What’s the meaning of life?
It is a question asked so often that no answer seems satisfactory for long. Here’s my humble contribution to the heap.
Any broad question can and should be answered at multiple levels. Whether you are atheistic or religious, it is clear that the human experience can be divided into the material and the spirit. Material being the physical world that we inhabit and spirit being the quality of our consciousness.
On the material level the meaning of life is simple. Evolutionarily: Survive. Reproduce. Pass on genes. Ecologically: Die. Decompose. Become worm food. Our atoms are recycled into other material things orbiting the sun. This feels excruciatingly meaningless.
But, I think most people asking this question do so from the perspective of the human spirit. A thinking, conscious, self-aware being is a prerequisite for the question itself.
Being born is like being dropped into a game with no manual or instructions. We have to learn the controls and start playing blindly. Science tells us how the world works. Through experiments and predictive theories we start to better understand the controls of the game and we can make increasingly advanced moves.
Religion is a transcendent narrative that explains why we are playing the game and what the objectives are. Science and religion are complementary tools. Science is descriptive and religion is prescriptive (orienting). They only clash when either attempts to do the job of the other. That is, when religion makes descriptive claims that can be disproven by science, the two are at odds. Or, when we try to prescribe a path to meaning through science it feels incomplete. In modern times, many people, including myself, have been taught to discount religion entirely because of its descriptive failures, and in doing so we may have thrown away its orienting value as well.
Playing this game without science leaves you in less control of your avatar or the world. A life without a transcendent narrative leaves you stuck because you don’t understand the objectives of the game. In the latter, you may feel like the game is meaningless because you lack orientation.
I am not a traditionally religious person, but I find their transcendent narratives interesting. Where religions diverge from each other, you can see the influence of culture. Where major religions overlap, it suggests there is some deep shared truth about human nature and our relationship to the universe.
From east to west, non-theistic to theistic, the following themes are repeated:
There is an ultimate good and truth that is a directional ideal, but we can never fully know.
Humans are the stewards, the fulfillers, the realizers of that ultimate good in this material world.
The goal is spiritual alignment with the ultimate good. Actions that move you in the direction of the ultimate good enrich your spirit and those that move you away degrade your spirit.
The quality of your spirit at the end of your life matters.
Helping others to align with the ultimate good enhances the quality of your spirit because we are interconnected. Compassion lifts the spirit of both the giver and receiver. Harming someone degrades both the victim and the perpetrator.
The next questions are naturally: What is the goal of the ultimate good? And, how can I live meaningfully in accordance with it?
I can’t prove that an ultimate good, or what some may call God, exists. But I can observe that an orientation towards that belief reliably produces more meaning and gratitude towards the involuntary experience that we call life. I’ve come to recognize the ultimate goals of the human spirit as:
Create. Explore. Unify.
Intuitively, these have always captured our souls and fulfilled us.
To create is to take once random information and order it into something meaningful. We look up to our most talented creators- musicians, artists, writers, system builders, great parents. The most prolific transcend the material time and social norms they occupied through their works.
Exploration is the call to adventure. It is continually pushing against the boundary of chaos and order until you feel just outside your comfort zone. Making a career pivot, starting an exciting hobby, pursuing an intellectual challenge. This is how we discover and make sense of new information - not just about the world, but about ourselves as well.
My working definition of love is: that which unifies voluntarily. We seek strong bonds and unity with other people that choose us in return. It is perhaps the most timeless and meaningful of the three goals.
How do I create? Pursue skills and execute on inspiration.
How do I explore? Follow your curiosities past the boundaries of your current experiences.
How do I unify? Foster deep relationships, compassion and kindness.
The direction is so broad that there are infinite paths to finding meaning, but many people choose never to take a step.
As Viktor Frankl observed,
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
The “devil”, or your personal favorite symbol of malevolence, does not have to tempt us towards obvious evil, it only needs to separate us from the ultimate good of creation, exploration and unity. There are two paths to this.
The first is the hell we recognize: torment, famine, despair. When the body’s base needs go unmet or your mind is consumed by anguish, the pursuit of good becomes impossible.
The second path is more insidious because it masks itself as safety. This is the invisible trap of comfort. When all needs are met and cheap stimulation is abundant, the effort required to create, explore and unify feels excessive. A satisfied state of sedation replaces agency and meaning gets crowded out by distraction. Here, the devil wins again.
An extreme perspective follows from this. Each person is born into a unique set of capacities, constraints, and circumstances, and therefore holds a unique potential. We have one lifetime to approach the fullest expression of our spirit available to us - to develop what can be developed, given what we have been given.
This places an immense responsibility on the individual: to willingly bear the inevitable effort and hardship required to pursue creation, exploration, and unity, rather than retreating into distraction, comfort, or self-pity. Meaning emerges from taking responsibility for what you can become.
Under this burden, the evaluation of life’s meaning shifts from “life is excruciatingly meaningless” to “life is excruciatingly meaningful”.
To live, you need to find a balance between the extremes of the material and spiritual perspectives. See enough meaning in the spirit to endure the suffering and motivate the work required to pursue a good life. But, also realize the absurdity of material existence to remain free to experiment, take risks and make bold choices - knowing in a few generations both your greatest successes and failures will dissolve as a drop in a cosmic ocean.
We are too small to comprehend the ultimate meaning of this game, or if this is worth the effort and suffering, but our spirit is only fulfilled when we choose to play.
Create. Explore. Unify.
I’ll leave you with a poem I recently enjoyed:
