The Meaning of Life

I know, I know - I've skipped a few translations. The reason is simple: They are about subjects that would mean very little to people outside Norway. One was a blog about why feminists are no longer needed (in Norway, that is), one was about Norwegians' lack of knowledge about Obama espescially, and one was on the Norwegian language.

But this one is different; it's on the meaning of life. Not the song, the real meaning of life. Because humans are strange. We worry about things like where the Universe came from, which substances the world is made of, and perhaps most of all what the meaning of life is. These are questions which religion has previously tried to answer, and many of those questions have already been answered by sciende (even if some fundamentalists won't accept that).

But not what is, perhaps, the most important one: The question about the meaning of life. And no wonder! The meaning of life can hardly be measured in numbers and digits. It's a matter of philosophy, and like all matters in philosophy it's both hard to agree upon and hard to understand.

Religious people often think that the meaning of life is following God. This is espescially true in the monotheistic religions - and espescially the religions of Abraham - but also in several polytheistic religions; the meaning of life is equal to following the will of God. Or the Gods.

On the other extreme end of the scale, you have naturalists, which would say that the meaning of life is simple: It's all about the offspring. No, not the band. It's about having children, and making sure your children are able to have children of their own. Passing on the heritage. That's it.

The problem with both sides the way I see it, is that the person has no value in and of his or herself: In the religious view, the real value is God, and our own value is derived from following his will; in the naturalist view, man - like all other animals - only exist to reproduce, and that doesn't take into account man's ability of abstract thinking.
I didn't really want to write about the meaning of life. It's heavy shit, and it can easily get extremely long and exremely boring to debate an issue like this. Also I'm lazy. That's a big part of it. I have been doing a lot of thinking to come to the conclusion I have, and it might change as time goes by. It probably will.

Therefor we're going to cheat a bit, and I'll write up a shortened version. Fine, it's not that fucking short, but that's because I usually say a lot of bullshit for every good part that comes out of my mouth. Life sucks, get a fucking helmet.

So what is my opinion on the meaning of life? Or to put it more bluntly: What is the meaning of life? I mean - seeing as I'm always right and all. Well, to put it bluntly it dropped into my head one day as I was pondering fate. I don't believe in predetermination, but I have to admit there have been times where I felt like some things were meant to happen. Like a lot of events lead up to something particcular. At that time, what dawned on me was that maybe we didn't have a "destiny" as such, but that faith was our guideline. What I mean by that is: I considered that fate might be some force giving us directions by subtle hints - like getting us to look in a certain direction - and the meaning of life would be to follow the hints given. The problem with this is that it demands something like a higher power. It follows no logic. And it can't be tested. I don't endorse anything that can't be tested one way or another, or at least is logical. Some "fate" is not something I can endorse. But the part of taking hints from life, that is definately something I took into account when.

After much consideration, I reached a conclusion. It might seem fairly obvious, but the implications are not. The meaning of life is to be happy. It is enjoying this life and being happy. So how can we be happy? It varies from person to person. You can't say "to be happy, be a doctor!" But the thing I truely mean we all have in common, is this: You have to be rationally selfish. To clarify: You don't do the things you want to do (like stuffing your face with burgers all day, or stealing, or even kill someone if you're a right nutter), you do the things you benefit the most from (like working out, reading, relaxing when it's needed). It may sound simple, and I supposed it is, but people still don't. I'm not always good at it myself, actually. If you follow your dream, if you follow the carreer path you feel you are supposed to do, you are going to be happy - even if you end up shit-poor doing it. But we have to realize that we have to take a rational choice; that is, we have to do rational considerations and realize how that effects our lives. And then choose.

Because just laying on a sofa all day, every day for 20 years, isn't being rationally selfish - just lazily selfish :)