Meaning of life essay

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Meaning of Life Essay

What is the meaning of life? Many agree that the answer depends on the person asking the question. When Albert Camus and Richard Taylor decide to answer this question, they must take an in-depth look into the real and mythological worlds to arrive at a concise answer to this question that has baffled so many. Both have similar views with subtle differences - however Taylor's view is the more accurate of the two.

When looking into the biological world, Taylor clearly describes how much of it can be identified with the Greek tale of Sisyphus. His first of two examples take an in-depth look into glowworms. They go through this cycle like Sisyphus did with his rock and ultimately they have nothing more to show for it than reproducing. They are condemned to this fate and like the rock that Sisyphus rolls up the hill, once they fall down, the burden is passed onto the next generation of worms, making their existence ultimately pointless.

The story is the same with migrating birds, as they seasonally migrate across the planet just to do the exact same thing the next year (Klemke, 2008). The effort put into this, like the effort Sisyphus puts into rolling the rock up the hill, ultimately accomplishes nothing and in the end is futile. The birds are condemned to a meaningless task that has no meaning, but gives them purpose. Taylor states "The point of any living thing's life is, evidently, nothing but life itself" (Klemke, 2008), something that Sisyphus himself endures as he rolls the rock throughout eternity, with the only difference between him and the biological beings being that instead of each organism doing the same repetitive task for eternity, they pass on their mundane tasks to the next...