Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1977)
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As our existence seems ultimately meaningless, and there is no universal compass to drive us through life, it is difficult for people and personally for me to keep deeply motivated about my work and other activities. On the surface, I may be driven by money, work achievements, desire to have a happy family, having fun, but often I find myself facing the deep dark emptiness of lacking a deeply ingrained purpose I would be happy to follow wholeheartedly.
I read an interesting thought from Jordan Peterson that a great purpose is to reduce suffering in the world. It sounds deep and great, but I think it will be hard for many people to connect their day to day activities to this noble meaning.
I sometimes envy of people from previous centuries, when Christianity was strong, and many found their purpose in serving God. God is dead in the Western civilisation now, and it is very hard to fill the void.
- Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125
I too look at the social coercion afforded to religion and envy. The idea of moving almost anywhere and having a weekly community event with like minded people is unparalleled.
I like coke and fatty burgers btw... I meant the drink...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Förster-Nietzsche#Ni...
But also, while “cultural Christianity,” the idea that everyone is a Christian and follows some pseudo-Christian values has mostly gone away, actual religion (of many varieties) is alive and well.
You can still move almost anywhere and find a Catholic Church that is pretty consistent around the world, and likewise many other denominations.
Speaking of my own experience in non-denominational Christian churches from here down:
The people in them would probably be a lot less like-minded than you would expect. The church (collectively, even if not every congregation) is wildly diverse, and is one of the few places you can still go and build relationships with people from all different income brackets, ethnicities, jobs, etc.
Lastly, you don’t need to believe in God (or Jesus) to attend and be welcomed in. Not everyone there does, and actually in most churches they’d be very interested to talk with you and hear why you’re there etc. Yes, they will teach you about their beliefs, but they’re quite simple, as summarized by Jesus himself in “the great commandment”: love God, and love your neighbor.
While all believers wrestle with what God is and what it would mean to love God, the focus is largely on the second commandment - love your neighbor as yourself. That, choosing a life where you genuinely try to support and take care of the people around you, is a pretty good way to live.
Now, I expect some HN hate for posting this. I don’t mean to claim that everyone who has ever called themselves a Christian lives as described above — I myself have been disgusted by the behavior of people who claimed Christian slogans or shove a few bible verses on poster boards and then twisted them for political purposes, completely failing to follow the actual teachings of Christianity in the process. Bad churches and misguided church-goers exist in every religion, unfortunately (Christ himself often called this out). You have to think critically, never follow anything blindly. And I think that “cultural religion,” where the mainstream state government adopts the trappings of a religion and then uses it as a cudgel to enforce their agenda has been quite harmful. My point in posting this is not to gloss over any of that.
Rather, my point is that spiritual life (of many different traditions) is still alive and well among thoughtful, caring, and intellectual people. If approached with an open mind you might be shocked at how pragmatic they are, and how open they are to deep skeptics who are more interested in how to have a meaningful life here on earth than whether or not anything beyond that exists. In fact, many of them fit that description themselves.
" Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind. "
-- Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata
Simone De Beauvoir suggests our aim should be to will the freedom of others / increase the autonomy of the many.
Things can only have meaning when people are free to make their own decision.
It’s much harder to judge actions as good or bad if there was never a choice. The trolley car outcome can only be evaluated if the switch is available in the first place.
It used to be that every individual didn't have to figure out for themselves what to believe, they just believed the same as their family and neighbors.
It used to be that every individual didn't have to figure out for themselves what their life's work would be, they just continued the same occupation as their father or mother.
Unlimited freedom is a lot of work, and it doesn't make everyone happy.
Americans now live in a time and a place in which freedom and autonomy are valued above all else and in which expanded opportunities for self-determination are regarded as a sign of the psychological well-being of individuals and the moral well-being of the culture. This article argues that freedom, autonomy, and self-determination can become excessive, and that when that happens, freedom can be experienced as a kind of tyranny.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5044/cf122d8903a8506871d67f...
What I liked in Emerson's Self-Reliance is the idea of trusting ourselves in finding or deciding on the meaning of our own life, cultivating this ultimate freedom to decide and take responsibilities on our own.
