The Meaning of Life?

[peter]

The answer to this 'what is' perennial chestnut is of course that life has no 'meaning' per se - or at least not one that can be put into a pithy catch-phrase that can be wheeled out at parties or when the lunch-break discussion at work turns a little heavy.

But that is not the end of the story by any means, because life does have a meaning - just not of the kind that the question presupposes. Because life in fact has as many meanings as ever there were people who wanted to consider the question. no - more! As many as there were people who ever lived .......... because the answer is that as reasoning, thinking beings, we have each been given the power to find our own meaning in life - and this is a wonderful thing.

But this is not going to satisfy you is it?

What you want is an answer. What is the meaning of life? It's a simple question, and in the face of the daily battles you face simply to survive, what you want is something concrete; something to give it all, well, meaning. You have earned it!

Okay. It's a fair point. So let's give it a go.

I'm going to cheat just a little and rather than give you meaning, I'm going to give you purpose. Will that do? Is the purpose of life interchangeable with the meaning of life in this context? You've got to admit that at the least, it's a pretty good second place! So - what is the purpose of life? [That sounds pretty good, like an 'important question' of sorts.]

Well, here's the thing. You've been allotted a period of time on this place - you didn't ask for it but here you are. It's a place of beauty, of wonder, but it has at base, a brutal side. Life, I'm afraid, is suffering. The Buddha knew this and it remains as true today as it was when he realised it. It's a hard, hard ask for you as well as for everyone around you.

But you are a free agent. You have this time, and you can make of it what you will [or if not what you will, at least what you can]. So what are you going to do? Are you going to go through life looking out for number one, and beggar the rest? Are you going to go around spreading discord and pain? Or are you going to try, if you can, to leave the world just a little better than when you found it.

Now on the face of it, this 'leaving the world better' sounds a hard ask - a bit 'presumptuous' for most of us - but it is not so. Because the leaving the world better is not done - or if it is, it is done so only rarely - by the great events. Rather it is achieved in the main by the accumulation of the small. The small drops of kindness that flow together to form a river, then an ocean of goodness upon which we all can float.

This is what it means to be a human being; and by all means, fail at anything you like - fail at everything - but do not fail at this. Do not fail at being a human being. Never cease to look at the world with compassion, to look at the suffering of your fellow human beings [and indeed the whole of the Creation] with anything other than the care it warrants. Keep adding the drops of kindness.

Because if we all do this, each one of us in our own small way, working to leave the world a better place, then person by person, generation by generation by generation, together we rise up - we defeat the suffering that is the base-line of the place we found ourselves in and we triumph. This is the reason you are here; this is the task we have been given and why we have been given the very special tools we have as human beings, in order to achieve it.

To defeat suffering. This is the purpose of life.

And if you ask why this should be so, why we have been put to this task, I would reply, "Tssk - The desirability of the ending of suffering needs no qualifying with an explanation of why!"

[Well - it works for me. ]

[Avatar]

Life's only purpose is to strive.



--A

[peter]

But to strive towards what?

[Fist and Faith]

I never tire of this. I've posted it several times before.

Arguably, the best thing that the world of comic books has ever produced is a twelve-issue series called Watchmen. In it is a character named Rorschach. We learn his origin in issue #6. It started with a childhood of abuse. And Kitty Genovese's murder helped shape it. It all came together when he was trying to rescue a little girl who had been kidnapped. When he found the kidnapper's house, he found out that the girl had been killed, butchered, and fed to the dogs. Rorschach handcuffed the man to a pipe, and set the house on fire. He left a saw with the man, but told him that he'd never be able to cut through the cuffs in time. Implying that, if he wanted to live, he'd have to cut his own hand off. Then he went outside to watch the scene. Here's how he describes that moment:

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Blood stain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hellbound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach.

[wayfriend]

There is no purpose devised for a human before he is born. Who is there to devise it? No one.

But it is the nature of man to imagine that he has a purpose, and to ponder his purpose, and to decide what it is, and then act on it. Who is to say that this purpose is less divine than one devised before he is born? It is more, because it is self-chosen.

But it is also the nature of man that each one decides on a different purpose. Can any man's purpose be more valid than another's? No. There is no purpose for mankind, only for men, divine but divided. And from this seed arises strife and pain and wasted potential.

But there is one thing that is true for all humans. And that is: Life is a Gift. The only purpose of a Gift is to bring you joy. If one's unique, self-decided, divine purpose includes one's own joy, then one has not squandered the Gift. And if it can encompass fellow humans finding their own joy, then it becomes not just divine, but holy, because it becomes what we imagine is God's purpose.

