We often ask ourselves one (or some) of the big questions like; do our lives have meaning? Is life worth living? What do our goals and accomplishments amount to if our life culminates in death? Can we live without a meaning or a purpose? There is no one monolithic answer to any of these questions which could be comforting to some and disquieting to others.

The answers –to these questions– may vary not only in detail but also in substance and perspective. Some have taken to comforting (most often illusory) answers –may it be religious or secular. Some may decide to evade these questions, brushing them off as unanswerable or imponderable. Some see them for what they are and subsequently live their lives in accordance with their harsh implications.

I’m not attempting to answer these questions on behalf of anyone. Rather, I’m going to cast light on the human predicament and how a realistic view of the world and our place in it may dumb down the optimism under which many people live and operate. If we can perceive reality unadulteratedly, we may reevaluate some (if not all) of our viewpoints and change some of our attitudes.

Meaning of life

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” David Benatar

Many (If not all) of us reflect on the meaning of our lives (or try to search for one). To some, it’s just a cursory thought and to others it’s enduring. Existential questions can lead to existential crises (An existential crisis is a full-scale realization) which –depending on the individual– may take a considerable toll on someone’s mental well-being. Whereas an existential question could perturb someone, it could be liberating to someone else (Having realized the transience or the absurdity of life, some people may take it less seriously).

Our very existence (or coming into existence to be more accurate) is a series of contingencies. All the odds have been against our coming into existence down to the moments our parents had coitus which resulted in our conception. And once we have defeated all these odds – winning the lottery of coming into existence – we are doomed to die someday. Death looms over all our accomplishments and halts the continuation of our pleasures and enjoyment.

Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, there are objective facts –leaving aside for now how we should look at them– which we can’t deny. We live in a vast universe that is apathetic to our existence and by extension our suffering in it. From a cosmic perspective, all of the humans’ endeavors are no different from a hamster on its wheel. Cosmically, they are utterly insignificant. The greatest terrestrial achievement remains futile beyond earth. We should be honest enough to acknowledge that.

Some people may repudiate this conclusion, asserting that we are cosmically significant for a secular or religious (divine) reason. This reason is, at best, unverifiable and inaccessible. A cheery (self-important) secular reason is we are the universe’s mind. We are the thinking entity of this universe (leaving aside the negligence to consider the possibility of plenty of other intelligent lives). We get to reflect on and study its nature and this is our cosmic significance. We can see, right away, the flaw with this anthropocentric thinking.

One religious reason would be to serve God(s) which makes us seem like puppets and God is the puppet master. It makes us mere ends to feed God’s gigantic ego. Another one is that God(s) created the universe for us as some kind of test or trial in order to see how we are going to behave in this life so He can establish his final judgment of us in the next one. Apart from the salient self-importance imported by this claim – creating that vast universe for just us – it fails to answer the main question (The meaning of life).

Meaninglessness

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning” Henry Miller

Our lives are not pre-assigned with a meaning or a purpose. No one is born with a preexisting meaning imprinted on her/his genes. In other words, our lives are purposeless and meaningless until we ascribe meaning and purpose to them. Meaning in life is not embedded in the fabric of space-time (unless someone decides to make such an asinine claim). The concept of a meaningful life is quintessentially subjective with some variations.

Now, in order to determine a meaning for our lives we, first, have to specify the perspective from which we are looking. There are many perspectives and it will help to imagine them forming a spectrum, at one end a cosmic perspective (which I discussed earlier) and at the other end an individual perspective and with some other perspectives in between (Which I’m going to discuss now). Life doesn’t have to be meaningful from every perspective as long as it’s so from at least one.

Meaningful life

“Who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” Fredrick Nietzsche

All accounts which try to define a meaningful life are predicated on subjectively selected standards. A meaningful life is attainable from an individual perspective (Unless someone thinks that life can’t have a meaning at all; like a nihilist). Once someone sets a goal or decides to live his/her life in a particular way, their lives become meaningful. Meaning needn’t have intrinsic value (I personally don’t know how can something have an intrinsic value without our subjective evaluation of it).

We may not see all lives as equally meaningful. Let’s take for example a famous scientist who adds valuable contributions to our understanding of, let’s say, nature and a regular clerk who does nothing more than signing papers and stacking them away. From a broader perspective (a communal perspective) or still broader (humanitarian perspective) the scientist’s life is obviously more meaningful than the clerk’s. But from an individual perspective, they are equally meaningful. But judging from the broadest perspective (a cosmic one), they are both meaningless.

Some people may find their life meaningful for being supportive, care-taking, and nurturing of others. Some may find it so in serving their local community, religious cause, or country. It’s not hard to find or more accurate to create value out of something, once you realize that things are not intrinsically meaningful or valuable. It’s a matter of what they can be used for and how can this be of any benefit.

Conclusion

“As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.” Viktor E. Frankl

Life is inherently meaningless. This shouldn’t shock a lot of people. We try to device different coping mechanisms to deal with the harsh reality we live in, and the fact that we find ourselves stranded here on a tiny speck in a spacious indifferent universe. Our coming into existence is highly unlikely but our death is certain.

All our strivings and endeavors, whatever they amount to, come to an end. The legacy most of us toil to leave behind or the progeny we spend a great deal on raising will all be gone sometime in the future (this is the case for most people). It’s a waste of time to ask what is the meaning of life while you are the answer. And always remember “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”― Albert Camus

I was inspired the idea of this blog by David Benatar’s book “The human predicament: A Candid Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions”. It is worth reading and I hope you find it informative and enlightening as I did. Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to recommend me books for future reviews. All the bold italicized sentences are the author’s words.

Links

Here is a link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Predicament-Candid-Biggest-Questions/dp/0190633816 My previous blog: http://thekahrbashow.com/index.php/2020/03/02/coming-into-existence-16/ My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Kahrba2019/ My Twitter account: https://twitter.com/abdo_kahrbaaa22 fbclid=IwAR2p26cV5mxDnZyLFCJLyspra3pqFU3HGSwkX_acZ_nkCtfY25qLF-eLyP8 For donations, My Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13017204, and my PayPal account: https://www.paypal.me/kahrbaa?locale.x=en_US

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