I will try to be as coherent as I can in this post, but I do apologise beforehand as I am trying to merge a few ideas together to make my point. The whole idea of this post is to use a bunch of premises (ideas) to establish a concrete reason, based on some logical transition, as to why we (or I, rather) should give some meaning to life, despite its inherent arbitrariness. As much as I'd like to say that I had a transcendental moment of sorts, the opposite is sadly true. I have just been doing some hard, some may say futile, thinking about, firstly, why should life have any meaning at all (whether natural or derived) and, secondly, what that meaning should be. I have come to some sort of conclusion through a series of logical steps. But, you know, via Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (Part 2), my own logical construct cannot prove its own consistency, so, this may end up all being a bunch of bullshit.
The first step is to describe the premises. There are four in total.
1. We are all specks of dust in the spectrum of eternity...
This sounds a lot more Chinese-fortune-cookie-y than I would like, but it's a thought that I just heard last night. I have seen this phrase before but have had no reason to connect it to anything. In essence, it mirrors what I generally believe about each individual - we are just one speck of dust, existing in one particular time period that is, in itself, a speck of dust along the time continuum. There should be no reason to think or believe that we are special, or that the particular time that we exist in currently is at all special. One of the great lessons of probability theory is that tail events are generally rare; in other words, really special events happen less than 5% of the time (in all times). For the sake of simplicity, let's just assume humanity has been around for 2 million years. Of these 2 million years, "special" years would have occured only 5% of the time, which amounts to 100,000 years. Non-special years would have therefore amount to 1.9 million years. Why the hell should we assume that our years are the "special" years, when all the probability points to the notion that our years are more likely to be part of the 1.9 million years group. This is the same for all humans. So, we are all specks of dust in the spectrum of eternity, and what types of dust we are is determined arbitrarily.
2. ...but even specks of dust must face a Judgment Day, if you believe in some God.
I don't believe in God. That's not to say I wish religion had never existed; I think there are many virtues to religion but this whole higher power bit fails to convince. I don't know if a higher being exists, but I think it unlikely. So, anyway, I don't believe in God - so this particular speck of dust (me) does not face a Judgment Day. I believe that when you die, nothing happens; no heaven, no hell. Just nothingness. Kind of like how things were before you were born. Or when you're asleep (minus the dreams). So, if I don't face a Judgment Day, and my time as a speck of dust is just arbitrary; I happen to exist only because my parents chose to make me, then what is the purpose of life at all? What's the meaning of everything? If I leave it at that, the conclusion has to be: Dude, there's no meaning.
NB: The most common argument I tend to hear for the existence of God is that of "intelligent design." In other words, "Check out how beautiful the mountains are. There must be someone who designed it that way." "Look at how life turned out - we needed a particular type of sun, a particular type of planet, a particular type of atmosphere, a particular type of atomic mix - in order to create and sustain life. The odds are so miniscule; therefore someone must have intelligently designed it."
Three counterarguments to that, from "Go blow yourself" to "Let's think about this logically."
"Go blow yourself" - "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Douglas Adams.
"Surface Argument" - If things were really intelligently designed, they'd be a lot more simple. I can't imagine why someone would deliberately make things complicated.
"Let's think about this logically" - The odds argument doesn't work for one main reason. That reason is simply that the odds that life, the earth, the universe whatever turned out this way are equal to the odds that life, the earth, the universe whatever turned out in another particular way. This means that from the spectrum of all probabilities, the wavefunction just happened to collapse to this particular outcome. Kind of like how if you roll a fair dice (1-6), the odds of getting "1" are just the same as the odds of getting "6". The outcomes are vastly different, but the odds that they could have happened are just the same as the other. So, because we're in this outcome, everything therefore HAD to be exactly what it needed to be. Otherwise, we'd be in some other outcome. If in another outcome, gravity was not 9.8Newtons, but say 200 Newtons, life would be vastly different but we would still have a set of physical laws that works for that particular outcome. So, when we have an outcome and we try to reason backwards as to how that outcome came to be, there is an uncountable set of probability spaces by which that outcome came about - the current reality just happens to be one of those. So, the odds argument suffers from one of my favourite sayings - "If everyone is unique, then nobody is." Similary, "if each probability setting is equally unlikely, then nobody is unique." We're not unique.
Very good. So, after Premise 1 and Premise 2, we have that I am a nobody in the sands of time and since I don't face a Judgment Day, this particular speck of dust's life has no meaning. Existence is arbitrary, in other wods. I truly believe that, y'know. The real arbitrariness of being.
3. "The fight of our lives has been drawn to this undying love."
Even as an arbitrary speck of dust, I still have thoughts, I sometimes have emotions, and I have interests, and I have passions. And so, I can get attached to things. And there are certain things which have always driven me and will always drive me. For example, I have always loved basketball a lot more than football. It's a deep passion. Similarly, I have always been passionate about Sherlock Holmes and the Lord of the Rings. So, there are things (sometimes people) that can hook me in. And, more pertinently, I'd like to think or, rather, I've come to believe that I have an undying love. While I think humans in general will likely end up having an undying love - whether it's a person, whether it's a hobby, whether it's a career, whether it's a game - I'm not going to be too condescending and say that everyone will have an undying love.
