Meaning of Life

Understanding the nature of the world has become the primary concern in rationality of human beings. The quest has given birth to a wide array of field of study- biology, physics, psychology, philosophy, chemistry among others. In so far that finding the nature of the world is concerned, there has been a rigorous assessment in different fields of studies which has led to mind-boggling inventions and discoveries in the world. An equally important quest has been to find the meaning of life.

A beginner into this inquiry, would want to know outlining or shortcut answers to the philosophical question of our life, especially that of the meaning of our life. However, the different schools of thought- both in religion and philosophy- in response to this question have only provided different obscure and contradictory concepts, let alone a unanimous one.

Before delving into the subject matter, let us first make the assessment of this paper clear. Trying to decipher the “meaning” is to understand the purpose and role an individual holds in the cosmos and the course of actions s/he is supposed to take. “Life”, for the purpose of the paper means a duration between the birth of a human being and the death of his/her material body and rational ability. It will be in the scope of this paper to understand the evolution of human beings, the beliefs they had in the process and the meanings they assigned to their life. In doing so, I will try to elucidate abstract concepts of different philosophers and religions and try to examine these philosophies. Our first aim is to understand the significance of the question and the motive for knowing the answer in our human mind.

Setting the Stage: Who and Why ask the meaning of life?

Let us begin with the first fundamental question- who seeks the meaning of life? Philosophers, Aristotle, for example, propose that human beings are different than other creatures in for their ability to think (Jhonson, 2014)  , and it is this ability that has enabled the human being to make unprecedented progress culminating to industrialized era. Philosophers claim that the propensity to assess the intricate meaning of life, however, is not innate in all human beings and that it is an indication of “sickness” in human beings. Sigmund Freud explicitly remarks that the person who asks about the meaning of life is sick- the reason of which, he thinks, is “unsatisfied libido” (Jones, 1957, p. 3:465). In Freud’s response, Plato, very long before Freud, would have consented him in that Plato also thought unfulfilled appetite as a cause of spiritual sickness in the soul (Young, 2003, p. 14) although he was of the thought that life should be spent in the pursuit of knowledge of the forms (Ibid, p.16).  Einstein also separates the rational ability to think about the world from sickly questioning to find the meaning of life. He said that a man with no longing for knowledge of the universe is as good as dead (Einstein, Living Philosophies, 1931, p. 6), but he blatantly also asserts that a man is seeking religion for self-help in trying to answer the question about the meaning of life (Einstein, Opinions by Albert Einstein : Quoted in On the Meaning of Life by Jhon Cottingham, 1934, p. 11). Irving Singer in his book- Meaning in Life- validates these thoughts to mention that the intention of a healthy person is not to think about the meaning of life (Singer, 1992, p. 2). It is evident from these philosophers that there is a fine border between a sickly inquiry of life and a “normal” interpretation of life.  Perhaps not if we are to accept Fredrick Nietzsche’s definition that man is, by default, a sick animal (Ibid, p. 3). It is to mean that we will be forced to contemplate the meaning of life one time or another as “sickness” is an inevitable phenomenon in human beings.

Tackling the big questions

Stoics in our textbook invite us to live according to the nature of the cosmos, and our lives are dimmed meaningful, according to them, when our actions are concurrent with the demand of the nature. As such, it is essential to understand the nature of cosmos first. There is a pessimism from earlier philosophers when they define the underlying principles of the universe.  Thomas Hobbes (1651) said that the human life in the universe is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. These ideas are backed by Schopenhauer who claims that the guiding tenet in the world is dynamic, brutal, non-purposive and directionless. These ideas are again validated by Nietzsche, who claims that the universe is vicious and that it causes more suffering than happiness in so much that he gave a philosophical assertion that god is dead (Singer, 1992).

Despite the pessimistic view of the nature, philosophers see longing for knowledge, beauty and our own extension in the world as the primary motives behind the life. There is no human who does not want to have his desires fulfilled, who does not want to be validated and who does not want to feel happy, content or understood. Oprah Winfrey, a famous interviewer, in this regards in Harvard Commencement Speech of 2013 said:
“I have to say that the single most important lesson I learned in 25 years talking every single day to people, was that there is a common denominator in our human experience. Most of us, I tell you we don’t want to be divided. What we want, the common denominator that I found in every single interview, is we want to  be validated and understood” (Winfrey, Harvard Gazette, 2013).