[Fist and Faith]

I think we need to separate meaning and purpose. The purpose of Life Is Life. The passing on of genetic material. Your own is the most important. Then comes your immediate family's, which is, basically, your own. Then your extended family's, then community, on and on up to species. On and on, through genus, then phylum, up to Kingdom, up to life. The purpose of Life Is Life.

The individual has no purpose as an individual. Look at the octopus. Mom lays her eggs. Then she sits on them for months. She doesn't move. At all. For months. She stays right on top of them, covering them with her body, squirting water over them so they get the oxygen they need. She doesn't go look for food. She just sits there, wasting away. When they hatch, she dies of malnutrition. Unless predators come along before that. In which case, she remains covering the eggs as the predators tear her to pieces. Giving them something of a meal, making sure as many of her eggs as possible hatch. And the genetic material goes on.

Look at species like ants and bees. The majority of members of a colony play no role in passing on genetic material. Their role is to ensure the survival of the queen, who passes on the genetic material. They sacrifice themselves , if necessary, to protect the queen. Any number of them can die. As long as the queen survives, and brings about another generation, all is well.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I learned this in Catechism class when I was, like, 8.

<curmudgeonly groan>

Okay, people, once again from the top, as a refresher.

[samrw3]

I suspect you may get more robust groans then from me Wosbald.

I found that a little interesting but from religious perspective it still does not answer the fundamental question of why life on this Earth?

Could God not set aside some portion in the cosmos where we could accomplish those things without obtaining a body and having life as it is? That way we would still be seperate from God but not have to deal with bodily/earthly ordeals? Or in short why are our bodies so important - which leads back to why this life as it is set up now so important?

I have studies religion some and the only answer I have gotten so far to that question is we don't know yet.

Yes some religous thought is we had to have bodies to display we could overcome the desires or a carnal flesh. Thus, the Earth is no more than a big testing ground (oversimplified but basic level). But this still misses the mark a little - what is the point for this Earth and bodies for the people that never had the chance to learn about God and - now picking on you a little Wosbald - but just make a point - the Catholic version of God.

There are millions of people born in past and currently that never had the chance to know about a Christian God because of their remote location or centuries of their religious teachings that teach them some version of Supreme Being of whatever kind. What is the purpose of their life if they can never know the Catholic or Christian God? Yes they may have heard of it - but no true method to really have chance to beleive or accept. Certainly they still have a purpose or a meaning for life?

I think to me then the underlying meaning is to learn from each other,learn from the physical surroundings, learn to enjoy the beauties and contribute in whatever we we can to make the area we live in and the people we are with better or striving to be better.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I suspect you may get more robust groans then from me Wosbald.

[…]

That was s'posed to be me groaning curmudgeonly, not the Close Crew.







EDIT: Oops. I misread your post. I get it now. You understood me right properly from the git-go.

Carry on.

[peter]

I don't buy the genetic purpose thing; there can be no purpose in any meaningful sense of the word down at that level of organisation. This is why I think Dawkins "selfish gene" idea is bollocks. Purpose and meaning can only be introduced at the level where conscious contemplation of the concepts can be carried out - that is at the highest level of higher brain function. There can be no purpose or meaning down at the level of single isolated strings of chemicals - not unless they are networking in a way that physics has yet no conception of.

Science has been positively hilarious to watch in it's writhings and contortions to avoid the inevitable conclusion that there exists in the universe a teleological aspect, an order and purpose toward which this is all directed. That the wonders that science uncovers by its smashing of butterflies could simply 'arrange themselves' by chance (up to and including the most amazing thing of all - the human mind) has taken effort of epic proportions on the behalf of the discipline. So great the fear of appearing in any way 'ideaistic' to their colleagues and contemporaries, so dire the need to prove themselves the most 'materialist of the materialists' that it has spawned and given headroom to the most arrent nonsense (such as the aforementioned selfish gene theory) in its attempts to avoid the most obvious of truths - that we live in a universe of direction. That we progress.

Now I'm aware that this raises questions of its own - no-one said that the idea was simple - but if as much effort had been put into exploring the possibility (no - call it phenomenon), as wriggling around to avoid it, then chances are we would be much further on than we are, mired as science is, on its blinkered materialistic tramlines.

