The Meaning of Life (and Death) in an Indifferent World

What is the purpose of life?

The most potent way to tie yourself up in knots, dive into confusion and anxiety, and, in general, become miserable in life would seem to be to ask the above question. Or, its brother - What is the meaning of life?

Once you reject the idea of existing religious frameworks providing any remotely sensible answer to the above (which would not be steeped in wishful thinking and over-simplification) you're left with... nothing.

The Indifferent "Mother"

From everything we can see, from the various scientific reports on the nature of the universe, the nature of living beings (as far as we can see), there doesn't seem to be any objective meaning or purpose of life as such.

Yup. We're (almost certainly) not here to pass a test to go to Heaven/Hell, or to become liberated from the clutches of this material world and the cycles of birth/rebirth, or for anything else in particular at all. (Unless, of course, the Flying Spaghetti Monster finally condescends to show himself and bless us all with his infinite glory.)

There doesn't seem to be any evidence that we're here to do anything other than survive. It took me a long time to accept this. Mother Nature (the beautiful, bountiful provider) doesn't give a damn about you!

Let me repeat that - Nature (or the universe or however you want to describe the world we live in) doesn't give a damn about you.



You live. No problem.

You die. No problem.

You win the lottery, find the woman of your dreams, AND have six-pack abs. No problem.

You contract AIDS, your wife/partner dies of cancer, your entire family holdings are wiped out in a single day, and a tsunami drowns out anyone else you'd ever known. And, somebody drops a nuclear bomb nearby. No problem.

Nature doesn't care. Life goes on. Even if it didn't, actually, Nature would still go on. Though, of course, you could ask all sorts of clever questions about whether things would "exist" if there were nothing to experience them and so on, but that's beside the point.

Death

We need to address head on this rather fundamental "reality" of indifference from nature. It is also connected to the phenomenon of death. What happens after death? I don't know. Neither does, I think, anybody who's alive and with us.

Whatever happens afterwards, it's important to face this rather
unsavoury prospect. Someday, you will die.

"You have to realize that someday you will DIE.
Until you know that, you are useless."

- This is your life, Fight Club

There's one common fate that we ALL share - Death.

Almost everybody agrees to that. Yet, the fact is often cushioned in our heads by some romantic ideals of Heaven / Vaikuntam and an afterlife where all the bad stuff is taken out of life and the good stuff is magnified infinitely.

Ain't any evidence to support that. From what we can surmise, this is the only life you get.


"But, c'mon... There's got to be a reason why we're all here"
  

• It can't all be for nothing...
• What is the goal of life then? If there were no Ultimate Goal in life, life would be a waste.
• What about the moral consequences? If life really is as worthless as you say it is (When did I say that?) then people can just go around killing anybody they want to and commit sins without guilt.

First of all, all I'm saying here is that there doesn't seem to be any objective universal meaning or purpose in life. What I'm saying is that "Life" as such doesn't seem to have any in-built meaning.

YOUR life, though, has plenty of meaning. It has the meaning you give it. What you choose to do, what you choose to pursue, the values you hold dear to your heart - they make your life worth living.

"I'm a 100% convinced that most of the big questions we feel compelled to face - handed down through centuries of over-thinking and mistranslation - use terms so undefined as to make attempting to answer them a complete waste of time."
- Tim Ferriss, 4HWW

And, as for sins, who decides which actions are sins and which actions are not? Most religious definitions of "sin" are laughably out-of-date. Most of what people do today would have been sacrilegious a century ago. Using a technological gadget, working on Sundays (or Saturdays, if you're Jewish), etc. was (is) sinful for Christians. Keeping women subordinated and preventing them from enjoying life half as much as men do or keeping black people as slaves didn't count as sins, though.

Remember, the idea of sin makes sense only in the context of a god and a religion. It would be useful to differentiate between a ethical code of conduct and an obnoxious, one-size-fits-all set of commandments.



Living


Anyway, everything above has simply been a denial of the (once) commonly held notions of Meaning of Life, etc. None of that denial shit does really provide any guidance towards living a "better" life or even "the Good Life".

"People say that what we are searching for is a meaning for life. I don't think that this is what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive."
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

So, given an indifferent world that couldn't give a damn about whether you "succeed" in life or not, and the reality that you and your loved ones could "pass away" any time soon, what really is a good way to live life?

The answer to the above and all such complex, ill-defined questions is one given by a professor of mine - "It depends."

What do you want, first of all?

Wealth, Fame, beautiful Girls (and/or Boys), incredible strength and stamina, tasty food...

May I suggest Happiness as the underlying thread that unites all the above?

It seems to me that it is the striving for happiness that takes us all the places we go, makes us do all the things we do and makes us think all the thoughts we think. Every single thing you do - watching TV, trying to do well in academics, trying not be seen trying to do well in academics, hanging out with friends, watching movies, trying to get a well-paying job - everything. Happiness is what you're looking for.

This isn't anything new. Every single religion I know of recognizes this. It is in their approach to achieve that state of "Eternal Happiness" that they turn out to be bogus. They take a leap from "It sure would be nice if there were some way to be happy for ever and ever" to "We are eternal and we are going to live happily ever after. In Heaven. It has to be so."

In the light of our obvious mortality, a goal of attaining Eternal Happiness may be a bit too lofty. But, from our own experience, some people do seem to be much happier than others and more consistently so.

Is there some way to be sustainably happy in life? To put it another way, how do we become the sort of person who makes, more or less, choices in life that lead to desirable outcomes?

One could say that that is precisely the definition of a Wise Person. And Philosophy (literally "Love of Wisdom" in Greek) is what studies that subject, supposedly.

Over the past several years, I've been studying and learning from various resources, some blatantly philosophical, others indirectly so, and been trying to put together more of those pieces in my life.

That is what I mean when I say Experiments in Lifestyle and Practical Wisdom. I'll expand upon those in future posts.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task."
- Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor; author of Man's Search for
Meaning.

For those whose interest was piqued, you may find http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy#Main_theories a useful guide to the various kinds of philosopohical Theories people have had in the past, ie. their takes on how to live "the Good Life".

As to whether there may or may not be a creator who has blessed us with the resources we have - just 3 words.

Flying Spaghetti Monster.
May His Noodly Appendage Grace You Always. 'nuff said.