You think life is meaningless? I think you’re just scared.

We’ve all heard it before.

“Life is meaningless. Meaning is a human construct and a figment of our imaginations. It’s all in your head, man.”

And I hear it more and more these days, and presented in such a way as if the meaninglessness of life is simply “obvious.” As if it was concluded a long time ago that life has no underlying purpose, and that anyone disagreeing just doesn’t have all the facts.

But I simply can’t agree.

First of all, let’s make sure we’re arguing about the same thing.

It’s important, in any good debate, to start with our basic assumptions.

Truth is, people on both sides of the argument pose, and pretentiously answer, this question of meaning without really describing what they mean by “meaning.”

So, what is meaning?

One common use of the word is to represent purpose. And so the question “Does life have meaning?” then actually goes like this: Does life have a purpose? Does existence exist “in order to…” something? Are we (stars and people and plants and dust and space and all) on our way toward a conclusion, toward a goal?

And to be honest, I don’t have a good answer to that. When phrased this way, I just don’t know. Life? All of existence? Is there some purpose to all of it? Believe me, I have my thoughts and my own personal conclusions, but do I know for sure?

No.

Maybe I’ll find out when I die. Maybe wondering is the answer.

But either way, it’s ok that I don’t know. It has to be, because no one else REALLY knows either. I don’t care what side of the argument you’re on, you don’t know. Stop being so sure.

Another way of looking at the word “meaning” is as “significance.”

Thus, does life “signify” something else? Does existence point at a “story” like the Buddhist’s finger points toward the moon, a story from which we’re supposed to learn something, feel something, or change our actions or our mindsets?

Again, I’m not sure.

But either way, when people talk about “meaning” they tend to use the word as a representation of one or both of the ideas above.

The problem with definitions

I think an inevitable problem here is trying to first encapsulate “all of life” in some general way, and then to ascribe some meaning to this general definition. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m simply saying, that’s a big task. Concepts of God almost make more sense when faced with tasks like this – because to try and describe “all of life and existence” seems more monumental a task than any human can accomplish.

Thus, God (or the idea of God) comes into play – a representation of something outside our understanding.

Personally, I’m just fine with that.

It’s those who are so certain about their conclusions that scare me.

That said, we all have an intrinsic desire to conclude. It’s what our brains are built to do.

And because of the difficulty in saying what life DOES mean, many people find it easier to conclude that life itself has no meaning whatsoever.

And while again, I’m not certain what life DOES mean (and part of me is open to the concept that such a question is wonderfully and inexorably beyond the limits of the human mind), I don’t hesitate in saying that those who conclude life is “meaningless” are dead wrong.

The Apple Tree: does specific mean lesser?

One common argument used to denigrate life as “meaningless” is this idea that “meaning is a human construct, that it only only exists within your head” and thus given its specificity and non-ubiquitous nature, there must be no universal meaning.

Think of an apple tree, in the summer, growing apples. But wait, the apples are only growing on branches (not on the trunk, or in the root system), and not on every branch (some branches are skipped), nor at every point on any given branch.

Should one conclude then that those apples “only” exist for the branches on which they’re grown, in the spots on which they occur? Does the point or purpose of the “the tree” then suddenly not include “producing apples” because apples aren’t everywhere, or because there’s not one huge apple that is the final product of the tree?

Does the tree lack apples?

No, it certainly does not.

And yet people, everywhere, love to apply this same logic to life, when pondering the age-old question: Does life have meaning? or What is the meaning of life?

And so I say this:

SO WHAT if meaning only exists in the human mind?

So what?

Is the apple less “real” because it only exists on part of the tree?

Would meaning be “less amazing” if it only exists in the human mind?

This conclusion that “meaning” is somehow “less-than” when facing the difficulty of finding a “universal meaning” – this conclusion, this judgment, it’s a CHOICE. It’s like saying, “beauty” doesn’t exist because I only see it in certain places and not others.

This illuminates a real issue people take with our own humanity – with the part we play in this universe.

The feeling that humans “just aren’t natural.”

