After considering quotes from Jean-Paul Sartre, Agatha Christie and Bob Dylan, among others, the team concluded that the most popular reason for existing was to enjoy life. At least 17% of famous thinkers supported the theory, including Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the US, and the singer Janis Joplin, who after advising "get it while you can", died of a heroin overdose in 1970.
Published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology this week, the research found the second most popular meaning of life was to "love, help or serve others" - supported by Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein and Jean Jacques Rousseau. But 13% of thinkers, including Napoleon and the physicist Stephen Hawking, concluded that life was "a mystery". A further 11%, including Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, and Joseph Conrad, decided it was "meaningless".
Even the great ones can't give a decent answer to this question. Freud, Kafka, and Conrad excepted, but we knew that already. This little survey also confirms my distate for everything Einstein said that didn't have to do with science.
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