With further respect to the ridiculousness of wasting bandwidth on whether our lives have meaning, consider that there are at least four different camps that ponder this, each with their own position; that life has objective meaning, subjective meaning, supernatural/unexplainable meaning or no meaning at all. Once you’ve determined which group you’re in, you’d need to try on those of the (up to) thirty ‘isms” your peers subscribe to, such as Mohism, Theism, Hedonism or Nihilism – to name a few – to see if they fit.
My position is, unless you are one of those fortunates that have time for pursuits such as philosophy, reflecting on this question seems like a waste of it, especially as it is in short supply for many.
In the vastness of space and all things celestial within it, consider the distance that light travels in a year, which is about 9 trillion kilometers, and that our solar system’s diameter is about four light-years.
Our solar system lies within the Milky Way, itself orbiting black hole Sagittarius A*, ~ 28,000 light-years away. One trip around takes about 250 million years and we, along with all of the other organisms on Earth that have come and gone, and the rest of our solar system have made about 15 orbits around the Milky Way since reproducing hydrocarbon molecules first formed on our little blue dot.
The Milky Way itself is about 100,000 light-years across, is home to up to 400 billion stars, featuring up to 40 billion Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of those sun-like and red dwarf stars within it alone.
Next we have the Local Group, and it includes the Milky Way, Andromeda and Triangulum, spanning ~ 10 million light years. As large as these galaxies are, they are dwarfed by IC 1101, part of the Abell 2029 cluster spanning ~ 5 million light years and boasting over 100 trillion stars. Then there are “superclusters”, which are clusters of galaxy clusters, such as the Virgo Supercluster. At 110 million light-years across, it contains up to hundred galaxy clusters, including the Local Group, and features 2,000 individual galaxies.
Then we have the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, composed of about 60 superclusters; over 45,000 galaxies in total. At about 1.4 billion light-years across, it’s the largest structure known, spanning about one-tenth of the observable universe.
All of these galaxies, groups, clusters and superclusters are bound by their mutual gravitational pulls and each orbits their common center of mass. Because the density of galaxies is high within clusters, galaxy collisions occur. In fact, the Milky Way is going to collide and merge with the Andromeda galaxy one day, although no time soon. Having said that, if the vastness of the universe isn’t enough to convince us that spending valuable time trying to determine if our lives have meaning or not is a meaningless pursuit, know that by the time this merger begins, the Sun will be running out of its hydrogen fuel, and in its dying throes grow to envelope the inner planets, including Earth, and whatever traces of us, that remain.
With this, all reflection and rumination of any kind by us about life having meaning, in my opinion, can be rendered moot at the very least. For example, by “life”, are we also including extraterrestrial life, and even then, are we talking about extraterrestrial life that has now simply come and gone, life that has not yet even formed, or life that may in fact exist, but we simply don’t know where?
I suppose if any lives are to be given meaning, it may as well be the lives of those that have “made more monie” determining that nothing, including us, has an inherent purpose or is somehow special. It all just is. As far as I’m concerned, those of us fortuitously living in the First World, should gratefully accept this without questioning or worrying about why, as to do so is to potentially squander the opportunity given us.
Disclaimer: The information contained herein should not be construed or considered professional advice. Nonetheless, thanks for reading! If it resonates, there’s “plenty more where that came from” on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube ‘n’ Twitter.