I recently saw a meme being passed around that said the following:

Homosexuality is not against nature. More than 500 species are known to practice same-sex coupling. Religion is against nature. No other animal practices it.

To which I replied the following:

“Religion is ALSO natural. Pretty much every culture of humans has had it. It’s not aberrant behavior. Also, humans are natural. So are buildings, just like a bee-hive is natural. Now, do all of those natural things contribute to a future that we desire? What kind of future DO we desire? Those are the real questions.”

Why do we think so little of humans?

See, it has become en vogue to think so little of humans.

Yes, it’s beneficial that we become aware of our faults, our selfishness, and our destructive tendencies. But to then begin to contrast ourselves with this separate ideal of “nature” – to suggest that our actions are “polluting” the natural order is fallacious.

Not just polluting the earth, mind you – yes we pollute the earth, but to suggest we pollute the “natural order” is to suggest that we as humans, scientists and thinkers A) actually understand the “natural order” and B) that we are somehow not part of it.

But damnit, my friends, we are the product of the universe. We weren’t thrown into this universe like unwanted guests, nor did we force our way into it like a band of marauders.

Remember that.

But is this “we humans are just as natural as a rainforest” argument a justification for everything we do? Everything that is destructive or short sighted or just plain stupid?

Hell no.

It’s simply a reminder that conceptualizing of humans as being the “scourge” of all around us just isn’t helpful, nor is it based in fact.

It’s like trying to win someone over to your political party, but first calling them a “fucking Liberal” or “fucking conservative.” There are no hearts and minds being won this way.

In the same vein, denigrating the idea of meaning itself, simply because it’s perhaps a strictly human experience (and again, that’s the argument, and I don’t know if that’s true) – this denigration is not a beneficial path.

It creates an unprovable separation between humans and the rest of existence – a separation that not only doesn’t actually exist, but which fuels our tendencies toward feeling more alone, and increases the chances that we act in a destructive manner.

Creating esteem in one’s self and one’s place in this world has a much greater chance of fueling personal responsibility than does cutting down oneself for being human.

As Alan Watts suggests, we didn’t “come into this universe, we came out of it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCQcUeW4XyY

The universe gave birth to us, just as it gave birth to everything else, “…in the same way that a flower comes out of a plant, or a fruit comes out of a tree. And as an apple tree apples, the solar system in which we live, and therefore the galaxy in which we live, and therefore the system of galaxies in which we live, that system peoples. And therefore people are an expression of its energy and of its nature.” (I added the italics for effect).

“If people are intelligent,” he continues, “and I suppose we have to grant that if, then the energy which people express must also be intelligent, because ‘one does not gather figs from thistles, and grapes from thorns.’ But it does not occur, you see, to the ordinary civilized person to regard himself, or herself, as an expression of the whole universe.”

So even if people are the ONLY THINGS in the universe in which the experience of meaning exists, then “meaning” is an expression of the universe too.

But Watts’ argument also touches on something larger – that intelligence observed on the part of we humans can’t have come from an unintelligent system.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem

Mathematician Kurt Gödel wrote a famous theorem about the impossible task of describing a set of numbers using that same set of numbers.

“For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.”

Basically, you can’t fully explain something within a system using only the pieces of that system. I’ve heard it said this way, “It would take an explanation larger than the universe itself to fully explain the universe.”

And from that (and back to Watts), if there is such a thing as intelligence that exists in humans, and a consciousness that exists in what we call “human experience,” then that intelligence and consciousness must represent a larger intelligence and consciousness that exists “outside” the system as well.

This intelligence (our brains being the most complicated things in the universe) can’t just emerge from nothing. Lower orders don’t seem to generate higher orders.

What this means? I don’t know. That’s the point. I can’t describe this higher order. I can’t describe God.

That’s why the “apophatic” viewpoint of God is perhaps my favorite, the description of God by saying what it isn’t, rather than what is IS. It’s a tool to remind oneself that descriptions can’t encompass something like God, and I’d go so far as to say that in the same way, they can’t encompass describing existence, either.