And so, if I have this undying love, then surely I should do something about it. Even if I'm a negligible speck of dust in the continuum, and I don't owe anything to anybody in the afterlife, I can still do something about this undying love. I would be doing myself a disservice if I failed to do so. And so, "the fight of my life has been drawn to this undying love." My life should be spent, if I have enough moral courage, in trying to address this undying love. And, hey, maybe there can be more than one undying love(s). I don't believe it needs to be just one finite number.
NB: For the purposes of this post, it doesn't really matter what my undying love is. You can ask me (I swear this is not some plea for attention). It's just a bit complicated to explain here (yes, I recognise the irony). No, it's not a person. For now, anyway.
So, what do I have after the three premises? I'm an arbitrary speck of dust, with very limited time (no afterlife). Despite that, I am still a thinking, feeling speck of dust with, as what most people will have, an "undying love." So, it makes practical sense that I should spend my limited time undertaking the fight of my life towards this "undying love." This is all well and good, but it by no means necessarily logically follows that I should give my life to this "undying love." This is where the 4th premise comes in.
4. This premise isn't really a premise as much as it is a thought experiment. Imagine you're on your deathbed and I'm by your bedside (hopefully not murdering you). You're literally one second away from dying. For me, observing you, that one second is really just one second. But for you, given your likely much different conception of time, that one second could stretch to feel like a super long time. Now, what would you have to think in that moment to really believe you can go in peace?
So, the premise here is, I have to be able to go in peace. What would make me go in peace as a meaningless speck of dust with no judgment by a higher power, but with an undying love? Well, in that one second, if I were about to die, the final judgment on myself is done by myself. I have to be at peace with myself. How do I do that? Well, here, I will argue that from the first three premises, and tied in with the fourth premise of judging myself into peace, or lack thereof, the concluding thought I should have for myself is:-
"I have spent my life trying my best to uphold my undying love and even if I failed, I did my best. That's okay with me. I can go in peace."
In other words, the meaning of life, for me, is that I spent my life doing my best to fulfill whatever meaning or purpose that I derived. Even if there were no higher adjudicator, I can still judge myself at the very last. So, despite being a meaningless speck of dust, despite not having to concern myself with some higher power's judgment, my life would still have meaning if I were able to tell myself, on my deathbed, I did my best for my undying love.
And so, with that conclusion, I'd like to just say a bit about an "undying love." I really believe everyone has at least one, but I am conscious not to make that generalisation. And I would encourage whoever reads this to think about what their "undying love" is and to figure out if that's what they want to spend their life fulfilling. And, just remember, you really are an arbitrary speck of dust. But that doesn't mean you have to be a meaningless speck of dust. Draw the fight of your life into your undying love.
The first step is to describe the premises. There are four in total.
1. We are all specks of dust in the spectrum of eternity...
This sounds a lot more Chinese-fortune-cookie-y than I would like, but it's a thought that I just heard last night. I have seen this phrase before but have had no reason to connect it to anything. In essence, it mirrors what I generally believe about each individual - we are just one speck of dust, existing in one particular time period that is, in itself, a speck of dust along the time continuum. There should be no reason to think or believe that we are special, or that the particular time that we exist in currently is at all special. One of the great lessons of probability theory is that tail events are generally rare; in other words, really special events happen less than 5% of the time (in all times). For the sake of simplicity, let's just assume humanity has been around for 2 million years. Of these 2 million years, "special" years would have occured only 5% of the time, which amounts to 100,000 years. Non-special years would have therefore amount to 1.9 million years. Why the hell should we assume that our years are the "special" years, when all the probability points to the notion that our years are more likely to be part of the 1.9 million years group. This is the same for all humans. So, we are all specks of dust in the spectrum of eternity, and what types of dust we are is determined arbitrarily.
2. ...but even specks of dust must face a Judgment Day, if you believe in some God.
I don't believe in God. That's not to say I wish religion had never existed; I think there are many virtues to religion but this whole higher power bit fails to convince. I don't know if a higher being exists, but I think it unlikely. So, anyway, I don't believe in God - so this particular speck of dust (me) does not face a Judgment Day. I believe that when you die, nothing happens; no heaven, no hell. Just nothingness. Kind of like how things were before you were born. Or when you're asleep (minus the dreams). So, if I don't face a Judgment Day, and my time as a speck of dust is just arbitrary; I happen to exist only because my parents chose to make me, then what is the purpose of life at all? What's the meaning of everything? If I leave it at that, the conclusion has to be: Dude, there's no meaning.
NB: The most common argument I tend to hear for the existence of God is that of "intelligent design." In other words, "Check out how beautiful the mountains are. There must be someone who designed it that way." "Look at how life turned out - we needed a particular type of sun, a particular type of planet, a particular type of atmosphere, a particular type of atomic mix - in order to create and sustain life. The odds are so miniscule; therefore someone must have intelligently designed it."
