Modernity, Faith, and Martin Buber
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Edit - a bit more about Feel Free: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/books/review/zadie-smith-...
This is often said, but I don't feel like its obvious in any way. Questions can be big and hard to answer, but that hardly means we _must_ speak about them without precision.
My sense is that people use oblique language on these questions because they dislike the answers that precise language makes unavoidable.
"What is the meaning of our existence?" is not at all hazy but is far more simple (yet subtly complex) than people are willing to admit; of course, people are generally not willing to admit that another person can have knowledge they do not, especially if they are deeply wedded to their particular culture (e.g. academic philosophy) and/or faith. And, yes, I do know the answer to this question, and, yes, the answer is both very simple and deeply complex (very much in the realm of "Not 2, not 1").
The simple meaning of our existence is to enjoy life, to be happy. The complexity arises in a couple of dimensions. First, we need to live in societies to survive and prosper. As such, we have an innate morality that pushes us away from selfish, animalistic competition and toward selfless, humane cooperation, across all artificial divisions [e.g. ethnicity, form of religion (including none at all), sexual preference and identity]. This morality is a part of our being and is tied to the inner feelings we get when we interact with our fellow human beings and even the Earth itself (for when we harm the Earth we harm others). Our morality affects how we think and, therefore, how we approach life with our attitudes and behaviors; each society imparts its own moral teachings upon its acolytes, from Dr. King's univesal love and service to the purely capitalistic callous disregard for the suffering of others to the purely evil ethnic hatred and violently oppressive practices by various groups.
The inner feelings of happiness or unhappiness we experience are what we reap from what we have sown in others, combined with our level of self-evolution, for we are the only creatures with a free will and a mind that can evolve itself within its life to achieve moral perfection. As such, we are the only creatures that live under the most subtle of laws: the Law of Karma. This can be evidenced in the general misery of the wealthy and the rather surprising level of joy of the people of the projects that I currently live in; yes, there are exceptions to this because there are, of course, people in these projects that look at others as Buber's "It" and there are wealthy that seek to uplift those less fortunate than themselves (though they are few and far between). It is obvious to anyone living honestly that material wealth does not determine happiness, though it sure does buy plenty of pleasure, most people confusing the two for the simple fact that most people are only concerned with the material aspect of this world, not the bigger questions such as those understood by Buber and the other Sufi sages sprinkled throughout history.
So, then, the meaning of life is to become happy by evolving oneself to create happiness in others by first personally embodying the highest ideals of compassion and service and then by working to establish societies where those ideals are manifest in the institutions of government, business and religion themselves. Here it is obvious that we have allowed the most ruthless, hypcritical and selfish liars and oppressors to seize and hold power. From a game theoretic standpoint, they have access to more tools than the moral human being and the fruits of their labors stand testament to their single-minded power-seeking, our tattered Earth going to ruin and the misery of the poverty-stricken masses demonstrating their efforts.
The crux of the issue resides in the answer to "Why, with most people not being evil bastards, is the world moving away from happiness?" Besides the efforts of the relatively few amoral people, most people are too confused to either confront or overcome their own personal demons and are therefore blind to either their own foibles or those that rule over them; such people are not merely individuals, they form powerful groups of super-ego-driven packs of self-centered power mongers. Here the evidence can be seen in how many poor people support corrupt, self-serving politicians that make the life of common people worse, as well as how many obviously hypocritical religious institutions maintain their adherents.
Here then can be found the ultimate crux of the meaning of life: our Creator is literally Unfathomable and absolutely peerless -- after all, It is the Creator of time, space and all the subtle, mathematical laws that interrelate them -- but It has tied our self-evolution into reaching out within ourselves and establishing a relationship with It. Only in that reaching out can we learn how to self-evolve ourselves beyond our petty animalistic, pack-centric destructiveness and into a global cooperation of compassionate humanitarians that understand that every human being deserves happiness, respect, dignity and the opportunities to live a life of achievement and self-worth, according to their own predilections.
The caveat to such universal compassion is that we must be ever on guard for persons and groups that teach hatred and oppression of others. They must be stripped of their ability to harm others for the work of the righteous is ALWAYS to protect the innocent, no matter who they are, for we are one human race, with all non-destructuve members deserving of FDR's Four Freedoms.
Ultimately, we can talk about what we believe but our choices each and every day are the evidence of the life we live, and that evidence shows in our facial expressions, our tone of voice and the joy (or its lack) we feel within.
"The Way goes in." --Rumi
We really don't.
source: look at the world around you today and the past thousands of years.