Unsplash / @nathanfertig

Recently, when asked “What is the meaning of life?” My instinctual answer was “to oppose death.” I wasn’t quite sure why I answered that but it seemed at the time a logical and wise answer at the time. Here I will explore it and myself further.

First, let’s define ‘death’ in this context. By ‘death,’ I do not mean life that loses its life, I mean all the universe that is dead: The matter, the energy, that is not somehow matrixed into what we consider “living.” Buckle up, because if you hadn’t guessed this is going to get hard to follow rather quickly.

So, what does it mean that life exists in opposition to death, or non-life?

Before this can be answered, we must disentangle a ourselves a bit from our language. If things exist at all, then it must be that nothing exists as well. We, as mortal beings, can never get past the filter of irreducibly subjective consciousness and so our true meaning for words is slightly different person-to-person. Who is to say what I mean when I say the word “meaning”? Best I can do is describe it truest to my being. Here, too, I must point out that things and nothing are just descriptors in our language; they are antonyms and they don’t exist in reality apart from our minds.

Therefore, the question of “what is the meaning of life” really isn’t the right question in my view. It should be “Why do humans insist on a ‘meaning’ to life?” And what the heck is meaning anyways? There is no way to bring out the true essence of something than to set it against its negative space.



Say I have a theory for the sake of argument that all things, including nothing, exist. So, if death, or non-life, exists, then life must also exist. The question of ‘why’ is maybe the most interesting question that one can ask. Because when someone asks what the ‘meaning’ of something is, it instantiates and necessitates a ‘why.’ But, what does ‘why’ mean? What does it mean to have meaning? Have you ever considered how deviously unnatural the question ‘why’ is? With its implications for our perspective on the universe and our place in it? If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, I think it very likely that they have equally good words and concepts for WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW, & HOW MUCH, but of what practical use is WHY? These are all questions with practical applications that a sentient being needing to navigate their world in systems similar to ours would convergently evolve.

WHO is that alien walking over there? Do I know her? WHAT is she holding? WHEN did she get that? WHERE can I get one? HOW did she get it? & HOW MUCH effort am I willing to put in to getting one ?(the primal source of stored capital) Compare these to: WHY is she holding it? These other questions are lower order and of more practical importance, the question of ‘why’ indicates higher intelligence. A dog asks not why the hand feeds it.

Pixabay / Tombud

If you consider it closely, animals of “lesser” intelligence on Earth have their own ‘meaning,’ even if it’s not a verbal vocabulary for all of these framing questions, except WHY. ‘Who’ is more important for a social creature and ‘how’ and ‘how much’ are perhaps higher order thought frames. But evidence points to sentience being well-versed in all of these questions except that of the WHY. Why is that? Why doesn’t a dog consider why it is being fed?

If the universe exists at all in absolution, apart from our minds, is it the plenipotentiary of its own destiny? If a universe had the choice between life and non-life, which would it choose? Would it rather be a panoply of inert matter and energy or would it rather create order such that it might evolve into sentience?

Carl Sagan once said that [we] are a way for the Cosmos to know itself. We are a way for the universe to observe its own machinations. It is not enough to observe the machinations of the universe at large and ask ‘what’ and ‘when’ and ‘how,’ the universe begs of us the everlasting question of why.

In his fairytale masterpiece, P.S. Beagle wrote of the difference between beasts and men,

Rhinoceroses are not questing beasts, but young girls are.

This has stuck with me quite stubbornly through my many years since reading it — and not just because it taught me the pluralization of rhinoceros. ‘Why’ might be the most uniquely human concept of them all. If we were to meet intelligent life, even more intelligent than we, we might have to explain ‘why’ to them, and they may still never understand. They might think how strange, these meek vertical apes are, though meek of body are ample of mind. Though they do have a complex about them whereby they chase all questions down to questions’ end, as if to unravel their own riddle until they come to its end. But what is at this end? Is it their very God? And what of he — he is but a representation of they. What is this end that humans seek? This cannot and may never be understood, lest one was of the humankind.

You see, back to the idea of casting something against its negative space to bring out its true essence, humanity knows no other ‘intelligent’ life. The only life we know is restricted to Earth, and we differentiate between ‘intelligent’ and ‘non-intelligent’ life necessarily through an anthropocentric lens. We don’t have a negative space with which to compare. If we did meet other more ‘intelligent’ life and were able to communicate with them, I think we would be given the perfect mirror, another set of eyes, with which to look inward.

This obviates the question of what is the meaning of life, and leads me to my next question: Why do humans insist on a ‘meaning’ to life?

It is to this question that I have read or heard some of the most varied responses. Alan Watts, a flowery philosopher and populizer of Eastern philosophy in the West, said this of the meaning of life:

The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at. But that it is best understood by the analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say, “You play the piano,” You don’t “work the piano.”…We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at that end, and the thing was to get to that thing at that end. Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

Perhaps there is no right answer to this question, but we can all agree, I hope, that some answers are better than others. Complete nihilism — the belief that there is no meaning to life — is not a good one, for it does not arrive at a good solution to orient one’s actions in society. The point being, the meaning of life then becomes truer the extent to which it is practicable and agreed upon. The more it satisfies these criteria, the truer it really is. So in other words, for a modern analogue, the meaning of life is a contest whereby we all submit our meanings using any medium or combination of mediums we’d like. And he whose answer receives the most upvotes or retweets or followers, he hath defined the truest meaning for us. This is why the meaning to life can be found in the fidelity (or non-fidelity) of a painting, in the crescendo of music, or in the music of words. It can be found in the rhythm of dance or in the spirit of sport. And why a truth in one medium or domain always translates across them all, to the level of meta-truths.

No simple answers here. If I find them, I’ll let you know. But until then, keep questing humans…

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FAREWELL EXTANT HOMO OF THE SPECIES SAPIENS. . .

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