What’s the meaning of life?

According to Douglas Adams that’s the wrong question to ask, according to Fredrick Nietzsche and Albert Camus, Life inherently has no meaning, according to Viktor Frankl the meaning of life is to be discovered within the world not within oneself, according to William James the meaning of life depends on the liver, according to religious people the answer lies in following a religion.

These are just some of the ways in which people attempted to answer this question. In this blog I will try to go over the different views that exist on this question and provide advice from my own experience in the search for meaning as this is a thing that I tried to figure out for a while and the collective philosophy of Camus, Nietzsche, Frankl, and James.

The role of religion in the meaning of life.

Philosophers such as Camus, James, and Nietzsche acknowledge the role of religion in giving life meaning and the reason to endure it’s suffering but as Nietzsche says it “God is Dead”, religion is no longer what guides most people these days. That resulted in Nihilism rising among people, He says “Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any “meaning” in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.” (Nietzsche, Will to Power).

 For Camus resorting to a religion or any type of premade belief system just to escape the fact that life has no meaning is considered philosophical suicide by him which is basically selling your rationality and being controlled like a sheep.

Life’s meaning

Life has no meaning or even if it does we aren’t capable of understanding it so it’s pointless, for Camus and Nietzsche life generally has no meaning and we need to accept this and live through it. For Camus he calls life Absurd as it makes no sense and random. For Camus he says that the question to ask is that is living a hopeless life in a meaningless world a bad thing? His answer is no, he believes that this is an opportunity for us to be able to create our own believes and choose what we want to do, the way to be free from life’s absurdity is to be absurd yourself. An example Camus provides about being absurd is the Greek mythological figure Sisyphus who was the king of Ephyra. He made the mistake of challenging the Gods and was punished by being condemned to push a rock uphill and it will roll down every time he is near the top. What would be absurd is him trying to give this meaning which is exactly what we should do to be content with a meaningless existence. We should always strive to create meaning to our meaningless existence.

How to be content with a meaningless existence

Now, I will go over the different philosophers way to find meaning. For Camus is to be an “absurd man”, refusing to commit physical or philosophical suicide and accepts that life has no meaning and revolts against his desire to find meaning. For Nietzsche the solution is his idea of the “Übermensch” which is his version of “superman” and that is a man who rejects premade roads and creates his own meaning. The idea is similar to the Absurd man and it is a solution for the decline in Christianity in the west and the rise of nihilism. For Viktor Frankl, the meaning of life is highly dependent on the person and the current circumstances. Frankl also talks about the pursuit of wealth, power, and fame as just ways to cope with a meaningless existence. What he suggests is to discover the meaning by interacting with the world which could be through work that gives fulfillment or a way to contributing to the community or helping others. This is also what William James recommends.

What we can learn from all of this is that we need to be okay and accept that life has no meaning and that we don’t have purpose and be happy about that as that gives us the chance to choose what we want to do with our life.

We also can see that picking a value system if we don’t have one already as this is important at guiding us and helping us live a meaningful existence as we need to be able to determine what matters and what doesn’t in order to choose our pursuit.

My experience in search for meaning

I had an existential crisis multiple times and always would resort to philosophy to answer what’s the meaning of my life but the last time, I stumbled accords this video from Elon Musk. 

This gave me the realization that I shouldn’t be asking what’s the meaning of my life but to be asking what do I want to do with my life. Also following the advice from both Nietzsche and Camus of accepting the fact that life has no inherent meaning also helped. I personally started working out to became more athletic and enrolling in martial arts as these two are things I wanted to do for a while. Soon after, the existential crisis was fading away. Also starting to make friends helped as I am someone who neglected their social life. Starting a gratitude and mindfulness habit helped. Always trying to be grateful for what I have in my life also helped me feel fulfilled and happy with my life. Continuous self reflection through helped me asses if I am on in tune with what I want. Setting goals and forgetting it and falling in love with the process is also another thing that helped me. Overall the search for meaning is just a life long journey of finding it and looking for something else to live for, because once a goal is achieved, we are just left with the emptiness what we chased the goal so we always should  be striving for something in our lives.