The Meanings of Life

What is the meaning of life
Meaning, as in the definition of a term
Life here meaning human existence
Definition of a term, as in what I mean when I say it
When I say human existence I mean the state in which people find themselves
Everyone who lives, lived, will live
The way in which they live
Some happy, some unhappy
Mostly miserable most of the time but with enough ecstasy and joy to make them glad they exist
To make them continue to exist

The meaning of life
Life, as in sequence of chemical reactions involving namely carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen resulting in deoxyribonucleic acid and the means for it to propagate itself
Meaning, as in significance
The transformation of much of the earth’s surface into the waste products of deoxyribonucleic acid’s meanings of propagation, carbon-based organisms
The propagation as such over all of the earth’s surface
Deep into its oceans and earth and high into its atmosphere
The construction of dwellings from non-carbon materials by the most advanced propagator of deoxyribonucleic acid
Permanently altering the shape of the world
The use of such non-carbon materials to carry deoxyribonucleic acid into the void beyond the atmosphere
Perhaps someday to other heavenly bodies
To reduce their stone to earth and to make carbon soup of their seas

The meaning of life, as in a phrase containing a significance wholly apart from that contained in ‘meaning’ and that contained in ‘life’
Something to do with why people exist
A projection of the process of human reasoning, of reason, onto the inhuman world
Often involving consideration of human-like entities, who variably create, control and interact with the human and inhuman world
Why people exist, to please such entities, to serve such entities, to love such entities, to defy such entities, to be the whim of such entities
Alternately, such entities exist to satisfy the projection of reason onto the unknowable, the unreasonable

Why people exist
Why, for what purpose
People, plural of person
Exist, be, possess form
Purpose, the ad hoc construct of human reasoning, variable as human reasoning, relative to the speaker, thinker, reasoner
Dependent upon a reasoner
Why, because of what
People exist because person cannot
Person dies, person ceases to exist
People die, growth ratio of people shrinks, slightly
Existence, measured by the human ability to detect
Subjective to the human ability to detect
People exist because they detect themselves
People continue to exist because upon detecting themselves they do not destroy themselves
Surprising at times
Humans have not yet, but may ultimately, through the manipulation of certain non-carbon materials, namely sulfur, uranium, plutonium, and hydrogen, destroy themselves
Most likely without the intent to destroy themselves, or rather all of themselves
People, upon occasion, in singularities, destroy themselves
With intent to destroy themselves
Such people detect themselves, but do not wish to continue to detect themselves
Do not wish to continue to exist, for a variety of reasons, as a result of a variety of reason
Why people exist, because such people never constitute all of, or all but one of, or all but any number of one sex of, all people
People exist because of a variety of reason

Meaning, the definition of the term
Life, everyone who lives, lived, will live
Mankind
Practical definition of mankind
The world, as it is and has become, product of gravity, nuclear energy, and deoxyribonucleic acid
Carbon based life living life with meanings
Why, because they can

Assorted Microprose on the Sea

The Dead Sea Lion
There lay at my feet a dead Sea Lion, bloated and burst. Putrid beyond even the taste of a scavenger, gathered to only by flies and sand flees. Either gases or barnacled stone had torn out its chest, ribs exposed and behind them the cavity of its once being. All through the day I heard its kind bellowing their will out on the reefs and isles I was forbidden to approach. Far out of sight their roars carried yet all that we saw of them was this stinking carcass. Approaching upwind I hardly noticed it, lying like another rotting and infested log, dark and worn by the sea, yet to be bleached sol’s whiteness. The sea threw this one back, this and no other. These lustrous beasts make their home in the waves but the sea remembers its betrayers. Those foolish souls that wandered ashore. This lion but died, it is on us that Poseidon exacts his vengeance, upon out paltry flounderings and thrashing about that the might of the ocean is known.

North Atlantic
A white, glimmering cloudscape for which we have not words, plains and mountains and canyons of vaporous solidity.
I marvel that no poet has put this spectacle to lines, to decry this fleeting wonder I am the first. This then is perhaps the last unfixable beauty, ever-shifting storms forever re-forming this panorama.
It is a thing unbound and eternally becoming, no men can ever inhabit this airy paradise. These bodiless lands will never fall into the machinations of realm and fief.
Beneath it and through it the vast ocean shines, ripples blue and capped with white until they crash unto the icebound cliffs of nordic legend. Dark and glaciated mountains chiseled by rime and gail descending into a frigid desert, cracked where wind has worn to the ice the fields and hills of snow.
High above sea and cloud we fly, spanning seas that once seemed to border the very earth. They once said that at the edge of this ocean was a mighty precipice, waters churning into the void. And now we soar over it without a thought to its power, these swells and currents that once girded the lives of men.

No Such Compass
I heard once in a bawdy tale of a compass that points to whatever one wants most. And into my mind came crowding issues of the nature of possession and objective states and the desires of dead wood and the composition of objects but all of this was soon realized to be void for there was no such device, and so its depths cannot be queried. And then from the hours spent in knowing futility, in restless laxity, came another thought. In my core there must be a deepest desire, though I cannot seem to know it. If any such compass came into my hands I would follow it, fix its course by map and divine what I could be seeking and pursue it with all vigor. Neither mountain nor man nor even the chasmic seas would halt me.
But I know not this course for I have not that compass for there is no such earthly field to guide it. Were this even not true I somehow doubt such a device’s analytic powers, if I am so unearthly blank how could iron delineate my being? And thus I am lost. Adrift. Plying my fears and my wares until Ragnarök unbinds the world.