Welcome and thank you, Keith Augustine!

As you probably know, Ayn Rand was a 100% rational naturalist and an atheist. She wrote a little about the meaning of life in 1943. In one scene of The Fountainhead, through her fictional character Gail Wynand, she proclaimed the right and the rightness of each human being to exist for nothing but their own joy. She continued as follows:

"Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they don't understand the meaning of life. There's a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or 'universal goal,' who don't know what to live for, who moan they must 'find themselves.' You hear it all around you. . . ."

"Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, . . . [and] bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing.

That's the meaning of life."

"Your strength?"

"Your work. . . . The material the earth offers you and what you make of it. . . . "                                                                                                                           (page 596, emphasis added)

Rand seems to be saying that the natural world and a human being in it is a setting sufficient for making meaning. She seems to be saying, furthermore, that work, utilitarian or artistic, is the way in which humans make meaning in their lives. They don't have to be focussed on those projects as meaning-making. They can be focussed on the work and the enjoyment it makes possible. But a sense of meaning will be one of the benefits of engaging in work, understood broadly.

Do you think, as Rand seems to think, that one cannot find meaning in anything but work (utilitarian or artistic)?

Do you think that work becomes even more meaningful by some of the social connectedness it may afford? Is the brotherhood of joint production an amplifier of meaning? Is the sharing of an artistic or intellectual creation an amplifier of meaning? Is the willingness of consumers to pay for one's product or service an amplifier of meaning?

I'm not being rhetorical. I'm simply interested in what you and readers think on these questions.

That article describes the typical contemporary philosophy of the anti-theist species of atheist.

A superb point and one I hit on frequently.  To truly value life one must feel inversely about it’s cessation.  Life is the source of all of our values and its cessation is the destruction of all our values.  I think to truly recognize the finality and horror of death is an extremely difficult thing and leads a great many people to devalue their life or to delude themselves into thinking that death serves some purpose.  I have elaborated on these feelings before on this forum in other threads.

“If the absence of a higher purpose is what makes life ultimately meaningless, our lives would be just as meaningless if they were eternal”

 Another excellent point I will remember whenever I hear anyone fretting about the meaningless of life, thank you for that.

“Conversely, if being part of a higher purpose gives our lives meaning, then our lives would be meaningful even if death ended them forever.”

Another great point and this seems to almost always be the root justification for life people grant themselves.  To ‘leave the world a better place’ or to ‘make a difference’ and no doubt the drive to do this is because they think life a waste without making other peoples lives better.  However I am quick to point out that this is just another form of collectivism, it is valuing the self only for the effect one has on future individuals.  It is not living for the sake of other men now, but every other man who will be.  My mother was involved in local politics her whole life and did a few runs as a city clerk and founded two historical preservations societies, when she retired the democrats of the area held a dinner in her honor where some two or three hundred people showed up.  She felt as though this justified everything she had done, and quoted one of her favorite poets saying something along those lines, that life is what you do for others or the future.  This gave her a great deal of pleasure when she tried to reconcile nearing retirement with little savings and working what she feels a demeaning job.  I am always quick and adamant on pointing out that it is very wrong to think her life worthless unless she had accomplished some great thing, her life has value to her of it’s own accord and is not something we are granted by the universe in order to accomplish something.  This attitude, that life is worthless unless served for a higher purpose, is what states have used to justify murdering millions.  It is to the benefit of the exploiters to convince you your life is worthless unless you serve what they have convinced you are higher callings.  I try to convey to her that all of her actions she did to uphold the things she valued most, to further what is dearest to her, and doing so is right and just.  But she still doesn’t seem to see it as worthwhile until a dinner is thrown in her honor.

I am an extremely ambitious person and literally do want to change the world and I am pursuing my 50 year plan to do so, but I am the first to jump on someone for demanding someone ‘serve the greater good’ to justify their life, because the intrinsic philosophic premise that is implied, that life is worthless unless serving some higher goal, is so horrific.  As you so eloquently state “Our activities are worthwhile for their own sake, not because they fulfill some unknowable transcendental purpose”

Michael F Dickey 

From a sociology paper on Aging that I posted to my blog:  "The first Boston Marathon measured 24.5 miles. “On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott of New York, emerged from a 15-member starting field and captured the first B.A.A. Marathon in 2:55:10.”   In 2006, that mark would place him 5th among the women age 40-49 (Gina M. McGee, 2:55:03).  However, the modern race is longer.  Therefore, today, McDermott would beat all of the women 50-59, but none of the women 40-49.  His time calculated for the longer course would be the same as John Smallwood, in the Men’s Age 60-69 who clocked 3:10:44."