The Meaning of Life(1)

Despite this not being a proper platform to express my views on, I would like to elaborate on my philosophy to the few, or potentially none,who read this and will begin by tackling a question that's so common, yet so intricate.

The first and foremost thing I would like to tackle is the question, 'What is living?'. Could it be the possession of a consciousness, but then comes the question, what is consciousness.

Could it be the ability to think, to process events around us. I firmly doubt so as with that definition, a machine would have a consciousness too, as it is able to sense its surrounding to a certain extent, and be able to process simple logic questions, such as arithmetic. Maybe, it could be the ability to have free thoughts, meaning, the ability to pursue one's own thoughts without the preset direction of others. However, I doubt this would be true either as any thought we have a has been manafactured by everything around us.

For example, let's consider a child. We cannot call it a blank slate as it has already been effected by the factors such as it's genetics, and it's memories may start forming from the first thing it has ever touched. As the child grows older, it has formed no definite thoughts of his own, as it's memory is made up all the people and environmental factors around it, and before the memories, it was influenced by it's genetics, the situation of its family and it's birthing conditions. So, we cannot call the child its own, individual being, rather, it is an amalgamation of all the things that have existed in its life, and it's thoughts are too, making the thoughts, not free, but rather, a product of every event in its life. The same could be said for its parents, and all their ancestors, thus, making this definition illegitimate.

This, would then make a any person, no different from a machine, as it too, does its actions with a preset line of codes. So we can either state that there is no consciousness, or to a certain extent, everything has a consciousness.