 Similarly, when explaining absurdity, Albert Camus is of the perspective that happiness and reason are the greatest longing of human beings, although these longings are only ephemeral (Singer, 1992, p. 32). Meanwhile, Hegel thought the impulse of reason is the desire instigated to understand oneself (Young, 2003, p. 62).  John Cottingham in his book On the Meaning of Life, in a clear manner, encapsulates the nature of the cosmos, which he thinks, is to produce human beings who seek truth, embrace aesthetics, and fulfill their life with mutual love and affections (Cottingham, 2003).

However, Singer (1992) quotes Aristotle to cite that although contentment, happiness and joy are essential, no man can be happy perpetually. Everything in the world is short lived and there is nothing which can last forever- happiness quickly fades and is hard to recapture, and contentment turns into boredom. Life is not a marathon where an individual who have travelled fastest and furthest can feel that they are closer to some absolute and all resolving goal.  It is true that we are guided by ideals of love, beauty, creativity, freedom, happiness and self-improvement, but there is no end goal – there is no finish line of learning or loving. The universe, economy, population or knowledge is expanding, but -to what limit or end- nobody seems to concur.   By defining “sickness” in people seeking the meaning of life, philosophers were correctly referring to unfulfilled appetite in complexity as its cause. This elusive nature of the world led Blaise Pascal- a seventeenth century philosopher- to comment in this way:
 "I see these frightening expanses of the universe that shut me in, and I find myself stuck in one corner of this vast emptiness, without knowing why I am placed here  rather than elsewhere… All I know is that I must soon die, but my ignorance is  darkest concerning this very death that I cannot avoid” (Cottingham, 2003, p. 32).

Religious Perspective

Inability to reach a decisive conclusion about the meaning of life and the absence of clear end goal paved the way for emergence of different religious tenets- backed by the idea of the God – within different civilization. Their dialectics are different, but all of their motive is to bind the human being into a moral and ethical standard so as to provide a unitary purpose.   Hindu Religion- of which I can speak and have knowledge- open a way for our lives to have a meaning in a strong sense that would move our life beyond a mere ephemeral satisfaction (Ibid, pp. 62-104) towards the liberation of the soul.

Hindu religion divides our actions into the concepts of Kama, Artha, Dharma, and Mokshya. Kama means lust, Artha is economic gain, Dharma is a selfless act and Mokshya or Nirvana is a supreme act of liberation of the soul. Hindus regard Mokshya or Nirvana as the end goal of human being ,and the religion claims that Nirvana can be  achieved through “work, dedication to work, knowledge and devotion to Hindu teachings” (Payne & Nassar, 2012, pp. 46-48). The religious interpretation of reality is tested and severely rejected by the evolutionary perspective of Charles Darwin, who hints towards the denial of an omnipotent creator or the God. Similarly, many great philosophers’ notion that “ultimate being or highest good” provide objective ends is also put in question through this idea.

Evolutionary Perspective

If we were to compress 14 billion years after the big bang into 14 years for simplicity, earth would have existed only for past five years, entire recorded history of human would remain for only last three minutes and modern industrial civilization would last for only six seconds (National Geography, 2014).

This information entails that our current human form is an outcome of continuous evolution in many generations through mutations and natural selections, and that none of the character of human beings, of other creatures or of the earth are a part of the grand design of the Supreme God.   According to the natural selection theory of Darwin, there is no purpose or selection whatsoever in the natural working of evolution, but it is an entirely arbitrary process whereby certain favorable traits are passed on to the next generation (Cottingham, 2003).

Preservation and Continuation as the sole goal

That we are complex beings for our rational ability makes understanding of our purpose very difficult. We can fabricate reasons for our benefit,. Thus, if we are to understand the purpose of our life, we need to observe other animals which do not put a veil of complexities but exhibit observable purpose. Just as Leo Tolstoy achieved his own salvation by understanding the life of peasants (Singer, 1992), observing the animals – which differ from us only in our ability to think- is one of the ways to understand the intricate purpose of human beings. Animals long for food, shelter and reproduction and try to avoid danger through their own means. These four factors, I believe, are the core purpose of the human being as well, but the only difference is that our means of achieving those fundamentals of living is rationality.  The rest, whatever we may claim, is secondary and unimportant.