For example, let's imagine we've turned the entire world into a utopia and no one suffers anymore from disease, famine, war, homelessness, etc. If everyone thinks life is still ultimately meaningless, then the elimination of suffering will allow them to look this reality full in its face. I remember in Joss Whedon's Serenity one of the characters talks about a planet of perfect utopia, which is also perfectly secular, and the planet ultimately succumbs to despair and suicide. In which case, people may miss their suffering, because their need to survive took their minds off the emptiness.
On the other hand, let's say we discover there is some kind of ultimate meaning, perhaps even some of the worse suffering becomes less significant if those suffering understand the meaning of it all.
So, the question of ultimate meaning appears more fundamental than 'eliminate suffering,' and we will be unable to eliminate suffering without tackling the more fundamental question.
A human needs (to pick) struggles to overcome in their lives, and they can give us so desired meaning. I cannot imaging a life without any struggles. Even in a society where all the basic needs are satisfied, there will be struggles of higher order - to love and be loved, to be recognised, to create art, etc. Overcoming struggles empowers, trains mentally and physically.
On the other hand, suffering seems to affect our most essential needs - food, security, health, it severely limits our choice. Eliminating suffering expands our freedom to choose our meaningful struggles.
If we eliminate these struggles of necessity, then people can reflect that all the voluntary struggles you mention are meaningless, and so despair (unless the question of ultimate meaning is resolved).
So, elimination of physical suffering perhaps will increase the psychological suffering due to meaninglessness.
On the other hand, if someone has ultimate purpose locked in their mind, then perhaps even the sufferings of necessity can become more bearable and even easier to overcome.
Although, through our history most humans lived in conditions where existential questions could not arise, plus religions did their best to spread their answers.
I think that people get demotivated by thinking too large, that only if they've reduced the suffering of the whole world, only then it would be noble and meaningful.
If everyone would just take care of the people around him, reduce their suffering or at least not increase it, then a lot would have been achieved.
Hardly a novel thought, is it? :p But anyway, the issue remains, right? Why reduce suffering. What's the point. We will all be dead anyway. Etc, etc. If you struggle with finding a purpose/reason to do your life, then how does that help?
>God is dead in the Western civilisation now, and it is very hard to fill the void.
Still far from dead, but it would be for the best anyway. All things considered, religion probably wrought more misery and did more damage that it did good.
Myself I'm much more content without a god than with. It's liberating. Well, at first it's scary. You realise than nobody is there, nobody is listening. There is no cosmic justice. Nobody is going to come down from the heavens and save you. Then, all of a sudden, when you think of it... it's liberating! Nobody will save you. So what? You will save yourself! You will roll up your sleeves and do things. You don't have to pay tribute to a lord. You don't have to follow his laws. There are no limits to you, or what you can achieve.
There is nothing else. There are just humans. There's just us.
This is the money line for me. People who find purpose, who improve themselves to pursue that purpose, are always looking at their failures and asking how they can make themselves better so they can succeed on the next try.
Those who blame others don't get better, they stay where they're at.
This isn't to say that you can't be held back by circumstance or the mistakes of others, just that you yourself won't improve if you focus on the things you can't control.
Finding a trait in yourself that could have allowed you to succeed had it been better developed can be difficult and requires creativity, but there's a lot of purpose to be found in that difficult and creative work.
He explored the question of meaning more fully in his later work, and came to believe that the meaning of your life was a question that life asks of you, and that you answer this question by the choices that you make.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl-ebo...
-- Angel, Season 4, Episode 1, “Deep Down“
The desire for some overarching sense of meaning is motivated by, in my experience, simple fear. Fear and a lack of faith in one's character (which is another kind of fear: what might I do if I didn't have a framework taking control away from me?)
There isn't any final meaning we can pin down, and even if there were such a thing, we pretty clearly are incapable of figuring it out.
There is lots of stuff we'll never understand, both personally and as a species. True wisdom is, in my opinion, transcending the discomfort associated with not knowing.
-- Henry Brooks Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma.
https://archive.org/details/degradationofdem00adam/page/216
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Adams
Similar thoughts from Aldo Leopold, Howard Odum, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and many others.
Humans are not designed to work as individuals but as a whole population. If you judge at the species level it makes the most sense to try and push in every direction available and let natural selection take its course.
