I think that one of the reasons we strive to concoct meaning is pattern recognition--the human brain seems pretty hard-wired for that kind of thing.

We don't have a purpose in life other than to pass our genetic material along as much as possible. But people who spend too much time listening to religious claptrap get it in their heads that there's something "more" to life than that and then they feel compelled to concoct meaning.

Part of it is that we know that we're going to die; our time is limited, some day we'll cease to be, so are we using the limited time we have well? Which leads to questions of what "well" means in this context, and so onward into questions of meaning, purpose, value, etc.

I don't think it's just about individual genetic material. It's also about protecting our group, and to some extent our species, and thereby indirectly propogating human genetic material and indeed life on planet earth in general. It's so limiting to think that we're all ultimately serving a personal biological need, when we consider the vast stretches of lifeless nothingness that surround us.

My favorite discussion topics are the meaning of life, and anything but the meaning of life.

I don't need a porpoise but they're so damn cute!

Personally I think that asking 'why' is very helpful when we're young. We learn a lot about causality. And that's important in learning to influence our surroundings.
But then we go and overextend the mechanism to domains where it is not as helpful.

I agree with muddgirl; altruism is also a hard basic reality as much as rivalry and egocentricity. Frans van der Waals writings on altruism within simian communities make that very clear.
van der Waal maintains that life is purely rivalry on the level of DNA. But on the level of the organism cooperation, altruism, taking care of each other are hard realities and not the wishful thinking of fuzzy duddy religious people.

As an adolescent I came to the following distinction: activities and things that need external justification and those who don't. The latter category are things that are just worthwhile because of the kind of animal that we are.

Our purpose is, in my opinion, simply to survive. That's really what life is all about, methinks.

However, purpose in a more ... appealing sort of way is self-created. I've always figured the answer to "Why are we here?" is "To reproduce and continue surviving." "Why am I here?" is a question for which each of us individually makes up an answer.

Pattern recognition was kind of along the lines I was thinking. My brain is just constantly trying to make sense of things and put things in order, categorize, make connections, links. Probably an essential skill for language and communication. It sure feels hard-wired to extract meaning out of symbols and things.

But then the pointlessness really bothers me. I know that it bothers me and I cannot control it. I desire meaning even when I don't think it exists.

I know this topic is old hat, but you are a new group of people for me to ask opinions of.

Another reason many people pine for a point is that much of life is suffering, and waiting, and slogging through. In general, people seem to function better with a bit of hope and a sense that it's all ultimately going to be worthwhile, even if that boost is based solely on wishful thinking and fantasy. It takes an enormous act of will to maintain positive thinking and an entirely rationality-based world view.

My purpose is to get beered up and knock over the trash cans and get as much fried chicken down me as possible. I have a certificate to that effect and everything. It's laminated.

"Why do you think we (humans) need to have a purpose?"

I think it comes down to the incredible capacity for behavior shaping of fatigue mechanisms in biological organisms. Too often, we as human animals see fatigue as a negative, and we admire the machines we have created, or other creatures, because they appear tireless, and constant in their output. And yet, an unflagging ability to endlessly repeat the same motions, to produce the same results, is the very antithesis of human action. We're human (and possibly intelligent) because, as much as anything, we tire.

When we tire, we look for different stimulus. When we tire, we're forced to think. When we tire, we're called upon to consider if the effort we're making is commensurate with the rewards we're getting, and if there is a way to improve our lot.

Tired people found language enabled them to share hunting effort. Tired people first appreciated controlled fire, and probably invented the wheel. Fatigue is the often unrecognized wellspring of creativity and imagination, if you ask me.

"Why does pointlessness bother us? Why do we strive to concoct meaning, or find it?"