In similar ways that the role of the rose is to be red in color and to provide wonderful smell, and that of dog is to bark and to be loyal to its master, our role is to think, to create and to be rational. Since we have the ability to think, our role in the world is to be creative and improve the world as we see it, and our purpose, just like everybody else’s, is  -just as Fernando Savaster in his book Questions of Life describes- the “preservation, regulation and reproduction” of our life (Savater, 2002).

 Meaningful life in an individual level

Thus far, we have tried to understand the meaning of life at a macroscopic level. We have pointed out that our role in the universe is to be rational human beings and that our sole purpose is the preservation and continuation of ourselves. Now, let us analyze on a microscopic level what we ought to do as a rational, and moral being seeking for happiness and continuation of ourselves in a right milieu.

 (Griffin, 2012) in her book Where We Belong mentions that the purpose of the life should be the life of purpose thorough self-actualization. A step further, Simon Sinek, in one of his TED talk suggests that our purpose should be contemplated in question “why rather than in what” (Sinek, 2009). Similarly, Oprah Winfrey says that it is important in life to develop an “internal moral, emotional GPS” that can tell us which path to take (Winfrey, You Tube, 2014). Herman Hesse in Novel Siddhartha describes most people as falling leaves that drift and turn in the air, flutter and fall in the ground and few as the stars which travel one defined path where no wind reaches and which have within themselves their guide and path (Hesse, 1998, p. 58).

The bottom line of all these thoughts is that we need to be contemplative and live a meaningful life. The problem, however, is the lack of a single unified and meaningful criterion that sets the standards for a meaningful life. I have subscribed one criterion for living a meaningful life set by Michio Kaku, who encodes the appeal that the purpose of human beings is to make the world better that that we entered in. We would also be in parallel with the Aristotelian definition of the good life which he said is a “rational dedication to some goal that structure one’s entire being” (Singer, 1992, p. 107) in fulfilling the claim of Kaku. We have explained earlier in the paper that the nature of such structure as defined by Aristotle is evolution, and improvement in the world is, to its core, an evolutionary process. Therefore, this can be said about our life that it needs to have a mutual characteristics of validation, happiness, meaningfulness and elements of improvisation.

Happiness, Meaning in Life and Morality

Happiness in life and meaningful life are not the same, and meaning or happiness in life is not a product of a moral life. An individual who has to struggle against an unwelcoming environment might nevertheless have lived a meaningful life and vice versa.  Galileo Galilei may not have lived a happy life, for his speculation about the nature of the universe was ill-treated by the fundamentalist, but he lived a meaningful life because he devoted his life to find the truth. Similarly, a politician who accumulates illegal wealth so as to raise a happy family and who lobbies political agenda in favor of few elitist people at an expense of benefit of millions of people may find himself happy in his family and meaningful to those politicians, but he is immoral and he is not living a life that is desirable.  What ought we to do then? We answer this question in the closing remarks.

A life can have significance only when it increases the meaning and happiness on number of similar lives “regardless of any effect upon ones desire both through relative or objective standards” (Ibid, 131-148). The meaning of the life can be measured by the positive impact it makes on the numbers of people. That is to say the greater the number and quality of lives one can transmute, greater the significance of one’s life.  In this respect, Bill Gates- who has made this writing possible through his product and have provided a lot of aid in helping people in Africa- have lived a more meaningful life than a hypothetical person, who may earn as much as Bill in an illicit manner but does nothing but waste money on drugs and gambling.   

Conclusion

The common theme in all of the accepted claims of this paper is that human beings fear death as a loss of their existence and that inherent human tendency is propagation like that of all other creatures. Rational ability makes us complex, but it is our means, similar to a red color and the good smell of a rose, to fulfill our purpose in the world. The direction the world is heading is not foreseeable, but on an individual level, the true meaning of life can be achieved by doing most good for most people -ourselves included- and thus by being an agent of evolutionary process of improvement.

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