Once the possibility of purpose is introduced at a universal level, the nihilism of scientific materialist thinking is swept away in a stroke, and the questions of meaning and purpose at the human/life level immediately bloom to the full significance that they deserve and present themselves as diamonds for our worthy contemplation.

Meanwhile the blind man of Science blunders on and on, heaping destruction upon destruction, and now has the temerity to tell us that we are to blame.......

[Fist and Faith]

I'm saying purpose and meaning are different things. The purpose of life is life. The meaning of my life is what I decide the meaning of my life is. I think a degree of consciousness/awareness that is lacking in non-humans (at least the non-humans we know about) is required for meaning to exist. A tree; a forest: an ant; an ant colony; a bird; a flock of birds; a dolphin; a pod of dolphins... I don't think meaning applies to any of them.

If the universe is teleological, then the purpose of life may be to bring about consciousness. (Many pages to be read in Z's thread on this topic.) But that's life's purpose, not its meaning.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[…]

If the universe is teleological, then the purpose of life may be to bring about consciousness. …

Upon what principle — what "sufficient reason" — does one base a Cosmic telos?

For in lieu of a principled basis, Ray Brassier — a self-described "Transcendental Nihilist" and founding member of the loose-knit Speculative Realism school — is able, with equal cogency, to counterargue …

• that Human existence, rather than being a "Gift" as WF says above, is actually a Curse.
• that Self-Awareness is an evolutionary wrong-turn — an abominable expulsion from the Natural Order.
• that, in contrast to the Natural placidity of the animal mind, Self-Awareness' contemplation of its own impending death introduces pointless suffering to the Cosmos (a position which, incidentally, has influenced the Anti-Natalist moral position [the "better never to have been born" school] which argues against inflicting the meaningless anguish of existence on a new generation).
• that the impending heat-death of the Universe will ineluctably extinguish all information, thus wholly nihilating all pretense to meaning — the only telos for the Universe being the silence of the grave.

[Fist and Faith]

[_]If the universe is teleological, then the purpose of life may be to bring about consciousness. _

Upon what principle - what "sufficient reason" - does one base a Cosmic telos?

Peter? Upon what is "the inevitable conclusion that there exists in the universe a teleological aspect, an order and purpose toward which this is all directed" based

[*]that Human existence, rather than being a "Gift" as WF says above, is actually a Curse.

An opinion with which I disagree. As H.I. McDunnough said:
"Every day we kept a child out of the world was a day he might later regret having missed."

[*]that Self-Awareness is an evolutionary wrong-turn - an abominable expulsion from the Natural Order.

That's nonsense. Literally. It arose from/with the Natural Order. It is part of the Natural Order.

[*]that, in contrast to the Natural placidity of the animal mind, Self-Awareness' contemplation of its own impending death introduces pointless suffering to the Cosmos (a position which, incidentally, has influenced the Anti-Natalist moral position [the "better never to have been born" school] which argues against inflicting the meaningless anguish of existence on a new generation).

Yin/Yang. Suffering only exists because of the joy that is also possible.

[*]that the impending heat-death of the Universe will ineluctably extinguish all information, thus wholly nihilating all pretense to meaning - the only telos for the Universe being the silence of the grave.[/list]

I don't have to wait nearly that long. Meaning ends when my life does. But that's irrelevant. Meaning does not have to last forever to be meaning.

[peter]

Well - it's just the way it is innit Fist? It's 'the vibe'!



But seriously, much of my above post was said not so much because I believe it, but because these are the arguments that have to be confronted if we are to accept the 'matter before mind' approach to universe building- and to date I don't believe that they have been addressed in anything like a convincing way. Our current explanation for the works of Shakespeare is the room full of chimpanzees and typewriters given a big chunk of time. Paley might be mocked, there might be blind watchmakers by the score, but emergence is not explained, that we are here and not not here remains, and before our eyes on the path lies a universe without explanation. In a court of law today in front of twelve men good and true Teilhard de Chardin would win the day and Dawkins would be taken down.

In respect of Wos's difficult author, I don't think his position can be entirely overlooked. The bestowal of life, of consciousness, is not a universal gift. Time and chance happen to all. To many are born into world of never-ending pain for this naive position to be maintained. And (giving it an idealist twist) having no knowledge of from what (possibly more exalted) position we have been plucked in order to buy a ticket in the lottery of life, and the shocking hands that some poor individuals are dealt, the position becomes even more tenable.