Beyond the utility of simple mechanisms like biological fatigue, if you look around the biosphere, you find that pattern is important to virtually all life. In conditions of perfect randomness, life can never specialize, and in conditions of unflagging constancy, there is little point in evolution, and life's mechanisms quickly stagnate. What's needed for life to flourish, apparently, are recognizable patterns of energy flow, that are stable enough to be exploitable, yet not so rigid as to stamp out all desirability of variation. Where conditions are predictable, but not steady state, life's diversity is favored, and rich ecosystems develop. So, the value of pattern recognition to any organism is that it allows that organism to expeditiously find and exploit good environments, and thus succeed to create progeny that can do the same, or better. Coupled with fatigue, pattern recognition explains a lot of many mechanisms of natural selection.

Part of it, and possibly the greatest part of it, is that we're wired for connection. We come into this world totally dependent on other human beings, and totally structured to both seek out and attract those human beings to us. Our brains grow and develop through those connections to other people, and then later through making connections to and among things -- it's literally how our neural pathways develop. Put a child in a room with no stimulation, and his brain will not develop the same structural, physical complexity as a child with more stimulation.

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel has some really interesting work about attachment and mirror neurons -- our brains are physically set up with neural structures that activate based on other human beings' emotions. From Parenting from the Inside Out:

"Mirror neurons are found in various parts of the brain and function to link motor action to perception. For example, a particular neuron will fire if a subject watches an intentional act of someone else, such as the lifting of a cup, and will also fire if the subject herself lifts up a cup. These neuron's don't merely fire in response to any action seen in another person. The behavior must have an intention behind it. Waving hands in a random way in front of the subject does not activate a mirror neuron... In this way, mirror neurons reveal that the brain is able to detect the intention of another person."

From a little later in the same book:

"Mirror neurons are further hints at how our brains have evolved to be profoundly relational. As inherently social animals that have survived through evolution because of our ability to read each other's external expressions as signs of internal states, mirror neurons [sic -- ugh, misplaced modifier!!!] may enable us to readily and accurately respond to others' intentions. The survival value of being able to 'read minds' in a social setting to determine another's status as friend or foe is profound. Hence, here we are with a legacy of empathy and the capacity for mindsight that is rooted in our evolution."

All this to say, we're physically structured in such a way to seek out patterns, intentions, and meanings and to put those together in meaningful, understandable ways. Not just to pass on our genes, but to ensure the survival of our entire social group.

I think it partly has to do with discomfort of stillness. The Zen thing.

Whoah, that's significant, occhiblu. I guess I always knew that, but had never really thought it out so explicitly. That sounds like an interesting book.

It's also about protecting our group, and to some extent our species, and thereby indirectly propogating human genetic material
I think the purpose is more precise than that - our purpose is to propagate the best human genetic material to ensure not only the survival of our species, but that each generation continues to have a greater chance of survival than the previous. With all our advances in medicine and social engineering, we are currently on a path to ensuring that each generation has less chance of surviving than the last, because people are surviving and breeding who would not otherwise have had that opportunity. This is leading to a gradual weakening of the global gene pool - if we were to be thrown into the wild without modern conveniences such as electricity, we would have less chance of surviving than people from 1,000 years ago; not only because we haven't had the requisite knowledge and skills passed to us by our elders, but because we are weaker as a species. I'm not saying that we should go back to natural selection or only allow the strongest, healthiest specimens to breed, but we aren't doing ourselves any evolutionary favours. I think it is a symptom of the sophistication of humans as a species that we can afford the luxury of allowing the species to become weaker, because we have built such a strong network of protection around us and no longer need natural selection to ensure our survival.

Until the oil runs out, anyway ...

I've been playing around with the idea for a while now that stories are much more fundamental to humanity, and consciousness, than are generally recognized. Perhaps even to the point that without stories, there is no consciousness, or that consciousness is in some sense a collection of stories. I'm not sure I believe that myself, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

If that's true, then the most important story (at least one of the most important) to each of us is our own story. And a story in which the protagonist has no motivation is simply not a very good story.

I was quite happy being purposeless but it seems someone found a use for me. Now my days are full but I've got no time to screw around, sigh.