An interesting discussion with my friend Bobby, which I am re-posting here because I think it’s interesting.
Hey Jim! How are you feeling after the booster of covid juice?
My friend, J, whose philosophies have driven him into a bout of nihilism, is struggling to find why anything matters. I briefly shared with him my personal 'aesthetic case' for meaning and significance in the world, basically that human being is an interesting phenomenon in the universe and could 'look' a lot of different ways - some 'better' than others and we influence that in some way.
It may be good fodder to chat about sometime -
He replied this morning clarifying his meaning of 'purpose' as meaning "to what end?" I replied:
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I just saw your clarification, "to what end?" This is the right question to focus on precisely because I believe it's the wrong question we all hold.
"To what end?" showcases our expectation that the universe is teleological; it, and stuff among it, is designed according to purpose and if it doesn't, it is arbitrary. This, I believe, is a grave error we have all adopted since Aristotle asserted it as one of reality's four causes. It also allows the notion of an ultimate purpose, which drives smart men to nihilism, partly because answering with God doesn't solve the arbitrariness. Plato had Euthyphro underscore this.
My view:
If the universe is computational in nature, then the question isn't "What is?" but "What's happening?" It views each moment of reality as a frontier of cycles of computation, processing forward. Reality describes a generative, self-evolving engine. A lot of stuff looks like it stays the same because some computation ensembles generate an equilibrium state, locations of homeostasis. Likewise, interacting frontiers can render new niches of reality for other computations to exploit, generating stuff that never was.
I think for us humans, our instincts to create and protect some stuff and stop others who'd impair that stuff betray our Aristotelian philosophies, and that's good. When we, say, want to stop the Woke or Puritanical Religiosos from infecting culture, for example, we see their potential impact on a destiny yet to be made. We see ourselves on the frontier of human being continually being written. I think this is right.
I see you as a distinctive hypothesis of human being; your each enactment in the world entails your distinctive signature that just may become indelible upon the next cycles.
And, those early humans who lacked these instincts never arrived. Nature selected them out. We are the inheritors of the instincts that change the future. We matter.
So, for me, when considering Purpose, instead of asking "to what end?," the question I prefer to ask is, "What's next?"
My reply:
Interesting problem and interesting timing. First, I have been a bit down from the second shot, though it didn’t hit me as hard as the first vaccination.
As for the problem of what’s the meaning of existence? Very interesting question. I’m going through a tough period right now for a wide variety of reasons. Much of which is that my life went so utterly differently than I planned and intended it to be.
I had a very difficult night last night struggling with those feelings. Most animals are well content with their existence is as long as they are comfortable and fed. That is enough. We humans seek a deeper meaning. You’re right that Aristotle made it a critical part of our general philosophy, but after all, he was just reflecting the reality of the human brain. We are so good at seeking patterns that we seek patterns and meaning in everything, including our own lives.
When we lived in Oklahoma, which means I was either five or six, I had a terrible meltdown and I remember standing in the doorway of the bedroom shouting at my mother, “I wish I’d never been born.”
The woman was shocked that a child so young saying that and told me, “But then you wouldn’t be here. There wouldn’t be a you. And I said,”Yes that’s what I wish.”
I understood full well what I meant, but I didn’t know how to articulate it at that young age.
All my childhood I was torn by the fact that the world such a vile horrible place and I didn’t want to live in such a vile horrible place. It was also during that period in Oklahoma that I first suddenly realized that I was going to die and it was evitable and it was no escaping it. That despair was the most significant contributing factor. This is the sort of thing that usually gets to a person in their 20s or 30s. But for me it when I was five or six.
Even I remember the moment it happened. I was dreaming one of those very vivid dreams I’ve had all my life which are so real that they are as real as any other memory. Dreams I called dreamtime dreams in my own distorted version of the indigenous religion of Australia. In the dream there was a beautiful hill, which I was gazing down upon from above, as a group of mourners were going up carrying a casket. And I knew in the dream that I was dead. They were burying me. Two beautiful angels came down from heaven to carry my soul up to heaven because that’s what I’ve been taught happened, They reached down to hug the soul drifting up from the coffin. And nothing happened. They reached down to strain and struggle, but nothing happened. There was no soul. They turned to heaven and I woke up in terror.
Young as I was, I realized that if I had never been born I would never exist and then I would never have to go to the horror of getting old and dying. Of course, it was also clear to me that it was too late. I wasn’t suicidal. After all, I feared dying. However, if I had never been born, I wouldn’t be there to be afraid.
As a parent now after all these years I realize how hard this must have been my mother, especially since she had told us when we were older that she was never supposed to have another child. The doctors had told her not to. My brother’s birth had been difficult for her and she was told not to take the risk of getting pregnant again.
(Interesting side story there because I think this contributed to her poor relationships with both my brother and me when we became adults. I think she wanted to take the chance to have another child because she was rather desperate to have a girl. This would explain how she could turn away from her sons and toward their first wives, and at the same time reject their second wives. Her first daughters-in-law became the girls she always wanted.)
So with this despairing situation so critical a part of the human psychology, we all seek to have some meaning and purpose in this horrible existence. We feel lost and desperate. However, as you pointed out, if we could only be warriors for God fighting a mighty battle suddenly we are incredibly significant and powerful beings. Joining a religion is like joining a militia. Suddenly you’re not a nobody or a loser, you are part of the glorious crusade to… fill in the blank.
The other side of it is that if you do accept the universe as a material reality in which the random fluctuations of probability and chance rule, then what’s the point of our existence? Even if you were William Shakespeare or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, what does it all matter a million years from now? Or two million. Or one billion. Or many trillion after the heat death of the universe?
I’ve struggled with that issue and answered it in various ways at different times of my life. Ultimately what I’ve come to conclude is that you simply must create your own meaning. The happiness and joy you feel is real. It may be fleeting, but it is real. So are the pain and grief. The function, the purpose we have is to make the world as much a better place as much and as much more enjoyable a place as we can. Not just for ourselves and our own, but for everyone. All right, in a billion years who will remember? Nevertheless, we added to this cold and indifferent universe, even if for a brief time, real joy, real pleasure.
From many this will not be enough. However, I think it must be enough.
Let me repeat once again that if we are highest perfection in this world that God could create then God is an incredibly bad creator and we are an incredibly hideous failure.
On the other hand, if we are apes who have risen up by pulling on our own evolutionary bootstraps, what we have accomplished is remarkable and we have reason to be proud of it.
Of course I would rather be part of a great heroic crusade and lived my life as I intended it, but even if those options had been accomplished, would it really matter in the history of the universe? There really aren’t any good answers, except that everyone must make their own sense of purpose and reality. One of the reasons I am offended by what I refer to as the fundamentalist evangelical atheists is that they insist on taking away the comfort that some people have found. They want to strip them of their meaning of life because the crusading atheist extremist is seeking his own meaning by destroying the meaning of others.
I doubt this will be of any help to anyone. It’s just the story of how I worked things out. However, I think you’ll find it interesting.
Let me end by noting that, for all the depression, trouble, and stress that I sometimes feel, when I’m with my family or friends and times are good, life is joyful and beautiful and very worth living. At those times there is no question in my mind. It is good to be alive. It is good to be here.
There’s a reason that I enjoy the philosophy of Epicurus and the book of Ecclesiastes.
Now to put it or to put it a bit more poetically,
The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
-- Omar Khayyam
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