“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. “This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. “The meaning of life is just to be alive." Alan Watts
Feel the moment, be in it and go forth being it. 
Here is another from the great man:
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ― Alan W. Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture
And if you add the environment in a similarly reductionistic and deterministic way, you’ll predict flawlessly and come up with completely meaningless answers.
All logical reasoning is fundamentally just an approximate solution to a paradoxical problem. It can never be used to answer these questions, as the paradoxes themselves transcend logic. Maybe it sounds psychotic to you. But even antipsychotics won’t make me change my mind on this one.
If your purpose is evolution, though, I’m fine with that. It’s a good purpose. I like it.
Aps may not change your mind, but they can turn you into a zombie 
I think I’m a utilitarian: it’s the Greatest Happiness Principle. In my own words, we can make life on earth a heaven or a hell. We’re responsible for that. Heaven is pleasure or happiness, hell is pain and suffering. All we know of death is parting.
Do I have third option besides evolution and religion? 
I like this principle, but it breaks down quickly for me if you take it too far. Like replacing all life with sentient happiness machines that have no purpose except to exist and feel happy. If we could do that, this utilitarian principle would say that we should.
There was a post recently quoting the Dalai Lama as saying ‘The purpose of life is to be happy.’ Sounds reasonable to me.
@anon9798425 Logical reasoning is good if others come to the same conclusion. However, nothing beats a set of raw data that has statistical results. There may be the few outliers here or there but a trend or bell shaped curve illustrates factual evidence.
For example, the purpose of most men & women in life is to procreate. These people or the majority whereas there is a minority of people or outliers that choose not to procreate.
Yes. Whatever suits you. Your purpose could for example be to live fully and experience what life has to offer, or to ponder life’s great questions, or to make others happy, or to ensure a good future, or to pave the way for what purpose the universe has in store and what will come after humans, or to just live. The options are endless. You decide.
Your purpose could even be to stack blocks on top of one another while you count them.
Should – but it’s not humans who are being happy? That’s like transferring the project from a collective subjectivity to something not-self, not-subjective, nonhuman, etc. That’s the fallacy of cloning.
You’re assuming machines and clones can’t be conscious like humans.
You don’t know that. It’s not a very parsimonious explanation of consciousness.
Maybe we could just store our consciousnesses in machines. And then force them to be continually happy doing nothing forever.
No, I know clones are conscious. But when an individual clones herself, it is not she who experiences the pleasures and pains. Dunno. Maybe I’m an egoist.
It’s just a thought experiment. I just like it because it made me question whether happiness really is the ultimate goal (from a human perspective). I know I’d rather be sad and angry and surprised and scared (etc etc etc) and happy than just happy.
You decide what your greatest achievement will be.
At least that’s what I was told.
Somewhere along the line children and marriage just seem right for me.
Thank you for sharing his quotes. I know what he says-- to live at the present moment.
Would I be lacking in empathy if I said I know my own feelings as distinct from another person’s? Is this like hoarding or something selfish? Sorry. I’m nervous exposing myself like this.
No, I’d say that sounds pretty healthy.
I’ve seen my mother, e.g., make the jump from her consciousness to her proposed clone’s consciousness, as if she could be inside the clone’s body and mind. Of course we know the clone survives longer, but NOT my mother.
I’m not sure I understand you. Are you saying your mother is living in a clone of herself?