Our inexplicable existence in a cold dark Universe

What is this world that we inexplicably find ourselves in? Were we placed here by some unknown intelligence for some unfathomable reason? Or is it all just a huge joke, that it's all just meaningless fortuity and happenstance that we find ourselves in existence now and having such thoughts?

If that were not enough, this world, this reality we find ourselves in, is highly strange. Consider our situation. We exist, apparently, on the surface of a small sphere that is suspended in the midst of an effective eternal, cold, dark, nothingness. An effective nothingness utterly inhospitable and even possibly entirely bereft of any complex life apart from on this one tiny planet. When we gaze up in wonder and forlorn hope seeking to understand why we're here, what it all means, what our role might be, whether there is other life out there, the stars merely gaze back down at us with cold pitiless indifference.

I find our situation to be highly peculiar. Certainly not something I thought about as a child, but the weirdness of our situation has slowly dawned on me the older and older I get. And even at my relatively advanced age, the feeling of weirdness continues to grow.

Perhaps we will eventually find out the answer to such questions in some unknown reality after we die, perhaps we won't. Personally, I feel that we will.

What can we do about being stuck in a miserable and futile existence?

 

The following article, I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence, quotes someone who laments:

I see a therapist once a week. But I have a shameful and persistent feeling of despair. I’m stuck in a miserable and futile existence. I don’t like work. I hate being trapped within someone else’s schedule, sending pointless emails, attending pointless meetings. I hate the nine-to-five, the long commute, asking permission to take leave – it’s just sleep, work, sleep, work.

I have no garden, and noisy neighbours. I won’t starve or lose the roof over my head but I can neither afford to go away on holiday nor to dine out or buy clothes and books.

My family and friends are wonderful. I have a partner who loves me. But I am just desperately unhappy. How can I say any of this out loud to the people close to me? I feel like a petulant child: stuck, wailing. I don’t know how to be alive in this world and be happy. 

The rise of modern capitalism and the introduction of the division of labour to maximise profits has resulted in most people living their lives as wage slaves, obliged to do work that is dull and repetitious. For many people, this is partially offset by the meeting up with people in the workplace, making friends, having a laugh with them. But for others who are not so gregarious, and maybe find it awkward to get on with others, going to work is often then just a daily grind that is unfulfilling and simply lacks any personal meaning. It is surely not how we are meant to live. Many of us are simply existing, not living.

It is true that we can get temporary distractions from the “toys” we can buy; the latest smartphone, or TV, or whatever. Or going on holiday. But even here, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, feeling a failure as many others seem to be able to afford more than we can, or go on holiday more frequently. They can afford the latest and most expensive smartphone, and we can’t. But even when we do have enough money to buy all the latest gadgets’, this most often only temporarily ameliorates any feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and despair.

Nor, for many of us, is it helpful if we didn’t work at all. Many people find it profoundly boring not being in a full-time job as an employee. That they have nothing to do all day. Indeed, many people claim that when they were unemployed they were sleeping 12 hours a day and were just depressed.

I suggest that, ideally, we need to have a job, find work, which engages our interest. One needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product we're creating or the service we're providing. To produce something, or provide some service, that other people really appreciate together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do likewise. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will encourage a sense of purpose and enjoyment in the work.

That’s the ideal, but in reality not the sort of work that most of us will ever obtain since modern industrial capitalist society creates precisely the type of work that is dull and repetitious. This is compounded by the fact that most of us work for 40 or more hours a week, hence leaving us less time for more purposeful activity. Incidentally, this is particularly vexing since it is my suspicion, and indeed some evidence suggests, that we could be just as productive, if not more so, if we worked fewer hours.

It seems to me that for a meaningful, fulfilling life, what we really need, what we really yearn, is a feeling of being alive. A feeling of life being an adventure. That life is a journey with ongoing meaningful experiences. But our modern industrial capitalist world forces us into meaningless soulless work and also conveys the message that we are just mere meat robots with no free-will destined to cease to exist when we die. All of which is antithetical to our yearning souls.

To be honest, I suspect we were all much happier in the Stone Age. Life won’t have been insipid, bland and boring back then. Yes, it might have been a hard life. A life full of many close brushes with death. But the comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs and the collective outpouring of emotions with the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw, more than compensates. As would the implicit feeling that death is just another journey and all will come right in the end.