Is it better hard working than lazy? You get hungry if you don't go out to hunt but it is better to set up traps than to fight animals hands on, or better yet delegate the work to others. We wouldn't have progress in comfort, security, etc without laziness. Laziness is not bad!
This applies to all qualities in human nature. A balance is better than any extreme of course, but that balance cannot be deduced intellectually, emotionally, morally, legally, etc. You can only try, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", etc. The right balance changes in time and space, it varies from individual to individual.
On top of that there are lessons to be learned from individuals who do take things to extreme.
For me it is clear we are doomed to be drones sacrificed in every direction possible to explore by algorithms deeply embedded in our hardware. Any sense of purpose, any rationalization of why our direction is better - an illusion. An useful illusion ofc. If you don't manage to fool yourself jumping off the bridge is the only option.
this is what i believe, and this is why i am a Free Software advocate, as that is my way of making a (meager) contribution. i believe that humanity is destined to advance as a society and technologically. the technical progress we achieved in the last 150 years is just the beginning. our global society too will progress to the point that we solve all the problems we experience today.
Are you stressed out? Then try and calm yourself a bit.
What good could you do right now for someone else of for the world? Now go do it.
How did it turn out? Reflect, and make note of what you'd do differently next time.
Repeat.
Fancy philosophical musings can be a huge waste of time if they don't help you perform the steps above. It doesn't matter if we have free will or not, or if we live in a simulation, or if all of life is a dream or any of that bullshit.
in our brain, we have a "mental model" of the world. it is imperfect, yet allows us to make predictions. Our goal is to improve this model (aka simulator, prediction engine) over the time. We seek for indicators which tell us if our mental model is improving or not. One of the indicators is money one our bank account, our praise of some master.
I'd be grateful if anyone of you can point me to some literature which describes the approach I outlined above. I use the expression "improve my mental model", but I guess philosophy is using some other (more established) term.
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I am not trying to deal with the question why we actually strive to improve our "mental model" :) though I like the idea that it leads to "less suffering".
- big need: existential despair
- big solution: Christianity
- no obstacle: Christianity is intellectually viable in our modern world
UPDATE reply to replies since I'm rate limited on new comments:
I'm saying Christianity fits "Believe only that for which there is evidence, and only for the time that there is evidence"
1. Good scientific evidence God exists
2. Good historical and archeological evidence the Bible is accurate
3. Historical evidence of the tremendous benefits of Christianity (see Rodney Stark), which flow logically from the principles of its founder Jesus, and seemingly more successful than can be explained by human inspiration
I'd say at the very least Christianity holds up much better than the modern mythos of materialism and purposeless evolution. Perhaps don't accept Christianity, then, but certainly don't accept the modern secular narrative which is even worse evidentially speaking. It makes little sense to accept a bad explanation as default because you don't have a good explanation.
In general, I do not see a internally consistent reason based on any modern criteria (enlightenment, postmodernism, positivism, etc.) for the widespread dismissal of theism and Christianity, and the clinging to atheism and extreme secularism.
Philosophically, Western society moved beyond good and evil, desecrated Christianity, questioned the words of God, and Nietzsche nailed it.
Recently, I read the biography of Rockefeller by Chernow. It was stunning how his strong faith drove and motivated him. He thought he was blessed by God to build his business, he must fulfill this mission, and it justified some questionable actions he did.
We've got to separate the question of existence from the question of nature. That God exists seems very evident from all we know. What God's nature is is more of a question mark, and we should not let this question mark about nature obviate what we know about existence.
And belief in God is not a panacea, people do horrible things in the name of God, and perhaps even more horrible things in the absence. However, people have done very great things, perhaps the greatest things, in the name of God. So there is that, too.
Also, in regards to your specific purpose you mention in the other thread of eliminating physical suffering, it seems Christianity in particular has done the most throughout history of eliminating physical suffering. Thus, insofar as your goal is to eliminate suffering, Christianity seems to be the most effective platform to do so.
UPDATE to reply to this post, b/c I'm rate limited:
It's one of those struggles you mention :)
At least this one is about resolving ultimate meaning instead of ignoring it.
