Bjarki Freyr

The meaning of life is relative within people today, we create our own inner worlds and give life its meaning according to which individual goals we are pursuing (obviously!). I think that life has an absolute meaning though, since we are gifted with consciousness we therefore have the opportunity to support further growth, development and evolution of life. Our role is to inquire for further knowledge about ourselves, how we as individuals think (what the real catalysts to our behaviours are) and how our society would best be constructed. We also have the opportunity to explore the universe we occupy, it is therefore our role to keep our world habitable and in check for all living beings (we have been horribly short sighted and selfish in that department), and search for greater knowledge about all processes in the physical universe. Our society's purpose has been lead astray by each individuals self-serving pursuits of "happiness", which is constructed upon power over others, material wealth or having a respectable position. These give us a false feeling of happiness, I believe, since pursuing only these goals will never make you fulfilled and satisfied, we are made to believe that without these we are destined to unhappiness, but the sad truth is also that in the pursuit of these statuses we are as well destined to unhappiness. I believe we are only pursuing these goals to have an advantage when it comes to sexual selection, which is discussed in a book called The Mating Mind, written by Geoffrey Miller, a developmental psychologist. We have to find ways to reduce the competition in society (productivism is perhaps essential to increase yield, but that does not equate to happiness of the population as whole), to make it a world where people can live in solidarity, sharing all resources, living for the well-being of all life, and eventually share the same meaning of life. A bit optimistic and simplistic some might say, and I don't blame them for having that view. We have been told all our lives that the only way to find happiness is by being more special than others, to somehow stand out from the general population. But I think this mindset that we have adopted is severely toxic to the well being of our societies. More and more researches are showing correlation between our surroundings and mental health issues (as some of us had already suspected), as an article written by a M.D. on psychology today sums up (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201206/the-culture-mental-illness" "Even schizophrenia, which is thought of as a highly heritable and biological psychotic disorder, has been found to be more common in inner cities and urban areas than in rural areas. The reasons for this are unclear: it could be that the stress of urban living increases the risk of the disorder, or that people with the disorder have a net tendency to migrate out of rural areas and into urban ones." I recommend reading this article as it has some very accurate points on this issue (of course I could be citing a more "credible" resource for some rational skeptics out there). This is a very interesting and prosperous field to go into for anyone who wishes to help us achieve a better understanding of mental health and of human nature in general. Anyway I don't want to go completely off topic, I think I am still within the parameters of the subject, so in conclusion I do believe we all share the same purpose and meaning, but our minds have been polluted by individual gains and the competition in society.