But I am not here to exclusively rail against all the failings of our modern world (I’ve done that elsewhere). To coin a phrase, it is what it is. The question is, for those who live bleak unfulfilling lives, what can we do about it?

If we cannot find work that is fulfilling, perhaps we can at least find work that has shorter hours, or where we interact with those with a similar mind-set to our own.

But I think the best course of action is to develop goals that we can strive towards. Develop an interest on some topic and read extensively about it. Or learn some new skill. It’s the striving towards a goal of some nature, even if it’s only a short term goal, which creates meaning and direction in our lives. But not unrealistic goals, rather something that you feel you can genuinely attain with some dedication and effort.

A Purposeless Existence?

At the following link in the comments underneath a lady called violagirl says:

After my husband died of a 13 year illness I spent a lot of time reading, meditating, doing yoga, hiking, etc and here's what I learned; life is purposeless and meaningless. When we die it is over unless there was something huge we did. My husband was a brilliant NASA engineer, but his work is not "his", it belongs to NASA. We live then we die and it does not matter one little bit what we do in that time. It would be nice to think we would at least aspire to be moral and ethical, but greed and stuff are what is lauded and that is another reason humans and their lives do not matter.

I feel for her and I understand why she and so many others feel this way. Her sentiment is due to the underlying message that our culture is giving us -- namely that we are biological machines with no set purpose apart from living this one life. The Universe just is, there's no meaning behind it, there's no reason for it. We live our very brief lives, and that's it.

But I think she is very wrong. I feel that our lives and the Universe are ultimately mysterious, and we are all on this adventure. That perhaps part of the mystery will be revealed when we die. I feel that life is exciting and even though it may appear to be dreary and monotonous, that this is illusory. We get a brief glimpse of how things truly are during moments like mystical experiences.

Do we really want an endless hedonistic lifestyle?

I just read this article this morning.  In it he says:

I once saw a ‘Twilight Zone’ half-hour which I thought was very insightful. A gangster, un-principled even by the standards of his colleagues, was shot to death during a crime. Crossing to the other side, he found himself in a posh apartment accompanied by a butler dressed in all-white street clothes. The place could not have been more to his liking. Beautiful women abounded, his liquor cabinet never wanting; turn on the TV? One of his favorite shows 24 hours a day. He also gambled: ponies, poker and pool; and he never lost, not once.

Then a strange thing happened: he grew bored with everything that had once amused him. In desperation, he turned to his butler and said, “I’m sick of this place! I want to the other place!”

“You mean Hell?”

“Damned right!”

The butler smiled and began to glow. “Why, sir, you’re already there!”

So it turns out, for this individual at least, the punishment of his eternal damnation would consist of being bored forever. A subtle extraction that.

A thorough grounding in Human nature, it seems to me, would lead us to suppose equally boring, equally punishing would be multiple virgins, and singing praises all the day long. It would be the painful equivalent of grape jelly and peanut butter sandwiches three times a day… forever [although for this thought I lack scriptural advocacy]; we need challenge, growth, set-backs, learning, and the like.

I'm not sure what we need, but I am sure that although a non-stop hedonistic lifestyle might be great for weeks, months, or even years -- or in my case decades --  ultimately one would become bored, and worse still deeply unsatisfied. Whether in this life, or an afterlife, an important element of happiness is feeling fulfilled from within. The feeling that your life and all things have an ultimate purpose and you're a very important part of that purpose. That we are striving towards some goal -- some ultimate purpose. That gaining knowledge and understanding about the world and our place in it is part of this quest. And especially the development of an empathic identification with all other beings and realising we're all in it together.

Oops that very last part sounds like a David Cameron soundbite . . but anyway. 

I would imagine that if there is an afterlife we will not be engaged in endless pleasures or any other endless behaviour which goes nowhere.  Rather I would hope that we will grow and develop as spiritual beings.   Perhaps the afterlife realm consists of different levels that we will ascend as our souls develop.   This is not to deny there might be many pleasures  to be experienced, but endless non-varying pleasures will become ultimately tedious.

Meaning or Purpose?

