Over a decade ago I faced a question that first made me feel quite nervous – what’s the meaning in all of this? What’s the point in my existence – or anyone’s for that matter? I felt that without a satisfactory answer I might become quite … lost, for lack of a better word.
To make the question a bit more difficult, I couldn’t accept a religious (supernatural) answer – serving a god, or some other supernatural being or goal wouldn’t work because I just don’t believe in such. I don’t feel anything like that. I also can’t really accept ‘living in this moment’ or ‘just serving others’ as the whole answer. I see the benefits of these in avoiding suffering, and in general making the world a better place for us, but they don’t really create meaning in the grander scheme of things. Which is what I needed.
Since this question popped up, I’ve spent lots of time in my head answering it. I started by asking “what am I?” and quite quickly then “what does it mean to be human?”. This set off a cascade of thoughts, that’s still slowly expanding. All this has of course been influenced to a large extent by books I’ve read and other works of art and thought. And for quite a long time now, I’ve felt I’ve got it.
This post tries to capture the gist of it. My ‘meaning of my life’ or kind of the core of a personal life philosophy. I don’t expect anyone to have or find the same meaning or purpose, even though I perhaps hope so. This works for me and that’s enough. These thoughts have already affected some life choices, such as starting a PhD, how I prioritise and how I try to raise my kids, and it has helped me cope with things like uncertainty, grief and all kinds of shit life throws my way. There’s stable ground to stand on.
Building blocks
The meaning I found emerges from the combination of four different corner stones:
The base:
I base my thoughts on a naturalist world view that follows current science and adds nothing supernatural. This doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be great mysteries, quite the opposite! In a nutshell, the world we experience is a combination of emergent phenomena rising from fundamental building blocks of the universe, and their interactions following laws of physics. While this means that everything is at its core just physics and statistics, it doesn’t make the things we experience, consciousness, feelings, sensations, aspirations, any less real – and this I find truly wonderful. There’s a book that quite well sums up many aspects on this: The Big Picture by Sean Carroll. I can highly recommend reading that one.
Fundamentally desirable things / goals
As one cannot derive what should be from what is, some personal objectives are needed. Here are the two most important “existential level” ones for me:
We don’t yet understand how the universe works and what possibilities there are. There’s still so much to learn, and what we learn might affect our concept and ideas about the meaning of this all. In a way it seems like we already know “almost everything”. But then again, we still have huge mysteries to solve. For example, our consciousness is a big one. Or what about dark matter and energy? We don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. And it’s a puzzle I hope someone, someday, to complete.
The simple idea that Life (meaning really evolution and the plethora of life forms it puts out) should continue and evolve for as long as possible given the laws of the universe. And even preferably intelligent conscious life, that can learn and experience the universe. I think this is something many of us kind of assume, without thinking that this is indeed something we could and should try to influence. The alternative is of course the end of all life. Which I find a rather disappointing notion.
The role of us humans here and now.
We are the only known ‘force’ in the universe we know of that could push forward both learning about our universe and continuation of life. Whereas I’m painfully aware of our current performance in this regard, we’re still the best hope for pushing life beyond Earth, which needs to happen at some point if life is to continue. Humans should find a symbiosis with other life, instead of being parasites. Can we?
(There is a third goal I do consider relevant: making life enjoyable, or at least not painful. But this is perhaps a bit different from “meaning” and on the other hand, much more subjective and dependent on circumstances than the previous ones. )
In a way, I don’t feel there’s anything very special or unique about these thoughts above. But embracing them and connecting them to each other does create real implications for what should happen in distant future, and more importantly here and now, and that in turn answers my need for purpose and meaning. If I can “be a good human” in the sense above, I shouldn’t feel like my life is completely irrelevant. My “meaning” is, as a human, to work today for a future where Life goes on and evolves into most wonderful forms long after I’m gone. I fully embrace the possibility that the sponge that is my brain is structurally just not complex enough to understand the full extent of the universe. Maybe some future beings’ is.
It is of course possible to argue whether trying to make Life go on and learn ever greater things are really somehow fundamentally desirable things. If there’s any intrinsic value in them?
One way to look at this is to think in negatives: what if we decided not to strive for the points laid out above: learning, preserving life and being active? If we stop learning, or decided to not try to advance and protect life would seem giving up when there’s no reason to do so. If there’s no intrinsic value in Life, then where? One could just party on until a fast end, the hedonistic the better – but this doesn’t really create much meaning into life, does it? For me, Life in all its complexities, diversity, evolution, outcomes, even ugliness, is simply beautiful. Epic.
And finally, not accepting our status as the only known force capable of actively protecting Life on Earth, and its future generations, would be a coward’s denial of fact.
Implications
There are a few implications one can draw from the starting points, that make all this a bit more concrete. But there’s also huge amounts of freedom – there are infinitely many ways future could play out in a satisfactory manner, given the criteria above.
I see the implications emerging in a backwards manner. There are certain very, very, long term future elements that are ‘required’ for life to continue even then, and those in turn require some things to happen before it, etc., all the way down to today. (If you think I’m talking about the philosophy called longtermism, see the comment at the end.)
