by Patrick Sharkey

Created on: July 07, 2010

 Satire, yes satire, taking the commonplace notions within culture, masticating the ideas of masses and have it mangled to absurdity and therein make it closer to it's truer nature, which invariably is a confusing, multi-coloured, diffusing and indefinable mess.  Herein lies the crux however: satire has meaning and this is indisputable, otherwise it wouldn't be suggested as a topic, wouldn't be studied by literature students and wouldn't be the central focus for those of us who sit around in rooms smoking weed and needing stimulus for laughter.  So even the title "Satire: meaning of life" provides a powder keg of meaning with just two of the words (which aren't even parts of the same clause.) Go to any bar and start talking of your favourite satirical comedy, anyone who likes it will most probably engage you in a guffaw infused quote off, exemplifying the meaning this particular manifestation of satire has for each of you.  This is just the meaning of satire, and arbitrary, and thus integral to my main point...wait for it. Now time for the main subject "life".  THE meaning of life is paradoxical.  Here's why. as I have illustrated meaning is integral in satire, this follows in writing about satire, then as my gaze roves significance rings it's bells at the five pounds next to me, my stereo, my sofa, my girlfriend, my football, and my mind wanders to lasso meaning from my childhood, the stories of each book on my shelf, scars, pains, loves, hates, and the list continues beyond the mere horizon of immediate life. All have significance and all have meaning.  So the meaning of life is the unifying concept we employ for all the individual atoms of significance which amalgamate to a concept of being alive, a.k.a having life.  The singular meaning of life is the multifarious and intrisically intangible complexity that is life, and so is a paradox and to find the meaning of your life is merely to achieve a knowledge of what has meaning to you, and this is easy as if it has been stored within your mind then it would have had significance.  It is integral in effective memory storage that something has meaning as Psychology: A students handbook (2000) illustrates based on an eminent psychologist Ericsson's studies (1988)  which highlight the importance of meaning in memory, one of the most effective way of remembering is "Meaningful encoding: the information should be processed meaningfully, relating to pre-existing knowledge."  Thus, based on previous knowledge, the ideas and connections that are you're working base for personality, if it relates significantly and has meaning to that base it is better stored, and therefore to find it is naturally easier, thus what has meaning to you is what is most apparent and is in fact a psychological neccessity and what makes an adult an individual.  So if you question just what life means, realise you are a person who has countless iota's of meaning as part of your fundamental nature as a human, and also spurns meaning in others through contact (If anyone has ever stopped you in the street to say hello, they have remebered you, and they have done that through a significance you imposed upon their psyche).  So pursue meaning in all it's forms, and if you don't then you cease to be as human as you can be, but as for "The meaning of life" there is no simple answer as life goes from singular celled amoeba to the intangible processing power of the neo-cortex.

Therefore, if you perceive meaning in any form then life has meaning, and this is the meaning of life.   Yet you can increase it. Just because life has meaning doesn't mean it couldn't mean more.

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