Humans and animals have evolved differently, making the meaning of their lives different as well.

• Perhaps from a baseline evolutionary standpoint, all animals exist to a) survive and b) to produce more animals to continue their bloodlines/species.
• However, with humans evolving beyond animals in many ways, the meaning of our lives has likely changed. Many humans wish to make a positive impact on the world; a lot have particular issues that they feel strongly about. However, I do not feel as if the deer that lives in my backyard particularly cares about income inequality or voting rights. This is because, to my knowledge, this deer does not hold a full-time job or vote. The main driving factor in its life is to survive and produce more deer. I think humans go a bit beyond that now.
• Humans certainly have a drive for survival (also known as self-preservation or survival optimization), but we also have a drive for things like happiness, love, financial security, success, etc. One can definitely say that humans do tend to reproduce and die just as any other animal, but there are so many humans that do not reproduce and still attempt to create some sort of meaningful existence in the world.
• Most of the issues that plague humanity today are man-made, and many of the goals in peoples’ lives (happiness, true love, etc.) are more philosophical than instinctual, but I do believe that we exist on this planet for a different reason than animals. This is not to say that animals are not important because they more certainly are vital to our existence, but their existence and consciousness is undoubtedly different.

The animal lack of self-awareness and consciousness mean than while they are very similar in nature to us, that they find no greater meaning of life behind their actions that humans do find.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl wrote about his ordeal as a concentration camp inmate during the Second World War. The objective of his writing was to decipher the meaning of life after living in a place surrounded by so much death and suffering.

According to Frankl, meaning in life can be found through:

• Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others.
• Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and,
• Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.

Animal instincts, such as fight or flight responses and animal courtship behaviour, demonstrate that animals, like humans, interact authentically with their environment and with others.

However, I think that while animal actions are comparable to what make human life worth living, they do not find the same meaning of life in it that humans do as they remain more unaware of the wider implications of their actions and their expression.

Is the meaning of life even the same for all humans?

• What is the meaning of life? I perceive this to be quite a difficult question to answer. If we were to ask individuals what they perceived to be the meaning of life, I don’t think every answer would be the same.
• We can look that intuitively some things stand out.
• Financial stability/ attainment of wealth and success.
  Most people work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We don’t do this because we want to. This allows one to be financially stable and comfortable. We go through many years of education, with some even going on to get degrees and masters with the hope of securing good, well-paid jobs. We could say this points to the meaning of life as reaching a level of financial stability and freedom. However, some people choose against this. For example, nuns and monks. The meaning of life for them is devoted to their religious beliefs. They find no pleasure in things of high monetary value.
• Along this line of reasoning, even those belonging to different religious groups may have different conceptions of the meaning of life. For someone who is Christian, this may involve abiding by the ten commandments and Gods law to be rewarded with heaven in the afterlife. The meaning of life for someone who is Buddhist may be to produce enough good Karma to get rewarded in reincarnation.
• Some have argued the meaning of life is for survival and continuation of the species. This is supported by the fact that it is through natural selection that we adapt to survive in our environments. We were made to survive.
• How can we say the meaning of life is the same for humans when it is for animals when not all humans have the same conception of the meaning of life?