answers and analyze them accordingly.
• We have many relatively popular general answers: for example, "live in the moment," "enjoy life," "contribute to the collective," "seize the day," "work hard," "pursue truth," "pursue art," "go to the dock for some fries," etc. They are all summaries of actions and plans, or rather, they are the types of life/living that people expect. 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 most cases, they are still essentially pursuing a certain quality/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 accepted "meaning of life." The needs of the masses 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 analyzed and categorized into these three types of needs, 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 properties of the answers: it can certainly be categorized into these three needs.

Nihilism and Negation#

• However, at this point, someone might stand up to 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 everyone dies, 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 "everything becomes meaningless after death" 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, "everyone dies," 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 valid in this context.
• On the other hand, we can subjectively or inspirationally provide some contradictory answers to refute, namely all answers that can satisfy "are the best that transcend death." For example, love for family, love for partners; victories, fairness, and justice achieved at the cost of countless deaths; even universal truths that one must know 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 happens 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. In other words, the events that happened in the past are not necessarily meaningless for everyone, especially for those who are asking, "What does the best look like?"
• Thus, we can make some bold statements supporting these claims and conclude that people who say 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 enlightening life experiences and truths are often not universally applicable unless they specify concrete applicable conditions.
• The answers from the masses are varied; some are legitimate, some are not. However, regarding the previously mentioned argument "everyone will die, so nothing is meaningful," if we change it to "everything is meaningless," then undoubtedly, everything becomes meaningless. Furthermore, we can further question, is logic always correct? At this point, we can discover another property 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 of.

  • If something/concept is objective, then it is already within the context. Objective (noun) is everything that is already in the context. If something is subjective, then it is outside the context, and it cannot be judged from within the context. We can use a storybook as an analogy, treating it as a context; "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, fan fiction derived from the storybook, the person holding the storybook, or everything that exceeds 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 of this sequence out of context, we cannot say it has no meaning, but at least it is of no use.
• Thus, we can say that other people's answers are objective in their 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 correct in any case, irrefutable, until you discover something new.
  • For example, for us (the authors), logical validity is an objective fact that must be adhered to in most cases; it is truth, and adhering to it is one of the meanings. The best can sometimes be that everything is the best, right? However, for others, this may not be the case, so for such others, it is subjective. The same applies to other answers.
  • It is important to note that the context of answers may change; what was previously subjective may become objective here. When you find the answer, what has been found "transforms from subjective to objective," or "it has always been there, and you have now discovered it." Similarly, what was previously objective may also become incorrect or invalid.

Comprehensive Conclusion#

• The continuous inquiry into the meaning of answers ultimately returns to the linguistic question 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; it specifically depends on the context of the answer.
• When we ask about the meaning of life, in most cases, we are not actually inquiring 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 expressing a sigh due to the atmosphere, or questioning the legitimacy of our current action plans. However, regardless, the answers we inquire about have certain definite properties, and we can find our own answers through these properties.
• For others' answers, we often say that we cannot act 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 in others' stories and consider ourselves the protagonists. We can be, but we are not in reality; whether we are or not must be discovered by you. 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. However, if they only want to know the conclusion, you can succinctly respond:
• I don't know.