Is it essential for all human beings to have some sort of concept for "the meaning of life"?

Essential? Essential carries an implication that one would die without it. In a relatively benign existence, where the basic essentials of needs (physiological, and most needs regarding safety), no, one does not need a concept of the meaning of life.

And I would posit that one does not need a meaning of life of any sort until many basic needs are met and the individual has an expectation that they can continue to be met.

Viktor Frankl did point out that Man’s Search For Meaning gives a reason for one to continue in the face of unrelenting horror and catastrophe. But it is not essential for a quotidian life.

Not at all. Some people just live their lives; they do not spend time pondering its meaning.

Good question.

I spend most of my days pondering the meaning of life and derivations of that subject. I can’t imagine not doing it for myself.

However, I can imagine that it is possible to live without wondering whether there is a grand meaning to life. It is not essential. Air, water, and food are essential.

In my experience, helping other people in some way seems to be how you find the most meaningful existence.
It’s not essential because a person can go through life being self-centered, but that’s one’s choice.
Personally being a father has helped me to see what the true meaning for my life is, but that’s just me.

If we live well, eat well & get lucky we live for 70+ yrs, a drop in the ocean in terms of time.
I’m not going to waste a moment of that on thoughts of what life is all about, live life at one speed, balls out, before you blink & miss it.

No.

Not essential, just a normal “Why am I here?” self-determinant query.

It contributed heavily to evolution, but it is not now, nor was it ever essential. The knowing there is more to know, the desire to know more, and the search for answers have been musings which stretched, tore, and transformed the human race down through the ages.
Without it, we could easily be herds, such as sheep, but it only contributed to our ability to survive. It is not the final determinant.

Is it essential? IMO no. The “meaning of life” is entirely subjective and takes on a variety of forms and definitions throughout the world. The meaning of life is often distinguished within the various religions around the world. People gravitate towards a religion because it can provide context and spiritual currency to the great question of what is the meaning of life. Having a God to worship, comfort you and often provide explanations to the inexplicable things life throws our way helps add purpose and relevance to why they are on this planet.

Others find life’s meaning and purpose within their role in raising a family or their work, their art or just smelling the flowers along the way. And of course there are many people who nary give it a passing thought as to the meaning of why they are on this planet.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Or as in Threepenny. Opera. “First feed the face, then learn right from wrong.”

There is no ultimate “meaning” to life, we create our own meaning and meaning and purpose are ever changing.
Humans crave some sort of ultimate meaning but really, we are no more or less special than any other organism and could just as easily shown up as a turtle or a chicken or a leech in a puddle. lol
We exist for whatever reasons our existence has been enabled and while we should pursue treating each other and other life forms with kind regard, there is no ultimate “meaning” to our existence.

Not at all. In fact those claiming such knowledge should be viewed with suspicion.

If we understand “meaning of life” to be an organizing principle that drives decision-making, then it seems to me that most beings come equipped with a default meaning of life from the outset: minimize pain, maximize pleasure.

Even someone who has no conscious, conceptual understanding of a “meaning” is almost certainly operating according to the dictates of this default. When we do adopt some conceptual framework for a meaning, it’s because we aspire to something more than the brutish, reflexive existence that living by the default affords.

That “something more”, for humans at least, is often the property we tend to call happiness. However we define happiness, most of us recognize (typically after much trial and error) that it doesn’t result from an unconsidered adherence to the default. We find that maximizing happiness often requires making a choice that increases pain or passes up pleasure, something the default would interdict.

What enables us to override the default is that we have, to at least a small extent, given rise to a value that we now place above feeling pleasure and avoiding pain. I would suggest that as soon as you have enshrined such a value, you have a “meaning of life” that is to some degree conceptual. After all, if this happiness is either not present for you, or to an insufficient degree, and you conceive of a happier state, then you’re now in the realm of concepts. That doesn’t mean that it constitutes some grand credo; it can be extremely basic. Any being that gives rise to the thought, “I want to be happy” has some concept of meaning of life.

My point is that we needn’t understand “meaning of life” to be exclusive to higher-order thinking. Some form of it is present at the most basic levels.

Of course it’s not essential, but it’s how we ended up being wired, asking “How, why?” all the time. That’s where religion came from.

I don’t think so, everyone is so different with different beliefs and morals that we can’t all share one thing like having to have meaning to life, you know? Some people just live their lives without needed to know, what’s the meaning of all this?

