Why do we assume there is a meaning for life? That life has a purpose? Why do we feel that human life is special? Because someone told us so?
I have read that Mormons profess to believe that the meaning of life is to serve God, who has a plan for human life. Most of the religious denominations, in one form or another, seem to echo that belief.
But Leo Tolstoy said "The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity." That statement is probably true, if serving humanity is synonymous with preserving and advancing the human species.
It is somewhat evident that the primary goal of even the lower? animals is to preserve their species. Why do honey bees spend their lives gathering nectar from plants, converting it chemically within their guts, and vomiting it back up as honey to feed the colony?
Honey bees transform nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and evaporation
They store it as a primary food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive
From Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle:
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.
And He went away.”
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WORD FOR TODAY
aphorism
noun
a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a concise and memorable form.
The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. It was later applied to maxims of physical science, then statements of all kinds of philosophical, moral, or literary principles.
In modern usage an aphorism is generally understood to be a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written.
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"The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature -- all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes extinct."
--Michael Crichton, Congo
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