[Zarathustra]

Let's look at the facts:

1. We are literally the universe waking up to itself.
2. We create purpose(s) and meaning(s).
3. The universe, through us, creates purpose and meaning.
4. This would not be an actuality if it were not first possible.
5. Something can only be a possibility if there are underlying principles/laws/structures that not only allow this possibility to "lurk in the realm of the potential," but also delineate the way in which it can become an actuality.

Therefore, the universe possesses fundamental, general principles that are both the possibility and the actuality of purpose/meaning. There's your "cosmic telos." It's a demonstrable fact.

Now, does this mean that the universe has A Purpose? A Meaning? Or just whatever purposes/meanings we devise? I'm open to either. I don't think we have enough information to know yet. Maybe all life everywhere in the universe tends to zero in on the same purpose, or maybe purposes, like life, undergo natural selection, weeding out the ones that don't reproduce well. Memetic evolution.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Let's look at the facts:

1. We are literally the universe waking up to itself.

[…]

Well, this is the Universe signing-off.

Nitey-nite, y'all.

[peter]

Good post Z. Like it.

Taking your five points;

1. Are there possibly other ways that the universe could (or might be) wake (waking) up to itself. Not just in terms of other life events distanced from ours, but in ways we have no conception of because they have simply not yet emerged in our limited spot or stage of development in the universe (and perhaps they never will).

2. We certainly can create purpose and meaning for ourselves, and it's good enough for most people as far as it goes; but taking it a bit further we are thinking perhaps more in terms of all-encompassing purpose and meaning rather than individual. Does that exist (even if we can't get to fathom out what it/they actually are)?

3. Do you mean insofar as we create it for ourselves, or in some broader way?

4. This figures.

5. From whence does these "principles" arise? Are they hardwired into the basic nature of 'being'? Are they random? Deliberate? The questions keep getting deeper until they threaten to drown you.

And assuming we have this cosmic telos demonstrated before us - to what 'omega point' does it tend? Here surely, is where we would find our overarching purpose/meaning (with apologies to Fist who rightly and consistently pointed out that the two are not the same thing! ).

Night Wos - love the graphics!

[Avatar]

But to strive towards what?

Sustenance and procreation.

--A

[Zarathustra]

Wos, you don't have to tell us that you are the sleepy part of the universe. That much is clear. Sleep well. But one day you should also try waking up.

[Zarathustra]

Good post Z. Like it.

Taking your five points;

1. Are there possibly other ways that the universe could (or might be) wake (waking) up to itself. Not just in terms of other life events distanced from ours, but in ways we have no conception of because they have simply not yet emerged in our limited spot or stage of development in the universe (and perhaps they never will).

Surely there must be other ways that the universe can evolve into consciousness, i.e. 'wake up to itself.' We can't be so arrogant to assume we're the only way. But I have no information on this.

2. We certainly can create purpose and meaning for ourselves, and it's good enough for most people as far as it goes; but taking it a bit further we are thinking perhaps more in terms of all-encompassing purpose and meaning rather than individual. Does that exist (even if we can't get to fathom out what it/they actually are)?

I addressed that at the end of my post.

3. Do you mean insofar as we create it for ourselves, or in some broader way?

No, just insofar we we create it for ourselves. I was trying to speak factually, not speculatively. But "for ourselves" is enough, because we are literally parts of the universe, specifically, those parts of the universe that knows itself. So our purposes are also the universe's purposes.

5. From whence does these "principles" arise? Are they hardwired into the basic nature of 'being'? Are they random? Deliberate? The questions keep getting deeper until they threaten to drown you.

I don't know. But maybe the universe itself is conscious on a deep, pervasive level, and it keeps finding ways to sharpen this focus in order to do specific tasks that wouldn't otherwise arise out of natural, random events. Or maybe Being itself comes with this possibility automatically, as a condition of being something rather than nothing. 'To be' could simply be the potential to be self-referential. The condition of being actual means that you have an impact on what's around you; and you are one of those things.

And assuming we have this cosmic telos demonstrated before us - to what 'omega point' does it tend? Here surely, is where we would find our overarching purpose/meaning (with apologies to Fist who rightly and consistently pointed out that the two are not the same thing! ).

As I said, I don't know. Whatever it wants?

Surely the meaning of all this is not so that some god can have beings to worship it. Surely our purpose is greater than sitting around for an eternity telling god how great he is. If *that's* our purpose, then god is the one who needs to ask himself what his purpose is. Sounds like a pointless existence to me.

Maybe we're just the hobby of a bored, purposeless god. Some entertainment. Reality TV on the grandest scale.