There seems to be a lot of talking at cross purposes when people who believe in a "God" and a "life after death" argue with materialists/atheists.  Many of the former claim that if the atheists/materialists are right, then there is no meaning to life so we might as well just kill ourselves now.   Many atheists, on the other hand, seem to be genuinely bewildered by this and claim that of course there is meaning to life!  We form friendships and relationships with others, achieve various goals, experience many pleasures.  And even after death our lives might not have been in vain since we will have affected many other peoples' lives, hopefully for the better!

I want to draw a distinction between the words "purpose" and "meaning".  If there is no "God", no "life after death", and we are merely complex biological machines, then I would submit our lives have no purpose.  By this I mean that there is no ultimate goal to our lives.  There is no becoming one with "God" or whatever form that purpose might take.  That is to say that we live out our lives, and they might well be very satisfactory in terms of pleasures experienced, various satisfactions attained, but ultimately there is no reason for ones existence over and above that which we ourselves give to our lives.  On the other hand our lives certainly have meaning due to the aforementioned positive aspects to our existence.

But is having meaning, but no purpose to our lives, enough?

Although I emphatically disagree with Bertrand Russell in the following quote that we are compelled to accept the conclusion he outlines, he nevertheless nicely captures the dissatisfactory consequence of accepting that our lives have no purpose.

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation be safely built.

Bertrand Russell (from A Free Man's Worship, 1903)

If we are mere biological machines, then yes, life has meaning.  And I find it absurd for people to suggest that if there is no "God" etc we might as well just kill ourselves now.   But nevertheless it remains the case that the Universe and our lives are ultimately to no avail.   Whatever goals are achieved, whatever satisfactions are attained, whatever pleasures we experience, ultimately it is all pointless in the grand scheme of things.  Eventually the last human being will die, the last sentient being on Earth will die and eventually the earth will be swallowed up by the Sun when it ends its life as a red giant. 

With the death of the Earth we might legitimately conclude that the whole history of the human race -- every thought, every action, every emotion experienced -- might as well never have occurred.

If we gravitate towards materialism perhaps it is best to put aside such thoughts and lose ourselves in our day to day lives; care about the concrete things in life such as making a living, forming relationships, and just marvel at our fortune to be priveleged to have this brief spark of sentience before the veil of forever nothingness descends upon us. 

Never never give up!

From an unknown author:

One day, two frogs were enjoying the day in the barn when they accidently fell into the farmer's bucket of cream, and they couldn't get out. The two frogs kept swimming around to keep from drowning, and every once in a while they would try to climb out, but this was becoming very tiring.

One frog kept saying, "This is useless, we should just give up." But the other frog just ignored the comment and kept swimming.

Finally, the pessimistic frog gave up and drowned. The other frog was sad at the loss of his friend, but he wasn't going to give up. He kept swimming and swimming, and, finally, the cream turned into butter and the frog simply climbed out.

This story shows that even if we stumble and others try to pull us down, we've got to keep on swimming because, eventually, the cream will turn into butter and we'll make it out of the pail.

I wholeheartedly concur.  No matter how desperate a situation may seem, no matter how unlikely it seems to be able to attain the desired outcome by continually struggling, nothing is achieved by simply giving up.  And even in the most dire circumstances all hope might not be lost.

Moreover the striving itself serves to give us purpose and direction in life.  No chance of landing that dream job?  Well certainly not with a negative attitude.   And we can even grant it might be unrealistic even with a positive attitude.  But negativity makes failure a certainty.  Positivity, even where it fails to achieve the specific goal in mind, gives us hope, gives us something to look forward to, gives us a reason to live even if only to see if our plans come to fruition.  And if they don't?  Then make some new plans!   Always fight, and never never give in! 

A Purposeful Life?

We find ourselves in this world not knowing what we are, who we are, or why we are here.  Are we  mere meat robots with no free will living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe?  Or are we souls with an ultimate purpose to our existence -- a purpose which we cannot as of yet know, or possibly even comprehend. Worst of all we don't know what our ultimate destiny might be, whether it will be oblivion or whether it will be to ascend into some mysterious new reality.

In our day to day lives let's just be happy for the day and have a few pints of beer. Problem is I made a new years resolution not to drink from the 1st January 2014 to the 31st March 2014.  I am mortified  🙁