Life's Basic Purpose

Been thinking about the meaning of life. :-)

Seems to me that life, in the most general scope, through the development, replication and modification of DNA, etc. seems to be a basic form of information accumulation, modification, and preservation and it redirects energy in a fashion to serve this end.

I find that interesting. I'm going somewhere with this, just give me a few minutes to get there.

Now intelligent life, of which we have one example, so far, appears to take this business of energy redirection and information accumulation to a fundamentally new level.

Non-intelligent life redirects energy and accumulates & modifies information on a very localized scale exclusively to serve the perpetuation of its particular species or that particular individual.

Intelligent life, on the other hand, redirects energy on a massive scale, in both constructive and destructive ways, not necessarily having anything to do with survival. Example: nuclear energy, manned moon missions. Moreover, intelligent life gathers and accumulates information about the Universe at large, not just localized to a particular organism or DNA print. We strive to know everything, things that have nothing to do with furthering our survival (though such argument is frequently used to try to secure funding).

I think that's very interesting. Just wanted to kick it around a bit.

Okay, Paul K., I know I should be taking this a little more seriously, but I've been humming Monty Python lyrics every since you used the words "meaning of life".

"The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!"

:-]

I'll give it a shot. In the present, we are whirling in a maelstrom of technological advances that our antiquated morality systems find impossible to keep up with. Just look over the religious iconoclast viewpoint in parallel threads.

My thought is, once the human intelligentsia can throw off the camel trainer's political clout, medicine and technological advances will hurl forward.

In time, I believe our human conscious will be able to replicate itself into an out of body enhanced molecular matrix of beyond Deep Blue's wildest aspirations.

This new conscious entity, although ultimately finite, will live out its long life more adroitly than our everlasting Pioneer's electronics. The new conscious entity will guide the craft, which will benefit from a post relativity propulsion system (perhaps through new dimensions). The original flesh body might be carried along, just in case; held in limbo for those occasional love interests.

The question is who? The answer is, there will be millions of these crafts. They will have millions of trials and adventures ala Star Trek. Like sperm, only one will attain complete victory. That victory will indeed be the Holy Grail.

The ultimate destination?... Full knowledge of the universe. It is then someone will become the new god. He/she/both? will have the honor of kicking off another singularity into motion, where the whole 15 billion year chain of events start all over again.... Infinitely repeating.