What is the Meaning of Life, Answered….

What is the meaning of life?

Here are 10 answers:

1.  What=is=the=meaning=of=life=?

2. The answer is X. “X” equals your father’s saying, the one you won’t go against, though you like having thought of it so well, good fences making good neighbors, and so on.

3. Point to it, flip to the back of a book, derive it, deduce it, seduce it from its hiding place, club it on the head, stuff it, frame it on the wall right next to all the other trophies.

4. Pick a fight with “of,” suggest, instead, “in.”

5. Adopt the suggestion of #4, then pick a fight with “is,” suggest “are” instead, add an “s” to meaning.

6. Life is full of meanings, but is, itself meaningless. Its meaninglessness is its meaning, which will itself be understood uncountable ways. What does meaninglessness mean? Is it really a meaning, a meaningless meaning?

7. Take issue with “life,” substitute “existence,” ‘being,” or “awareness.” Spend time contemplating the difference between these three words. The act of contemplation (not the results) is itself the answer.

8. A-ha!

9. What is the life of meaning?

10. We must make the disctinction between the meaning of life and the meaning in life. Life itself, whatever that is, is something beyond meaning’s tool-clutching grasp, but something that includes meaning, that contains is, supports it, lets it arise in various forms and perspectives, contradictions, paradoxes, and oxymorons. Life can’t have meaning. The word “life” can have meaning, one and many more, but life itself cannot, it is not equal to language, it includes language. Language does point to more language, though language refers to things, it is ultimately somewhat of a closed system, can only go so far. But you can invest life with all kinds of meaning, make meaning out of it, make it meaningful. Life is full of meaning, but is, itself, meaningless. Its meaninglessness, however, seen in one way, can be said to be meaningful. It is full of meanings but has no meaning.


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1 Comment

  1. Nicola

     /  March 12, 2012

    They ran a competition in honour of Douglas Adams 60th with Meaning of Liff


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