well.. forgive my 2 cents.

to me purpose of life is lead and help others. Human are closely most perfect being. With advantage of intelligence and physical abilities that can do a lot of things. These advantages is what differ us from others living being ( animals, plants ) and gives us the abilities to lead others.

You mean you have a choice?

of course we have a choice. Because we have freedom, we can choose what we want to do. Of course these choices will be streamlined by societies expectation, but you still have a choice to oppose the mainstream decision.

Eg. The father of a family of four had just passed away. The eldest child, into his 20's has a duty to take care of his aged mother and younger sibling. But it is his choice whether he wants to fulfill his duty.

life purpose is to discover what self is ...

The life has no purpose until you find the purpose for it. Put it this way: you can be a gentleman, barbarian or a so-so man, it's totally up to you. That's why religion(or should I say belief) is important. Find something good that you like to do, indulge into it. Take it easy. The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.

the purpose is to consume the earth resources and to produce more human being and consume again until there's nothing left...

May I ask TS, why do you want to know?

what i get from following this discussion is that there's a lot of negativeness about the purpose of life. it's seems like the 'conclusion' boils down to - a self-created purpose to live and maybe make one self seem more important than to eat sleep and die...

so sad~

Do we need a purpose?

if yes,then life has purpose

@vipervr, why do you assume we just consume the earth's resource?

the purpose of life is to create a purpose
if u r asking for natural purpose , then the purpose of life is to reproduce , to continue more of your kind

Personally, we lived to groom the next generation, and the previous generation groom'd us. Any good observation or ways of live are pass down to them as our ancestor did.

Its never about us, its about them

Life is a journey towards death and nothing else. Anything u want to do in between is completely up to you and your circumstances.

I like your quote. I'll add on a lil, living on the single purpose: live for only ourselves will never be fulfilling, until you found the purpose to live for others, i.e. the next generation and your loved ones.

Humans are put to this earth for many reasons, there is the very basic purpose, some are more personal.
The basic reason we are here is simple, like all creatures on earth, we are here to breed and continue the legacy of the species called humans.
there are purposes which are more personal.
Some purposes are big, like Edison, inventing the light bulb to bring light to the world and the future and some are as small as just being there for a kid.
However small or insignificant a person's purpose is, it will always contribute to the big painting of life, making it more beautiful.

Find your own purpose in life, if you think you ever need one.

I think the question is what is the purpose of continue living for generations, we have charts of life cycle of almost all animals including human and it only show repeating the same thing.

What is the purpose to keep repeating the live cycle? Animals does not wonder hence they live by the instinct but human have intelligence and we ask questions and find the most appropriate answers that triggered civilization.

Ordinary people are product users created by the inventor / creator and build on top of each other which may never end and that is the purpose for human in general.

As for an individual, you can live with or without a purpose because you are brought into the world as user if not contributor.

why do animals live? what is the purpose of their lives? there in lies the answer.

The most probable answer at this time is the GRAND design "Evolution" that took many years to evolved and became what it is today, living things will continue to evolve until they extinct, if the dinosaur still live, human won't stand a chance.

So, what triggers the beginning of life and why they strive to live is the natural instinct that created all living things. If there is a god, we stop wondering or let nature take it course but if it occur in a spontaneous natural reaction, survival of the fittest is the only rules.

Earth happens to sustain lives and only difference is reproduction method, life span in a food chain. All animals that lives today are the surviver and a part of the food chain which is their purpose, but human went beyond animal life and invented technology, our brain is an ever recording medium unlike animals that can't remember too much.

Knowing we can't derive a satisfactory answer, a lifetime is only to feel as much happiness as we can and reproduce to take care of us when we are old and bury us, if no children, the system have someone to do that. Memories is our trophy and that is all we need to know.

everything in life has a purpose..
even the homeless man on the street..
the druggie in ur back alley..
the stray cat you adopted from the garbage bin..

everything has its significant values in life that we take for granted not bothering about it(me included)
we can actually pretty much learn from their mistakes to make sure we dont fall into their footsteps..

my 2 cents..dont flame me..