The Meaning of Life

If you ask, "What is the meaning of life?" and then look to other people for an answer, you will find a large variety of answers.

I think the meaning of life is improvement.

Everything that lives tries to either improve itself or improve its surroundings by growing, moving, or thinking.

In the past I thought that the meaning of life was survival because everything that lives attempts to survive, procreating to promote survival of its genetic code. I interpreted every action in the light of the ultimate task of survival. But to say that the meaning of life is to survive doesn't help much because it doesn't answer why life exists. If life was formed out of non-life, then forming just to survive is absurd because all the elements in the world would have persisted - survived - in their lifeless form due to the law of conservation of matter. To be clear, I don't expect a rock to know of, or understand, or employ the law of conservation of matter in its decision-making. What I do expect is that if a rock should become alive, that there be a cosmic reason for this change. Survival just doesn't seem to answer the question. But improvement does. I found that survival doesn't explain enough of our actions as humans. However, improvement can explain the motive for survival. Survival doesn't explain the origin of life, but improvement does.  A world without life is boring: changes are slow, sands move from here to there, the laws of physics are barely used. The lifeless world survives, but a lively world improves.

To move from a lifeless world to a lively world is an improvement. Therefore the cosmic reason for life can simply be to improve upon a lifeless world. It doesn't need to be more complicated than “to improve.” From the lifeless world to the principal forms of life that first existed all the way to the present day, improvement is the invariant of life.

Because changes to a species happen in each generation, the motive to survive is given meaning by improvement. An organism must survive and procreate in order to have a chance at genetic improvement in its offspring. Every action that is necessary to survive is given meaning by the ultimate goal of improvement.

If a person accepts improvement as the meaning of life then it explains the joy derived from a regular cycle of work and rest; the motivation to make the world a better place; the motivation to help others; the motivation to pursue the arts, sciences, and sports. Survival is possible without these inclinations but pursuing them leads to improvements in oneself, society, or the environment.

Starting with the axiom that existence exists, I think there are two natural tendencies. The first is towards chaos and the second is towards improvement. The world is in motion, the sands are moved by the wind, gases disperse to fill available space, liquids pool together, all these are manifestations of physics that affect atoms and small particles. Existence exists, it doesn't care what happens to a grain of sand as it is moved by the wind. When some combinations of particles are brought together due to the chaotic activity and they form bonds with each other due to their physics, those combinations will stay together when moved by the chaos. There isn't necessarily a purpose for them to stay together but they do because of their physics and the chance that brought them together in the chaos. Some combinations will break apart, some will continue to grow. New combinations will form due to chance. This is an example of a boundary between chaos and improvement. If there is a combination that is likely given the elements in existence, and stable due to its physics, then given enough time and chaos there will be many instances of this combination. The natural tendency of improvement is that, if something is better, it will persist. Therefore, even without a perspective on the end result of this evolution, the changes that persist may be called improvements. And so the world has both chaos and improvement, and this has naturally created life.

The universe is not only cold and dark, it is filled with much material that has formed into stars and planets and debris. The universe contains varying degrees of chaos, with their temperatures, and many improvements - changes or combinations that persist as long as they are able.

I don't pretend to know the purpose of the universe, if there is one.  I only know that it exists because I trust my senses. I know that it contains chaos because there is plenty of evidence. I know that it contains improvement because there is plenty of evidence. I believe that chaos and improvement are natural tendencies of the universe because my experience, which includes reading the work of many authors before me, has led me to this belief. The belief that the meaning of life is improvement has resonated very well with all of my prior beliefs. I can't prove it. But I think it's useful and it may turn out to be a conclusion if I am not able to improve upon it before I die.

It's hard to give up the idea of God because of all the psychological construction since my youth. The large number of people who believe in God, who claim to have seen and experienced God, who claim that if I don't believe in God I will suffer greatly - this makes me afraid to shuck my belief in God. But in contrast, I also know that it's possible for all the people in the world to be wrong. And I know that a all the proof of God that people cling to reduces to circular logic or invention with no root in reality, and worse, that there is clear evidence which contradicts many religious claims. So I am not afraid to say, that the God I believe in is not at all the same as the God that is popular in religious teachings.  My God is the creator of the universe. God is whatever caused the universe to exist.  For me, everything after that can be explained by the nature of the universe that exists.

Science is a methodology for acquiring knowledge about our world and it's concerned only with what exists in our world. This is why through science it will never be possible to completely know God, the creator of all existence, because God is outside existence. If God has manifested in any way within existence, we can only know the part of God that has manifested in existence, and we can only know it as part of existence.

So the meaning of life is improvement, and if there is a God who created the universe then I assume that God must have intended for me to find this meaning, since it is a natural part of the universe.  All of my values are derived from what I was taught when I was younger,  and yet they can be derived just as well from the axiom that existence exists and that the universe contains chaos and improvement and that the meaning of life, the cause and motivation of life, is improvement.