Firstly, we assume that we are all alive, that this life exists, and that we are all a part of it, intertwined in its web, slaves to its definition, wanting only to understand what it is that we are.
Secondly, that there is a meaning, that a meaning is out there, somewhere, like a fixed point in a cosmos, the truth, the meaning, it's here, it's there, wherever it is, it still IS. It exists, it makes sense, logically, if we are taught how to think.
Thirdly, that we have the power, the will, maybe even the need to figure out exactly what it is. So we create, and we try to understand. We dedicate our lives to answering that question, or at least we start there. I would say most never finish, which would be hypocritical. There are ways around it, saying there is none, or there is but one, that we will never know, that we will never know that we know, etc.
So I say that what is the meaning. That it lies in questions, a topic to think about: the question. A science, not a form of dogma, but the understanding that knowledge changes over time, that nothing is permanent, even if we write it in stone.
I'm reading these articles for a presentation in my Roman Imperial history class and the words identity, culture, and power keep coming about. A title if you please.
Identity: anything that makes us similar or different from anything else, including ourselves. Sex, height, weight, nationality, culture, age, race, etc. Anything that can be made up and used to describe and define ourselves. We have multiple identities and different ones are more intense depending on the culture where one lives.
Culture: shared meanings, shared ideas, shared something. The ability to think similarly, to make the same things valuable, important, worth it.
Power: control over environment. To alter, to change, to create. To be able to do these things, means one has power. Power in turn to create and then maintain. Maintaining by controlling, by creating identities and cultures and then ensuring that they live on, that they are believed in, and so they exist, just like the meaning of life.
I think Carl Sagan said it best in this excerpt from "Pale Blue Dot," written in 1994. The whole article can be found here
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994"
What is the meaning of life? That depends on whose life you are trying to find meaning for.
ReplyDeleteIdentity, culture, and power all shape this meaning, forming a intricate relationship between one another. Is there an answer, a correct lens by which to gaze on these? Maybe.
There is a meaning that we can create for our own lives. (This may be the only true phenomena in which 'free will' manifests itself, unless my idea of free will is so convoluted and life is the manifestation of 'free will'; or 'free will' is an illusion created by the evolution of language, and life itself is a chemical reaction. "Moral responsibility presupposes freedom of action.") Creating meaning comes under extreme pressure from the three concepts you named. All three are an expression, manifestation, and even life itself.
The exerpt from Sagan places the answer to the meaning of life squarely back on me, and you, the reader, the writer, the seeker, where it should be. However, one important observation was ommitted, and that is that the photo of a pale blue dot, my very existence, his life, everything that has happened on the blue dot could not have happened otherwise, because that is the way it happened, if that makes any sense. We can study this and make it orderly and teleological so to explain how it culminates into the present moment.
The "evil men" shaped the blue dot into what it is today, and just as important the "good men" and let us not forget woman. Sometimes I feel that I forget where I came from, and to who a huge part of my existence is indebted to...