What is the meaning of life? Since “42” isn 't the correct answer, some deeper thinking is needed to find out exactly why we are here on this planet and what we’re supposed to do.
Thomas Nagel attempts to answer this question in his many musings. He argues that because humans are finite they cannot make a significant impact on the universe. That in the far future, no one will care the slightest bit about our small lives. Therefore we have made no impact on the universe. Because of this our lives are absurd. However Nagel attempts to give the situation a slight positive spins by basically saying that while people one million years from now won’t care about what we do, we don 't really care about them either. So their lives are equally meaningless. …show more content…
But instead of asking what the meaning of life is, she asks “What makes a life meaningful?” But as she delves deeper into this question, it quickly turns into “What makes a life not meaningful?” To answer this question she outlines a few traits and characteristics of individuals that live “meaningless lives.” These characteristics are manifested in characters in an illustration. These characters range in activity level and prosperity. But what is clearly seen is the pointlessness of their lives. An example of this is one of the characters who raises pigs and sells them to have more money to buy more pnigs. This is an endless cycle of pointlessness and aimlessness. Susan argues that in order to break this endless cycle of pointlessness, one needs to life their life helping others. Individuals such as Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi have led meaningful lives because of this idea. Susan eventually states that even though life has no meaning one can still live a meaningful life.
Personally, I don 't think that we can’t really have any meaning in our lives without some sort of purpose or goal. Where that comes from is it 's a moot point, but I think unless we have something to strive toward, our lives would be (be definition) aimless, pointless and, therefore,
Thomas Nagel attempts to answer this question in his many musings. He argues that because humans are finite they cannot make a significant impact on the universe. That in the far future, no one will care the slightest bit about our small lives. Therefore we have made no impact on the universe. Because of this our lives are absurd. However Nagel attempts to give the situation a slight positive spins by basically saying that while people one million years from now won’t care about what we do, we don 't really care about them either. So their lives are equally meaningless. …show more content…
But instead of asking what the meaning of life is, she asks “What makes a life meaningful?” But as she delves deeper into this question, it quickly turns into “What makes a life not meaningful?” To answer this question she outlines a few traits and characteristics of individuals that live “meaningless lives.” These characteristics are manifested in characters in an illustration. These characters range in activity level and prosperity. But what is clearly seen is the pointlessness of their lives. An example of this is one of the characters who raises pigs and sells them to have more money to buy more pnigs. This is an endless cycle of pointlessness and aimlessness. Susan argues that in order to break this endless cycle of pointlessness, one needs to life their life helping others. Individuals such as Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi have led meaningful lives because of this idea. Susan eventually states that even though life has no meaning one can still live a meaningful life.
Personally, I don 't think that we can’t really have any meaning in our lives without some sort of purpose or goal. Where that comes from is it 's a moot point, but I think unless we have something to strive toward, our lives would be (be definition) aimless, pointless and, therefore,