Three counterarguments to that, from "Go blow yourself" to "Let's think about this logically."
"Go blow yourself" - "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Douglas Adams.
"Surface Argument" - If things were really intelligently designed, they'd be a lot more simple. I can't imagine why someone would deliberately make things complicated.
"Let's think about this logically" - The odds argument doesn't work for one main reason. That reason is simply that the odds that life, the earth, the universe whatever turned out this way are equal to the odds that life, the earth, the universe whatever turned out in another particular way. This means that from the spectrum of all probabilities, the wavefunction just happened to collapse to this particular outcome. Kind of like how if you roll a fair dice (1-6), the odds of getting "1" are just the same as the odds of getting "6". The outcomes are vastly different, but the odds that they could have happened are just the same as the other. So, because we're in this outcome, everything therefore HAD to be exactly what it needed to be. Otherwise, we'd be in some other outcome. If in another outcome, gravity was not 9.8Newtons, but say 200 Newtons, life would be vastly different but we would still have a set of physical laws that works for that particular outcome. So, when we have an outcome and we try to reason backwards as to how that outcome came to be, there is an uncountable set of probability spaces by which that outcome came about - the current reality just happens to be one of those. So, the odds argument suffers from one of my favourite sayings - "If everyone is unique, then nobody is." Similary, "if each probability setting is equally unlikely, then nobody is unique." We're not unique.
Very good. So, after Premise 1 and Premise 2, we have that I am a nobody in the sands of time and since I don't face a Judgment Day, this particular speck of dust's life has no meaning. Existence is arbitrary, in other wods. I truly believe that, y'know. The real arbitrariness of being.
3. "The fight of our lives has been drawn to this undying love."
Even as an arbitrary speck of dust, I still have thoughts, I sometimes have emotions, and I have interests, and I have passions. And so, I can get attached to things. And there are certain things which have always driven me and will always drive me. For example, I have always loved basketball a lot more than football. It's a deep passion. Similarly, I have always been passionate about Sherlock Holmes and the Lord of the Rings. So, there are things (sometimes people) that can hook me in. And, more pertinently, I'd like to think or, rather, I've come to believe that I have an undying love. While I think humans in general will likely end up having an undying love - whether it's a person, whether it's a hobby, whether it's a career, whether it's a game - I'm not going to be too condescending and say that everyone will have an undying love.
And so, if I have this undying love, then surely I should do something about it. Even if I'm a negligible speck of dust in the continuum, and I don't owe anything to anybody in the afterlife, I can still do something about this undying love. I would be doing myself a disservice if I failed to do so. And so, "the fight of my life has been drawn to this undying love." My life should be spent, if I have enough moral courage, in trying to address this undying love. And, hey, maybe there can be more than one undying love(s). I don't believe it needs to be just one finite number.
NB: For the purposes of this post, it doesn't really matter what my undying love is. You can ask me (I swear this is not some plea for attention). It's just a bit complicated to explain here (yes, I recognise the irony). No, it's not a person. For now, anyway.
So, what do I have after the three premises? I'm an arbitrary speck of dust, with very limited time (no afterlife). Despite that, I am still a thinking, feeling speck of dust with, as what most people will have, an "undying love." So, it makes practical sense that I should spend my limited time undertaking the fight of my life towards this "undying love." This is all well and good, but it by no means necessarily logically follows that I should give my life to this "undying love." This is where the 4th premise comes in.
4. This premise isn't really a premise as much as it is a thought experiment. Imagine you're on your deathbed and I'm by your bedside (hopefully not murdering you). You're literally one second away from dying. For me, observing you, that one second is really just one second. But for you, given your likely much different conception of time, that one second could stretch to feel like a super long time. Now, what would you have to think in that moment to really believe you can go in peace?
So, the premise here is, I have to be able to go in peace. What would make me go in peace as a meaningless speck of dust with no judgment by a higher power, but with an undying love? Well, in that one second, if I were about to die, the final judgment on myself is done by myself. I have to be at peace with myself. How do I do that? Well, here, I will argue that from the first three premises, and tied in with the fourth premise of judging myself into peace, or lack thereof, the concluding thought I should have for myself is:-
"I have spent my life trying my best to uphold my undying love and even if I failed, I did my best. That's okay with me. I can go in peace."
In other words, the meaning of life, for me, is that I spent my life doing my best to fulfill whatever meaning or purpose that I derived. Even if there were no higher adjudicator, I can still judge myself at the very last. So, despite being a meaningless speck of dust, despite not having to concern myself with some higher power's judgment, my life would still have meaning if I were able to tell myself, on my deathbed, I did my best for my undying love.
And so, with that conclusion, I'd like to just say a bit about an "undying love." I really believe everyone has at least one, but I am conscious not to make that generalisation. And I would encourage whoever reads this to think about what their "undying love" is and to figure out if that's what they want to spend their life fulfilling. And, just remember, you really are an arbitrary speck of dust. But that doesn't mean you have to be a meaningless speck of dust. Draw the fight of your life into your undying love.
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