> Nietzsche nailed it. If God is not, Nietzsche is correct.
If God is, then He is stronger than the universe, and the sight of His _back_ is enough to make you as radiant as the sun [1]. How gentle then, if He loves us, must He be with us, creatures of dust and ash as we are?
> Third, a friend of mine asked me what evidence, if any, would be sufficient to convince me that the supernatural existed. This question stumped me. My philosophy at the time excluded the contemplation of the supernatural axiomatically: by definition (my definition) even the word "super-natural" was a contradiction in terms. Logic then said that, if my conclusions were definitional, they were circular. I was assuming the conclusion of the subject matter in dispute ... This meant that, logically, even if God existed, and manifested Himself to me, my philosophy would force me to reject the evidence of my senses, and dismiss any manifestations as a coincidence, hallucination, or dream. Under this hypothetical, my philosophy would force me to an exactly wrong conclusion due to structural errors of assumption. [2]
[1]: Exodus 33-34
[2]: https://strangenotions.com/wright-conversion/It's also a different premise now that the context has shifted. We'd be moving from "Believe because it's the most coherent explanation we have", to "Believe only that for which there is evidence, and only for the time that there is evidence", to "Believe because it's the story we have which buries the existential dread the deepest".
I'm suspicious that it would be a net win. We're at this point because many people over many years preferred to pursue a more concrete understanding of our surroundings and natural history.
It might be likened to attempting to maintain a society-mandated belief in Santa Claus from birth until death because it makes for a more exciting Christmas morning.
> 1. Good scientific evidence God exists
I appreciate the reply, but I'm afraid we're each now too far outside of the other's respective worldviews to convince eachother of anything.
I felt that the idea that there may be merit in a widespread return to theology to avoid existential dread was definitely worthy of a charitable response, but continuing further will be us talking past eachother.
Enjoy your weekend :).
It seems like an obvious question to ponder, but I never seriously considered it until I quit my job. I know this because after quitting my job, I had the freedom to pursue a lot of my desires (at least for a little while) and found that everything I pursued did not satisfy me. Not even a little bit.
I thought about it for some time and realized most of my desires were the desires of other people. I had become infected with them and over the years never really stopped to reflect what I wanted.
What are the odds I really wanted to become a physicist like so many others? Or a social worker? Or a wealthy man? These were all lies I told myself because I didn't know what to do.
Everything I pursued was because I saw someone else do it.
But when I stopped to reflect what I wanted to do, I found nothing. No voice, no inner calling. I was blank.
I spent weeks and weeks trying to figure an answer and stumbled upon Robert Greene's "Mastery" which would've been better titled "Man's Search For Meaning".
I had hints of how I should conduct myself, of what I should do to find some sense of purpose, but nobody ever set down the framework quite like Robert Greene did.
Don't be fooled by the title.
Your life's mission is to find your life mission. And then, once found, pursue ever specialized lines of work and skill to capture that primal inclination deep within you.
You can imagine in a sense every brain on the planet is born uniquely suited for capturing or expressing some pattern. You'll feel it as a kind of need. It'll direct your life towards particular interests. But early on you lack the skill to express it properly, in a way that deeply engages you.
With discipline and practice, you can bolster that inclination—you can learn to deeply engage it. And as you do so, you'll cultivate a sense of meaning—you'll be one the edge of what you're capable of doing.
That's where a human likes to reside. On the edge of what they know.
But it takes discipline. It takes time.
Humans are mimetic creatures. We forget about ourselves so easily. You have to be aggressively persistent about the things you love.
And as you learn each skill that captures some inclination, you constantly expand. You learn more and more skills. You never stagnate, because therein lies the path of suffering.
And as you continue to add new skills, you not only increase your odds of success, you begin to cultivate a series of skills no other human has in equal measure. Because they're based off what you like—nobody else on the planet can compete with you there. You stand outside all hierarchies.
But the journey is long, tedious, and sometimes painful. It takes discipline to do the work that'll resonate with your deepest interests. Even Einstein got bored sometimes.
But if you don't do this, if you don't take the time to figure out what you enjoy doing, if you stagnate, you will stain your life with a bitter melancholy. And you'll lament over what could've been and you'll spend the rest of your days in an idle torment.