I do think, however, that mental illnesses, like depression, can sort of be stemmed from this. At least that’s how it is with my depression.

Socrates said the “unexamined life is not worth living”. Sometimes I think I’d be a happier person if I didn’t think so much about the purpose of existence, but it seems to be in my nature to do so.

Humans invented religion because they had no answers and that fact seems to be ubiquitous around the world. En masse, it seems like humans do need a purpose or reason for living, but I cannot say the same on an individual level.

BTW, welcome to fluther. Stay awhile. You are the best addition in a long time.

“Man plans and God laughs.”

I think that everyone has a point of self awareness in the world, based upon their frame of reference around them all their lives. Their own mind funnels the ideas and reactions into their brain- out comes the personality that deals with all the experiences.

I used to find the question of “the meaning of life” very hard to understand and it used to annoy me every time I saw it. I just didn’t get it.

What does it mean for life to have meaning such that you can identify that meaning and answer such a question. Like what is the meaning of a certain story or parable? Well that makes sense because its fictitious and designed to communicate something. And that something is its meaning.

Now what is the meaning of coffee? Well that doesn’t make sense. You can ask what its function is. Its effect. Its source or composition. Etc. But its meaning? What? Well that’s how I perceived the question of the meaning of life. It used to really piss me off.

Now I understand it. The question is asking what the value of life is. That is, what in life makes life worth living?

Now to that there can be many possible answers depending on perspective. I have my own perspective and opinion and am not certain it is correct so it’s just an opinion.

Because of death and the end of experience and memory, ultimately everything is meaningless. I used to have a coping mechanism for severe social anxiety where I’d focus on the knowledge of the fact that there is a moment in time in the future where this will be in the past until it calmed me down. Similarly there is a moment in the future were I will be dead and my experience of life will be no more and my memory of my life will vanish from me and it is real.

How to escape this fact?

Well the obvious answer is that while I’ll be dead other will live on. Great. So then life becomes about making a mark and leaving a legacy if its still very ego driven or it becomes more about helping others if its more loving. Still this obvious fact is the entire cosmos will at some point end. But that is such a long time that the mind kinda settles and says ok that’s good enough. Thus, the value of life is for the well being and happiness of all.

I have other suspicions now. But I’m still seeking and learning and growing. I suspect there is a deeper meaning than that. Its vague but here goes nothing: The meaning of life is for Gods will. And Gods will seems to be self-realization ultimately. The self realizing the self in manifest form as a living sentient conscious being. This body is a vessel for sentience and consciousness. Without this subject of consciousness, there is no point to anything in the cosmos no matter how grand except for the entertainment of the creator. And that’s basically what it is, a kind of entertainment, a playing of hide and seek. Where the one universal self/being in all beings manifests as a finite ignorant being on a journey of self discovery. All of life is a stage for exactly this. The journey of self discovery of yourself as something deeper and more miraculous than a temporary perishable body, and a finite confused deluded, ignorant and highly impressionable mind. You are somekind of a single immortal spirit which is made out of something which can be described as, supposedly, infinite, eternal, love, awareness and bliss. But I don’t know yet.

What I do know for myself is what it appears to be for me. And how it appears to me is that there is no true lasting happiness to be found in life to make it worth it. If the above paragraph were not true I would not deem life worth it and I would consider the whole thing, the cosmos a great tragedy and filled with immeasurable suffering. So I’m hanging on that thread because it is not in my experience yet but everything I have seen so far and experienced tells me this is true and those who say it are sincere and true. I could say many things to justify why I think its true but in the end we can only take each others word for what we say. I’m still figuring out truth as it seems to be something very important and special for the mind. Like a property of the ultimate or something.

If that sounds too ethereal, put it this way: The meaning of life is to figure out the meaning of life.

And sorry for forgetting the actual question, my bad. I don’t know for sure but I think that it’s not important or even beneficial to have a concept about the meaning of life. I suspect that will hinder discovery about life. Unless one doesn’t take their own concepts as anything more than just concept.

This is why I say I’m still figuring out exactly what truth is and its role because I’ve had some experiences that tell me it is something special but still has something to do with concept.

A simpler way of looking at things is to ask, do animals know what the meaning of life is? Ofcourse not. You need language to have concepts and you need concepts to talk about the meaning of anything. All an animal probably knows about it is how it feels about life in general and if we could somehow get an answer out of them I think they’d say the meaning of life is about being safe, fed, respected, loved, stimulated, and successful or in short, happy.