The problem in concluding meaninglessness

About 48 minutes into this recent Joe Rogan podcast, Dave Foley, Paul Greenberg, and Joe Rogan start talking about “meaning” and why people are so fixated upon it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmkEZKgeQQg

“Why do we need everything to be defined by a very obvious beginning and an end?” Rogan asks.

“Everything we experience has a beginning and an end,” responds Foley, suggesting rightly that human experience involves the breaking up of occurrences into individual “events” – ideas which our minds separate so that we can understand them.

This is true – our brains do this. But Foley (who goes one to push the “life is meaningless” dictum) continues.

“That’s why we create gods and religions,” Foley says, ”because the idea that life ends, and that it’s all been for nothing. It’s terrifying to people.”

And this is where I take issue.

Not that I’m so, perfectly, certain, that man didn’t create God. The thing is, I’m just not sure he did. And this certainty that God and meaning are simply man-made objects is, in itself, just as much a belief as its opposing viewpoint.

Now, you can quote science and data all you want, but science is limited to that which is measurable. And what we’re talking about is “what came before measurement?”

We’re asking the question, “what was the reason, the underlying purpose, of things to come into existence in the first place?” And science (a set of data and ideas WITHIN the system) will never be able to answer this question.

Unfortunately, while science is incapable of answering this question (not that it’s the fault of science, as humans themselves are also incapable), mainstream science has taken the stance that such a question is somehow less important because it’s unanswerable.

As much as I love Neal deGrasse Tyson, he rarely waxes philosophical about the meaning of life. It’s as if scientists gain a secret pleasure out of concluding that their is no “cosmic mind” out there, no grand purpose.

And I think this is partially out of fear.

Meaning and responsibility go together

See, if there is meaning, then there is a story that accompanies our actions. And in stories are judgments and lessons learned. If there is no meaning, then it’s perhaps too easy to sidestep the significance of one’s actions, to care less about the consequences of one’s choices.

I wonder if much of one’s inclination to believe in a meaningless existence is largely a desire to skirt responsibility – a consequence of fear that life actually does matter, and that one’s actions have consequences.

I’m not preaching heaven and damnation here – I’m reminding myself that the human mind IS full of meaning, whether we want it to be or not. Our brains are built to tell stories, and narratives. If we are less separate from the universe than we like to believe, then perhaps meaning is much more interwoven into the universe than atheists care to admit.

To consciously believe in “meaninglessness” is likely either a desire to oppose the story of meaning that we’ve been told (a reaction to a dogma with which we disagree), or a desire to be without meaning whatsoever.

But the human mind will always perceive meaning, and so the more “meaningless” the mind sees life to be, the more diminished one will judge their own life, in contrast with something that IS meaningful (whatever that is). The brain simply can’t judge something to be “meaningless” without making a value judgment for that thing. We can’t get rid of our need for meaning.

Maybe you want to change the story? I can’t blame you. Stories are incredibly powerful, and the story you’ve been told likely has had a dramatic effect on who you are. But to try to say that not only is the story wrong, or fabricated, but that no story exists? This is a step the brain just won’t take.

You’re deluding yourself to think that you really believe that. You just think less of life. And in thinking “less” of life, you must be comparing it to some other concept – some idea. And thus there is still a story, still a judgment, but you’ve placed yourself at the bottom.

So rather than see life as meaningless, what if we saw life as wholly meaningful? Every moment as a chance to create and experience the joys and pains and “story” of life?

In conclusion

Don’t throw yourself out with the bathwater. Because then what impact can you make? You’re now just a wet spot on the street.

Do you think you’re a fluke? If you believe it, then you’ll act as if you are.

But what if you truly believed you were the universe.

Not that you, with your individual soul or ego or perspective, will live forever, nor that you have the power of the universe.

But what if you believed that all this was you?

What kind of peace would you feel?

How would you act then?

Let’s take it to the extreme – what if you really did believe you’d live forever, and that there was nothing you had to do to ensure that to be so.

How would you act?

Would you really fight for possessions? Would you hoard your time or your money or your relationships? It’s an interesting question.

How would you act if you saw yourself as sacred?

Just try it.

~ Cecil

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