It is my belief that the best way for life to keep on going for as long as possible, is for it to spread into as many new worlds (solar systems) as possible. To keep the learning going, intelligent life must be included. And in addition to this “location based diversification” it would be good that the biospheres and societies living on those worlds would be as diverse as possible. The reasoning is the same as with investing into many stocks instead of one: More diversity brings strength against different kinds of threats. I guess this kind of a very long term vision might sound like really detached from the reality here today, but again, think about the alternative. For this to not play out would mean extinction, or at least a relatively high risk of that happening some millennia or another. Also, us not deciding to pursue such a state of life would effectively mean us deciding that it’s perfectly OK if nothing survives. I don’t intend to make any wishes on how (intelligent) life would look like then, I just hope that eventually there are lots of different kinds of it in many different places.
For this to be possible, a few things are necessary. Science needs to progress to create the necessary technologies. Our understanding of societies and biospheres needs to improve to allow life to settle successfully on new worlds and to avoid removing ourselves from the equation too early. We probably need to find ways to finance (or otherwise organize efforts) so that we can create colonies and the colonies can survive until self sufficiency. And more urgently, we need to save life on Earth from extinction or less fatal collapse of ecosystems through e.g. climate change, diversity loss and possible asteroid impacts. Only stable, technologically advanced societies are capable of sustained efforts towards long term futures. I would hate to see a hastily put-together effort to crash and burn, or run out of money and freeze to death on Mars, probably at the same time freezing future efforts and funding for decades. (I’m a little worried that I’ll see something like this during my life.)
This need to create and upkeep societies capable of such efforts leads to the everyday, anyone, “here today” levels of the scheme. Work performed for such long aiming efforts depends on the wide infrastructure that keeps our societies alive, active and healthy, and that again depends on very normal, 9-to-5 people. Nurses, construction workers, fire fighters, teachers etc. At least theoretically, many people should be able to find a connection to a similar meaning. (Doesn’t mean everyone will, especially if they need to worry about making ends meet, or illness etc. Which is perhaps an argument for reasonably balanced wealth distributions and social welfare.) And in many cases it’s not so much about what you do, but how.
How this affects me?
As I’m writing this, I’m also starting to look for my next job as my PhD project is slowly but inevitably nearing its end. I sure hope to find something that I can connect to these goals, the stronger the better. Instead of trying to categorise all possible jobs, I think I’ll just try to map out interesting opportunities and grade them based on their “meaningfulness” as I go about it. Fighting climate change feels very relevant.
One important effect comes from how the long term vision affects my thoughts on many different topics of the day. It kind of acts as a grounding point that I can compare things against. I can use it to define “progress” and as a moral compass even, replacing the gods declared dead by Nietzsche and his contemporaries.
In the end, the biggest personal impacts probably come from the fact that I’m no longer that anxious about “meaning of life” and many related things, and on the other hand I can see that I’m not alone responsible for everything. There is a larger story writing itself, which I’m inevitably a small part of, and I can choose what to add through my actions. I’m also less worried about “unimportant versions of success” like getting a title or a huge apartment with lots of expensive stuff. I feel what’s important.
I can only recommend going through a thinking process like this, and scrutinising your assumptions. I can’t say this would make things easier per se, but maybe clearer and less confusing. I’d love to hear experiences.
P.S.
While writing this I happened to listen to an episode of the “Philosophize This!” podcast that seems relevant given the topic. It discusses both meaning and life outside meaning. Check it out (check out the whole podcast if you’re interested in this kind of stuff).
Comment: Is this longtermism?
I know there’s a philosophy called longtermism (Longtermism – Wikipedia) that deals with similar topics. I haven’t really studied it deeply but based on the little I have read, I have some reservations, depending on how it is defined and what’s included.
Whereas I agree on many of the building blocks and ends, I must say that many of the means and conclusions presented in longtermist texts seem rather shortsighted! I think overemphasising benefits or value in the far future actually makes reaching it less probable because I believe a stable future must be built on a stable society today. Or, conversely, valuing the far futures high demands that we also take care of living decent lives today. There are heavy path dependencies in play. Are desirable far futures realistic if we don’t also put significant value to more closer futures? And also, if people shouldn’t be “allowed to value current things” now, when would that then become OK? Would we build a continuum of sacrifice, always working for a brighter future millenia from where we are at the moment? Some kind of balance seems necessary. And further, a completely digital civilisation, as proposed by some, seems less resilient than a well distributed biological one. And one more thing. I find the economic justification used in some texts a little absurd. OK, you can say that “future is valuable”, sure, but calculating a number millennia ahead based on simple formulas describing dynamics of today’s economies (and life forms!)… Seems like just trying to sound smarter than necessary or an obsession with quantification.
So, I can’t sign up for a lot that’s been attached to longtermism but on the other hand I do agree on many parts. I think there are connections to negative utilitarianism as well, as long as nobody thinks its a good idea to end it all. (But I’m trying to avoid categorising myself or my thoughts to isms anyway… so I‘ll stop here.)