A brief essay on logic and life
Beware before you read this, you might realize you're free
Mankind is a funny breed of complex organic stuctures. They always believe they're so special. It's quite adorable!
In life, aggravating as it is, we're always faced with such important questions. Should I get up now, or in five minutes? What should I cook today? Do I have enough money? Do people like me? Have I made the right choices in my life? Where am I going with this? Do I need to do more to help people in need? Do I have the right to judge someone else? Why do I live? What is my purpose?
I have an answer for you, I'm just not so sure if you want to hear it. Well, you're still reading, so I'll just assume the answer is yes. I'll try to make it quick and not to be more offensive to all your beliefs than necessary.
When answering questions of this magnitude about humans, it seems reasonable to define the term "human" first. As everybody knows, we are the crown of the creation of one or another God, entrusted with the responsibility to take care of all there is in the world, rewarded with great intelligence and culture that exceeds everything else there is in the world by far. Ha! OK, try a little more modern, maybe go with Darwin: Mankind is the most current update on ape-evolution, or at least one of the most favorable versions so far, We do pretty well and procreate sufficiently, as to keep the race alive. Congrats! Hmm, doesn't sound so bad, we're getting a little more humble already. Still, this just doesn't seem to be the right approach to answer the question, not just what we are, but what we are about! Maybe we have to get a little more into detail. Sounds like a lot of work, I know. Sorry. I'll spare you an explanation of our physiology, I wouldn't think that would be very important as to our purpose in life. No, the crux seems to be buried somewhere in that big ball on our necks. We call it our heads and it contains our CPU, RAM and harddrive - the brain. There has been a lot of fuss about it, recently. It seems to interest people. If they're good, they may one day understand why. Now, one way to look at the brain is through psychology. It's interesting and it will give you a good first impression on ourselves, but you'll end up in a big mess of contradictory assumptions and theories pretty soon. So nay, we don't want to end up in that swamp. Let's see if there's another way. And I am delighted to tell you, there is one. It's called "Neuroscience". You know, the stuff that Amy in "The Big Bang Theory" does. It seems to be a bit more scientific and therefore more reliable. Unfortunately, I'm not a neuroscientist. But that won't be necessary. All we need to understand is, that there are heaps of different systems and processes interacting with each other and thereby, with immense effort and precision (so I hope), form what we experience as "thoughts" and "decisions". And is that not the stuff we really need to understand to get a grasp on what we are and what we're meant for? I think so. Now, all theses processes are so interconnected and complex that there is no way I could understand them. Nobody does. Not really, at least. But that is only because the problem is so big! So in order to understand them one day, we must start a little smaller, set the scale to something we can comprehend. Because once we've figured that out, we can start building our own artificial brain from there, meaning that all necessary information is contained in these smaller scale processes. What makes the whole thing so amazing is the coordinated execution of so many of these processes at a time and in a reasonable order. But that's just the fancy fluff about the real stuff. So when we do that - look at the smaller scale - we'll find ourselves in need of understanding of what's going on in our brain cells. We do have some understanding of that. Let's just say it's got a lot to do with complex biochemistry and electrical signals. So we'd need to understand biochemistry. Well, biochemistry is also just chemistry. Aha, so we need to know chemistry. See where this is going? In short, to understand all these things we must first understand what's at the basis of each and every process. So we'll go deeper and deeper, from chemistry we'll get to quantum mechanics, and maybe from there to nuclear physics. Suppose we'd arrive at a point where we can truly say "OK, I just understood this entirely", we can go backwards by just adding complexity. But there's not much to complexity, except that's it a big mess. Note two things though: First, we do not understand the basics. Now that sucks. All this effort and all I can tell you is "sorry, no further"? Seems like we're back to the start, we have no idea. But here comes the second thing, and even though this may not seem as important as first, it might just put a few things into perspective once you think about it for a while: If we were to reach that point of basic understanding then yes, we could probably work our way back to understanding the brain and this ourselves and what we're all about. But we could understand much more! More precisely, we could understand everything! But this also means that, had we not started our journey of thought at the purpose of life, but at the mechanical properties of solid rock, we would have ended up with the same results, if we really went for the deepest of truths. This tells us that everything in the universe is governed by the exact same basic laws, whatever they might be. No matter if you start at something as noble as stopping climate change or something as stupid as nailpolish, if you'd take no shortcuts, you'd end up with the same result. That means that these things are not really different, right? They're just different types of messes. And yet here we are, proud to be human, happy to be alive, feeling more important than anything else. How strange is that? And what does it tell us?
Well, it tells us this: If we're basically no different than the next rock, our purpose in life is the same as it's purpose in sitting there. We just are. So what? No one gives a fuck. Except ourselves. But why do we? Why is it so important to us, to be so important? I don't know. And as we've just learned, it doesn't matter either. Nothing matters, really? Save a life? Fine! Dig you're nose? Fine! Kill a cow? Well, I don't know what's going on in you're CPU, but that's not really my business! Also, it's not you're business! Also, who are you? A human, a lot of water, protons, neutrons and electrons, probable (referring to quantum mechanics)? Why do you still read this? Why do you breathe? Why did I write this? It is all so useless!
OK, I'm sincerely sorry for painting such a dark picture of the world. But here's the real message: It's not time for dispair, it's time to really get your shit together and accept the reality that your are truly and absolutely free in what you do, think, say, eat, drink, cherish, destroy, build, hope, like and so on! There is no such thing as a greater power that dictates what is good or bad, right or wrong, interesting or boring! If you can deal with the fact that this may seem a bit lonely, then the world has just opened all it's doors to you, has welcomed you to play the game of life, following you're own rules! And if you can't bear the absolute absence of structure in your life, you may still go ahead and be religious. Who's now going to tell you that's wrong? Personally, it's not my thing, but I totally get why people want to believe in stuff. Sometimes I wouldn't mind that kind of reassurance. But I decided to deal with my shit by myself, which is equally okay.
Naturally, accepting this as the truth has enormous implications on all aspects of our lives. To be more precise, it renders many of our valued institutions, such as politics, justice, ethics and more absolutely obsolete. Or maybe not even that, but the basis on what these systems are build on. How do we declare someone a murderer, if he has just permanently disabled certain repetative actions of some cluster of water and organic molecules? How do we make laws that apply to humans, but not to dogs (or rocks), if they are in essence no different? Now, you could say, "of course I can see a difference between a man and a rock!". My point is, you could not tell where exactly that line is! But since justice claims to be objective, a clear definition of that line would be necessary! But we don't care, because the systems work (soso) and we rely on them. But we would really need to admit that justice is deeply subjective, nothing subjective can really be understood and therefore there is no universal justice. So what did we really learn about humans? We're very pretentious entities...
I hope I didn't shake your world too much. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, I can recommend the book "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. He was a biochemist and used his expertise to write about the implications of what he knew about his field to our lives and arrives at a very similar conclusion as myself. It's really mind-opening!
Enjoy life!