You must avoid this at all costs.
Move towards your highest calling. Move towards the pain.
You'll find peace waiting on the other side.
But I would say:
1. reproduce, have kids 2. keep what your ancestors gave you and make it better
Be a doer and a thinker. The Admiral was also right.
Well, "progress" in itself isn't either, as it lacks direction (progress towards what? Why would new be better?).
At least tradition has the "tried" part working for it, and it's something you know the pros and cons and how to work with it (even if its a devil, it's "the devil you know"). It's also a good choice if one values stability over volatility...
So we shouldn't blindly follow it, but should throw it just because there's something new.
A better question (we seldom ask) is: do we want this something new. Many times the new is just imposed into us (e.g. just because it's possible or profitable).
It's only that a lot of what is disguised as "good old tried stuff we call tradition" is highly subjective stuff that's barely one or two centuries old, which means, it's not old, it's not really tried either, so it likely is not "good" per se, but highly contextual.
(aside: it's funny how always similar things come up in batches https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1141977875567919104)
B) you're free to live on the Moon or on Mars once(IF) it becomes possible but 1) the ticket price is VERY expensive 2) once the novelty has faded, there's a very real possibility that you're going to be very jealous of those who can breath 'fresh air' outside. 3) these colonies are only useful for humanity if there are self-sufficient but they need high technology to just continue to exist, so how can they become self-sufficient? How are you going to make solar panels on Mars with only what is available on Mars?
2) I don't think i would be jealous of those who can breath 'fresh air' , i already spend most of my time in a room, and with better VR games and large domes/caverns i don't think i'll miss the outside.
3) Again with large population on earth, there will be enough people who want to go to mars to create self sufficient economy there.
A) the amount of generated waste does not depend only on the population but also on the time the population lives at the given level of technology. When there are less people less resources are spent on science, and people end up generating the same amount of waste eventually, and do not develop the knowledge required to generate less waste. Another variable is the desire to generate less waste: as long as the amount of the waste is not threatening most of the people are not interested in generating less of it. Some see the problem sooner than others, but with lower population the number of these people is also lower and they have smaller effect.
If you look at the history of humankind you'll see that we were able to do great harm to environment even with much smaller numbers (killing megafauna, deforestation). the difference was that then we were not able to understand what was happening.
The crucial point is that the cost of developing new technologies does not depend, but reward grows, with the number of people alive. So when the number of people grows, everyone wins.
I believe the myth of overpopulation and the cultural norm to have less children, have caused great harm. Migration from poorer high birthrate countries into rich low birthrate countries leeches the most important resource the poor countries have, more educated and more active people who want to change the country. If developed countries were giving as many migrants as they take, we would be living in a much better world. Hopefully technologies like longevity therapies and artificial womb will be developed sooner than the population starts to decline.
1) According to most cosmological models the universe will eventually end.
2) Even if it didn't, the problem with infinity is that anything that can possibly happen will happen, including the extinction of everything ever descended from ourselves.
One is forced to consider that the journey must be more meaningful than the destination.
Not necessarily. There are different cardinalities (sizes) of infinity. Your statement can only be true if the cardinality of time is at least as high as the cardinality of all possible events; I don’t know enough math (or physics) to pin either of these down, but it’s not obviously true.
People reproduce for the same reasons any other species reproduces though; they are a vehicle for their genetic code. That's what biological life is and we are not somehow separate or unique from the rest of nature in that regard.
To do that just because it is my biological imperative has never seemed like a very good justification to me. So my ancestors all reproduced over the cause of many millennia and that means I should also reproduce...why exactly? To continue the bloodline? For what purpose? I don't have any interest in being a part of that.
Your second point seems sensible though. Don't make things worse while you're here, leave it the same or better and try to live your life without causing harm to others.
I tend to believe that life is mostly suffering (and for most of the world it demonstrably is) sporadically dotted with short periods of joy or contentment. None of us have a choice in being born but the least we can do is try to make life easier for ourselves and everybody else as we struggle through this experience in quiet desperation.
Beyond that it all starts to sound like baseless ideology and narrow-minded religion pushed on us by people who desire to (with futility) control all the variables in their own subjective experience of this life.