I both completely agree and disagree with this idea. It all depends on how you define meaning and/or purpose.
Is life meaningless? Does life have no purpose? In a sense, yes. Life on this earth has no meaning. If our star went supernova tomorrow (Don't worry, it won't),and every life form on this entire planet was obliterated, it would barely be a noticeable event in the universe. It simply wouldn't matter, it would just be the universe going about it's normal movements. Stars explode every day. I would venture to guess that you don't spend a lot of time caring about any life that could be orbiting those stars.
Scientists expect that the star Betelgeuse, a red giant, is going to go supernova sometime within the next million years. Meaning that it is actually possible that it could happen tomorrow, or that it has already happened. If it did happen and we could somehow know that it had destroyed a civilization similar to ours, would you care? Would you feel any empathy for them? If we saw Betelgeuse explode tomorrow I don't imagine there would be any response other than scientific excitement.
Your life does not really matter, at least not to the universe
But it does matter. It matters to me. Life matters to those that live it.
It may not be of any cosmic or theological significance whether or not I take care of my children. It is true that if I didn't take care of them and they died of neglect that it wouldn't make much difference in the universe, or even maybe the world. But it would matter to me and to them. As a parent it literally hurts me to see my children hurt. I cannot imagine consciously causing them pain. I have caused them pain before inadvertently and didn't enjoy it at all. It made me and my children both worse off.
Life may not matter in any sort of cosmic sense, but since I am here and living it I may as well make it the best life I can. I may as well not hurt myself and the people I love and try to give them the best experience I can. I may as well try to make the world better for the life that is on it. I may as well do the things that I enjoy and the things that make me happy. I may as well be the person that I feel I am and not live a lie.
Let me give an analogy. Suppose your parents take you to an amusement park when you are a child. They tell you that if you are really good, if you don't fight with your siblings, if you don't beg for things you can't have, etc, that they will take you to your favorite restaurant every day for the rest of your life.
So you do your best to do exactly what your parents say. Everything seems to be going well and you are having a great time.
Around lunchtime you overhear your parents talking to each other about the fact that they have no intention of ever paying out the promised reward. They are just manipulating you into being good. (I know, your parents in this scenario are evil, but just go with it.) What do you do now?
You could get angry at your parents and demand to be taken home. You could be mean to your siblings to get back at your parents. You could refuse to enjoy the amusement park anymore. Or, you could just enjoy the fact that you are in a fun place and have a great time the rest of the day and worry about getting angry afterwards.
Even if there is no real reward after this life, even if there is no afterlife and the only thing that happens to us after death is that get buried in the ground and literally turn back into dust, we can still enjoy the life we have here.
We can try to make it a good life for as many of us as possible.
We can love each other, not because we think we will be rewarded for doing so, but because we want to live in a world where people love each other.
We can take care of each other for the same reason.
We can enjoy beauty, art, music, nature, science, and anything else that we enjoy. We do not need an afterlife or a god to have purpose. We should, instead, worry about finding our own purpose for the life we know we have already.
“If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.” - Carl Sagan
No comments:
Post a Comment