Just like a lot of other people, I have wondered about the purpose of life. Is there any specific reason we are here? Is there any purpose to our existence? If you ask someone who strongly believes in a religion, they always seem to have an answer - even if their answer completely conflicts with some other religion. Those answers never satisfied me. Not only because they conflict with each other but also because there is always a leap of faith involved to accept them. Further, I find a lot of those answers quite arrogant and shallow. They come down to - “It is true because it is written in a book” OR “It is true because someone said it”. I am sure we have a better standard for truth than that.
So far based on everything we know about the world - both scientifically and anecdotally - it looks like there is no purpose to our lives - at least not biologically. It appears that our existence can be explained purely on a biological basis (i.e evolution). There are certain aspects that can’t be explained yet - ex: consciousness - but it might be just a matter of time before we find out or at least define what exactly it means.
Animal vs Human
Humans love to think that we are somewhat “special”. In a way we are, because as far as we can tell, we are the only living beings who can actually even ask the question of “our purpose”. That does make us special. But from a purely biological standpoint we are no better than an ant. We are born, we do things to feed and protect ourselves, and we die. During our lives we also show quite similar traits to other animals - we fight for resources, we are fearful of predators (these days our predators are mostly made-up entities like concern for the economy or future etc.), we reproduce etc. I find it hard to believe that we have any special place in this universe just because we are humans. What makes us believe that a life of a human is worth more than say a life of a chicken? I still don’t have a good answer for this.
Karma
People love to argue that if you do good it will come back to you. I think it is quite insulting and disrespectful because there are quite a few people in the world who have done good (or done no harm) and yet the goodness never returned to them. Think of the millions of Jews that were killed during the WW-II, think of all the children who die of cancer before they can even think of doing anything (good or bad). Let’s not even talk about all the animals, birds etc. that die for no reason whatsoever. Further, there is also ample evidence that people who do bad things seem to get away with it. A religious person would probably explain this contradiction by using some abstract concept like after-life or reincarnation, but for me that is not enough. I would rather like to see justice done in a life-time if I had it my way.
Nihilism
I came across the idea of nihilism a few years ago. Now it is quite a broad concept and there are several interpretation of the philosophy. As of this writing Wikipedia defines it as
In philosophy, nihilism is any viewpoint, or a family of views, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, namely knowledge, morality, or meaning.
Now clearly parts of this are consistent with my interpretation of the world - particularly morality and meaning (of life). That said, I don’t like labelling myself as a nihilist because there seems to be a certain negativity associated with this term and further the definition itself seem to evolve with the times. If I really had to choose this label I would call myself a “positive nihilist”.
Where do I go from here?
If one believes there is no purpose to life, and no point in doing good then it appears that the logical conclusion is that there is no reason to live. However, we humans are really good at being cognitively dissonant. So even though I believe in a purposeless universe, I still believe that we must live to do some good in this world. At the minimum we owe that to our future generations - we ought to leave the world at least as good or better than what we inherited from our ancestors… Why? Because there will be someone like me who would be pondering about these questions in future and maybe that someone will come up with conclusive answers to these questions. Even though we live in this Darwinian universe it doesn’t mean we must create a society based on those same principles. We know we are here, and we have to do something with our lives, so we might as well do something good.
Ending it with my favourite quote from the The Lord of Rings - The Two Towers (Peter Jackson):
FRODO: I can’t do this, Sam.
SAM: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
FRODO: What are we holding on to, Sam?
SAM: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.