By: Edwin de Leon
There are probably more books and titles dedicated to life’s most perplexing wringer. What is the meaning of life? If we take this question on a purely biological basis, the short answer is “none”. Just as the universe has no meaning, so is the life ( or lives ) in it. We give meaning to our lives when we become cognizant of our place in nature. Life then is meaningless until we create it. We do have a purpose, not unlike any other living things and it is in our DNA: survival and procreation of our species.
Evolution, the mechanism that gave rise to humanity, allowed us to adapt to all the environmental changes of the last 200,000 years. It is a blind process. It is a stand-alone algorithm that is incapable of thinking, planning, or directing but is the powerful source of diversity and versatility in living things.
Meaning is the result of consciousness, arguably a human domain not shared by other creatures. This is an abstract product of our developed brain not unlike the heart’s job of circulating the blood or the lung’s function of extracting oxygen. There is no external process that assigns meaning to our existence. Our culture and upbringing and the role we played in these environments are the forces that provide the fuel to commit ourselves to certain goals in life.
Many of us go through life too busy making a living, raising a family, or just too distracted to even contemplate a profound question as to what life means. When people are most fearful and anxious, many find comfort and solace in religion; not a reassuring consolation from a culture of intimidation and fear. Obedience and submission to religious ideology have caused more death and destruction in all of history. Since the Crusades and Inquisition and even now, there are millions of people who are hell-bent in killing those who do not share their life’s purpose. History is replete with a fanatical declaration of “Allahu Akbar” ( God is Great ) during a terrorist attack or the Nazi’s ” Es ist Gottes Willie” ( it’s God’s Will ) while in a genocidal slaughter of Jews. The world is witnessing on-going sectarianism in Syria, Boko Haram’s kidnappings in Nigeria or ethnic cleansing madness in Iraq’s Islamic majority against the Yazidis, or Myanmar’s Rakhine Buddhist against Rohingya Muslims. There are also those singular acts, of people poisoned from the pulpit, who feel they are doing God’s work by shooting abortion providers or using vehicles to kill pedestrians.
Like a lot of things about religion, we are treated like a perpetual child
unable to think for ourselves.
It is ludicrous to think that the Christian God as Rick Warren’s book ” The Purpose Driven Life” contends, is the only way for us to understand our life’s purpose. Like a lot of things about religion, we are treated like a perpetual child unable to think for ourselves. We have been paralyzed by a primitive and outdated pre-enlightenment mindset. ” Man cannot live with bread alone”…” unless you put him in a cage and that’s all you feed him”. Religion’s absolutist ideology feeds us nothing else. Sigmund Freud calls it a “neurosis.”
The 1918 flu was the last of the pandemics where religion played any substantial role. ( up to 100,000,000 dead ) All the succeeding contagion have ( most likely including COVID-19 ) killed far less. The operative word in the current pandemic is Science. Churches are closed, Friday prayers canceled, the Pope in downtime. Still, there are pockets of people in the U.S. (primarily in the southern states ) who don’t understand ( or don’t accept ) the science behind wearing masks. This is not surprising in a country where, until recently, over 40% still believe in Creationism ( as opposed to Evolution ). Those of us who saw the U.S. president’s news conference suggesting injection of bleach ( or presumably by enema ) to kill the virus should only feel pity. ( some will argue that its science gone berserk! ) The good thing about science says astrophysicist de Grasse Tyson is “It’s true whether one believes in it or not “.
As the public becomes more familiar with the virus and other accompanying scientific processes like mutation, herd immunity, or terms like Messenger RNA, we become active participants as the pandemic unfolds. It has taken COVID-19 to now put the Scientific Method front and center, the kind of credibility that religion enjoyed when it was our only source of solace. Today’s emphasis on science is nothing less than a new phase of Enlightenment.
Nobody gives a blip on whether or not one attains his/her nirvana.
Future legacies are based on reality.
As we go through this pandemic, more time alone in our shelters, it is an opportune time to ask ourselves what matters in life. The rituals of old can now be seen with better clarity especially in the later years of our lives. They are mirages that give us hollow meaning. They were purposed to shore up a belief system based on ancient myth and superstition. Without these rites, fables and legend remain just as they have always been: fantasies. Rituals put life into them. Adding characters to these stories still doesn’t make them true or real. Adam and Eve, Flying Horses, Noah’s Arc, Angels ( who or what are they? a ” missing link” or a genderless poultry? ); let’s leave them for the children’s imagination to decipher.
A life spent on giving praise to an imaginary deity is, at the end of the day, a self-centered, selfish waste of human potential. Nobody gives a blip on whether or not one attains his/her nirvana. Future legacies are based on reality; one’s contribution to the betterment of society and the community. This pandemic has given us pause and a rare perspective of the future as it relates to the whole aim of human existence.
A meaningful life is not part of Natural Selection as Charles Darwin envisioned. A consequential life means we have succeeded in “leaving the Earth a better place than when we arrived”, something that requires a conscious effort on our part. Should we just resign ourselves to Natural Selection and let the cards fall where they may? If we do, we just as well return to the caves and let the old and the decrepit go to the dogs. That would be a return to the Neandertals and a tragedy for the Homo Sapiens, just like setting us back 100,000 years.
Leon, M.Ed. ( edwingdeleon@gmail.com ) is a retired science teacher, high school