Late Night Philosophy

The Meaning of Life (as if there is one)

 (This entry was edited by synthetic on 04-23-01 @ 1:16 pm EDT)

No, I don't know the "meaning of life" for sure becasue no one can know anything that profound for certain, as explained in previous entries. All that anyone can do is postulate theories on this subject. If anyone tells you for sure that they know the meaning of life... well, do something to them for being silly.

As far as my faith is concerned, the Creator may or may not have had a particular purpose for life, or even human life. Most religions would have you beleive that we are the most important species anywhere in the universe. I think that view may change sometime in the future. But it doesn't matter what religions say; they are entitled to their beliefs, just as I am. The point is, God may have had a different plan for this universe. Life, especially sentient life, could be just a resultant or some sort of by-product. I know it seems depressing to think of your life as a universal by-product, but it may just be true. Who knows? If there is no "Meaning of Life" in the religious sense, than the true meaning is much more simple.

All that anyone can truly do is reproduce and pass on his or her knowledge to the off-spring and other people. Sure, there are other professions and vocations in life, but those two are the basic, fundamental drives that all biological beings possess. And does it really matter what else we do, when our species would become extinct without those instincts?

So the true "Meaning of Life" for the individual is to improve the species as a whole. Granted, your efforts will probably not be felt or seen by the species on a whole. Only the most powerful person can every truly make a world-wide difference within his or her life-time. The point is, I feel that the goal in life is to improve the species by attaining knowledge and passing it on to my offspring (if I choose to have them).

In my opinion, the success of our species depends solely on the amount of knowledge we possess as a species; what I call the "Collective Knowledge". Without knowledge, how can we improve ourselves in other ways, both physical and materially? The Collective Knowledge of the species is what is known by the majority of the species to be true. There are several ways that you can look at this idea.

First, if you look at the Collective Knowledge of all six billion or so people on the planet, most of which live in third-world countries where survival is tantamount to almost everything else, you'd see that the Collective Knowledge level is around the US High School level. Maybe. I mean, I think that most people know basic math(+,-,*,/), basic geograhpy (continents and the like), basic biology (infection, basic human anatomy, etc), and basic survival skills. I might be wrong in this assumption, but it can be looked at another way. I asked myself, what is the most fundamental proffession that is required? I think that farming is probably the most basic skill that is required for a group of people to live. Think about what a human needs to survive. Air is everywhere, but food, water, and shelter can be provided (if not provided naturally by the environment) by farmers. I'm not saying that farmers are the least intelligent people, but that they provide the most basic of services to humankind, while theoretical scientists provide a less-than-tangible service. The point is, a farmer in a third-world country now has more skills and knowledge than he would have 100 or 200 years ago. Much of this knowledge was conceived by a scientist dealing with theoretical ideas. Now, when a scientist comes up with a new idea, it is passed to his collegues, who circulate it through the world to other scientists. As the idea become more accepted, it may be introduced into a textbook as a fact. That knowledge is eventually passed on into textbooks of under-developed countries who learn it to be a fact, then the idea will be passed on to those who are not priviliged enough to attend school becasue it has become basic knowledge to the rest of the population. Therefore, that idea has become part of the Collective Knowledge of humankind.

Second, Collective Knowledge can be derived from what the most powerful people know as basic knowledge. This is discriminatory to under-developed populations, but the people with power are the people who make global decisions, not the majority of humankind. Therefore, if you look at what the basic knowledge of the pople of the top 10 countries in the world, you would get a much higher Collective Knowledge rating.

Third, you could look at countries on their own instead of people as a collective. As far as I know, every country has automobiles of some type or another. I doubt that there is a country that still uses a horse and cart as its main mode of transportation. Also, the computer has become part of nearly every country. Of course, this Collective Knowledge rating is based on what technology the governments of each country uses rather than what techs the people of that country use.

Of course, the Collective Knowledge rating is used to determine what level of technology the species is at as a whole, not as a base. I mean, the highest level technology and theoretical piece of knowledge every discovered does not reflect what is being used by people as a whole. In fact, the goal of a species should be transcend into the state of being that can comprehend ideas that are not limited to this universe. If only a few manage to transcend, that does not mean the species has transcended. The majority must transcend before that is true. Thefore, in my opinion, by teaching your offspring what you know, you will give that child and his progeny an advantage over the progeny of a child who's parents didn't. Plus, by distributing knowledge, you increase the Collective Knowledge of the species and further the journey to the species' transcendance.

This is my Meaning of Life.