The Meaning Inside

I had an e-mail from an old friend on the subject of this blog. She indicated that this is not really the type of blog that she would follow; she prefers to be doing things rather than thinking about the meaning of existence. She is of course 100% correct; spending your time building the content of your life is exactly what the meaning of existence is about. This lady is a very interesting person and one of those people that it is always great to be around. She is kind and generous, not only in a material sense, but with her time and attention. The span of her interests and experience is such that I have always thought of her as a really well rounded person. I always had the notion that she knows why she is here, the rest falls into place, at least on a practical level.

Partly the reason I’m doing this is to find some of this purpose for myself, this is not only about contemplation, but is about doing. I am doing the research and am doing the writing. Ultimately the Universe may yield up its laws to us and we may get to understand how things are the way they are, but nothing in this endeavour is likely to answer the question of why they are. People will seek that answer within themselves, or outside of themselves. My friend, I believe, has an answer. The fact that she doesn’t feel a need to think about it tells me she knows why she is here. Moreover she has found that reason within the ambit of her own existence. 

When people seek the answers outside of their own existence things can become a bit tricky especially when we start to allow other people to provide this answer. The obvious culprit is religion, but this is not the only one. Hitler told the German people that they were there to dominate the world, too many of them believed him and we all know where that went. That’s a well known example, but by no means an isolated example. Stalinism, Maoism... pretty much all of the isms have existed only because one group of people are able to tell another group what their purpose for existence is and the second group are stupid enough to accept it as truth. I say stupid enough, but really it is sufficiently indoctrinated or in some cases intellectually lazy enough.

Lest you think that capitalism is not guilty of this, think again. The indoctrination may be couched as something else, but capitalism has convinced nearly the entire population of the world that our primary reason for existence is to feed it so that it can continue to grow. We believe that we must consume more and more.... and to pay for this consumption we must be more and more productive in the work place.  If growth stumbles even for a few months a calamity is upon us, people lose their livelihoods because we are in a recession. We define our existence in terms of what we earn, own and spend and the commercial media tells us what this should be. I call our global economy ‘the beast’ as that is what it has become. Like someone that has raised a lion from a cub in their home, at some point it will cease to be their lion, rather they become its people...the global economy may be considered an invention of humans, but we have lost all control over it, it controls us.

Religion is however probably the most dangerous because it tells us directly what the purpose for existence is. This would be fine if there was any sense or uniformity in the message from God to us as conveyed by religion. The fact that we have Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhist, Hindu’s and God knows what else and each of these are subdivided into sects and each sect believes that it and only it has true knowledge of the mind (or at least the instructions) of God. That religion has got things so spectacularly wrong in so many things – Galileo was right and the Church was wrong, one example amongst many – and that the pronouncements of religion has had (and continues to have) such horrible consequences, makes me particularly concerned. A few well known examples - the Inquisition, the Northern Ireland conflict, the partition of India, the suppression of women in Muslim countries and the events of 9-11. If you think I am being unfair to religion, remember that Muslim suicide bombers are martyrs in their own eyes carrying out the will of Allah, and paradise compete with bevies of virgins and free passes for their families awaits them on the other side of the explosion. It’s idiotic of course, but it is their reality. 

Science has provided us with the understanding that the Universe (potentially many billions of other Universes as well) does not actually need a divine being to manage it or even to create it. Even life does not need a God to intervene, it can get going and evolve perfectly well without any Godly interference. Note that this is not the same as science saying that there is no God, merely that there is precious little that is not sufficiently understood about matter, energy and life that requires a God hypothesis to explain. There certainly is no concrete evidence that points to His existence. So where we have no evidence that God exists, evidence that if God did create the world he isn’t doing much to manage its affairs, contradictory and dangerous views on His intentions, people still insist that God provides the reason for existence...I don’t get it. 

It may be arrogant to think that we can establish the reason for existence, and who knows if this is possible beyond the sense of knowing this, as does my friend described in the first paragraph. Nonetheless I think that it is worthwhile to seek the meaning for existence ourselves. I think that in itself may provide some meaning, it is certainly better than accepting something wrapped up and packaged by someone else, be that religion, Hollywood, advertising, Manchester United or the Boy Scout movement.