One question raised in the Monsters and Ourselves unit that I find particularly interesting is the question about whether all life has a purpose. I took this question to mean why do we live, and what is the reason, the purpose, of our living? I would answer this question as such: If we look at all life excluding human life, (animals and other living organisms, that sort of thing) I think most people could agree that the purpose of these lives is to survive for as long as possible and to create the following generation. Not exceptionally glorious, but logical. Personally, I believe that all life has this purpose. And I do mean all life- that means you too, humanity. However, I would be willing to bet that most people would not be rushing to agree with me, to agree that something so basic could be the purpose of every human life. I think the reason for this is that society has ingrained in us the idea that we all have our own individual purpose to fulfill, that humanity is much more special than your average life form, and that we all have a higher purpose- a more alluring purpose in life than to merely survive and reproduce. Personally, I think that this is just a story we tell ourselves so that we might feel better about facing the hardships in our lives, which is why I realize that the majority of people would be unwilling to admit that this is the sole purpose of their existence. I acknowledge this because even I sometimes want to be assured that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, that there is more to life than living just for the sake of living. So to sum up, I believe that if we don’t acknowledge our most basic purpose, then we each individually decide our own purpose in life.
This question made me think of The Stranger, because I was fascinated by Meursault. He is the one character that did, in fact, live for the sake of living. He did not seem to aspire to anything greater or "better" than what he already had. He did not pretend to feel something that he did not actually feel, as we saw when his mother passed. He just felt what he felt and did what he felt like doing. He just lived.