We live in a developing universe

We agree that you’re not seeing the right kind of space here, I think. The physical universe doesn’t have a purpose, it just is. It’s “natural law expressing itself” and that level of understanding is adequate to account for everything observed. But there’s another kind of “space”, another kind of universe, and this other kind of universe is where human being shows up, along with things like purpose and meaning, love and joy and hate and music and poetry. This other kind of space is best understood as “the universe of meaning” — it’s semantic space: a space that comes into existence because we’re linguistic creatures… creatures who bring forth meaning with ideas and distinctions and concepts.

Semantic space depends on physical space, because you can’t have meanings without minds, and you can’t have minds without the physical universe to provide the bodies and food and gravity. The universe of being depends on the physical, and it can be accounted for (indirectly) by the physical universe, but if you try to reduce it to “a bunch of molecules bouncing around” then you can’t make any sense of it. That level of understanding is too low in the layer set. To make sense of the universe of meaning, you have to work at the right level of thinking. You have to think of meaning as a kind of “substance” which flows and forms patterns and so forth. You have to become competent at seeing how things work in this universe.

To simplify the universe of meaning, you can start by treating it as a conversation between you and the world. In this conversation, you and the world are sort of locked in a jail cell together — you can’t escape being related to the world, but there are different kinds of relationships that you can have. Some people do not get along at all with their cellmate. Some people treat the world as a total stranger on the bus — someone they have no desire to acknowledge, someone who gets a rude shove if part of their jacket lands on the wrong knee. Other people fall in love with the world and have wonderful dances in their cell… they don’t even remember or care that they’re in prison, because the richness of their conversation with the world is so deep that the prison becomes irrelevant. The dance is everything.

Mostly we have a few fairly limited kinds of conversations with the world: we try to make stable contracts or agreements. We don’t quite trust our cellmate, but we recognize the need to negotiate a fair arrangement so that nobody gets hurt too badly and we can live in relative peace. But these “transactional conversations” with the world don’t yield a very satisfying life. There’s no music, there’s no dancing: if your partner and you are bound by a strict set of agreements about how much everything costs and who owes what to whom, everything turns into a contract and everyone demands receipts.

If you’re in a transactional relationship with the world, you’re always trying to give as little as possible to maintain stability and avoid pissing the world off. But since there’s no generosity in that relationship, it can’t ever take off and become love and dancing. You only fall in love if you’re generous — if you’re willing to give a bit more than you take — if you’re willing to trust and demonstrate that you care.

In the universe of semantics — in the universe of meaning — everything is a kind of communication. Every choice sends signals to the other side of the cell, saying things like “I don’t trust you” or “I think you’re beautiful.” Individual humans are unpredictable. But life as a whole, when you’re sharing a cell with it, does tend to behave more like it has “laws of nature” in the relationship domain. The random actions of individuals sum up to send you the signals that you’re supposed to listen to.

When the world puts out its hand to dance, you have choices that matter. You have choices that affect whether you’re going to express yourself and grow and have a wonderful time, or huddle in your corner sulking, or try to bargain your way through the day without giving an extra inch, etc. In the universe of meaning, you get to decide the purpose. But it makes sense to have a purpose that turns your cell into something wonderful, instead of something horrible. The fact that you have choices which determine much of that outcome is critical to understand.

Humanity evolved to build great robots who will do many great things in future, conquer space and discover amazing wonders of nature, build harmonious societies and live happy fulfilling lives. However, robots don't just build themselves initially. They need intelligent species made of meat to start. It is true that as compared with universe we are negligible. Human beings stands nothing in front of this universe. I also used to think about universe and ask questions like why, how, if .. then.

With so many questions and their answers, and by arguing myself i got one saying , this is pretty insane! And at that moment i got an answer to my question that we are here to do insane thing. In other words, we live our life to find purpose and challenge for ourselves to go beyond our limits. And this thing is called as insane. If we see beyond our daily life there will be always universe. And also universe is an insane thing, I mean why this universe has to form, there is no reason for it. As a result, even though we are so small compared to this universe we do have value of living. So we live our life.

I’m fully aware that I might come across as a condescending little prick here, but let me tell you a secret, from one fellow human to another. Things do not work the way you think they do. Trying to find your purpose in life will just make you unhappy and disappointed. Take, for example, the usual “purpose in life” self-help rubbish internet articles (from where most of the answers in this thread are copy-pasted). Take your pick: “Your purpose in life is to be useful” “Be like a brick!” (whatever that means, be like a prick would be actually more useful) “Respect animals around you!” (who the hell doesn't?) “ Are you happy? Is this what you want? I didn't think so, either. Instead of wasting your time with pseudo-philosophical BS, you should turn off your computer or smartphone and take a walk in the park.

This won't help you find your purpose in life either, but it's good for your health. Do the same tomorrow, the day after, and so on. After a while (we talk about years), you'll find out several things: You are quite okay without having ever determined a purpose for your life. After thirty years or so, you will most probably have a comfortable life, and you'll be able to tell your grandchildren that doing whatever you do is exactly what you wanted to do with your life.

We are nothing but apes that happened to start coming up with stories. Stories that connected people and made bigger tribes possible. Stories such as money, religion and politics make today's society work but they are all made up. Countries are also stories. As we are just monkeys without a purpose we may just as well make the most of our lives and enjoy it. Help other people and keep on learning.Cheers!