Reflections on the Meaning of Existence
This is an existential question
unique to us: Why am I here? Why do I
exist? What is the meaning of this
all? There is a host of scientific and
philosophical attempts to nullify these questions, as meaningless or
misguided. Reading through these
anti-meaning or biological and scientific “answers”, one can’t help but feeling
that a bad conscience, a refrain from meeting oneself, a desire for simplification and escape, is behind what they call "erasing" the question as
such, and/or a scientific answer to it.
Indeed, in revering the question
of the meaning of existence, we too try to transcend it, but not to erase it. What does it mean? My thesis is this: this is a holly
and noble question as a guidepost to the point of taking the mask of self-consciousness. As the result, we will exit the maze of the question of existence, not
only through an intellectual answer to the question, but by a transformation of
heart and consciousness. This requires
to go more and deeper into the question and live it through and come out to the
other side, rather than sweeping it under the rug, thus to overcome separation
and to re-connect to the source.
To start with, one has to keep in
mind that unlike modern epistemology, subjectivism, and intellectualism, the
question of meaning of existence cannot be simply and only achieved by
propositional knowledge, i.e., to get an answer to a question such as “who is
calling?”, “When should I meet you?”.
It is not the matter of a “knowing” subject, who can work it out through
intellectual endeavor. If some
variations of philosophy have been reduced to a
logical-intellectual-descriptive enterprise, we can’t expect them to address or
even apprehend fully the question of the meaning of existence. It is like one wants to taste the blue sky or
drink the oceans. Indeed, those who try
to grasp the meaning of life merely intellectually or “know” it, has just
started to fathom the question as such, in order to step in a path-practice
towards certain existential transformations, because in “response” to the
question of meaning of existence, one needs to arrive at a sense of “oneness”,
to leave behind representational thinking, and then and only then with Angelus
Silesius[1]
to say:
The rose is without why; it blooms because it
blooms,
It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether
it is seen.
My thesis is that the question of
the meaning of existence will be resolved (gets an “answer” or “be overcome”)
at the conjunction of a “how” and a “why” and an “ethical practice” (how I
should live) in unison with God. As
Goethe puts it:
Were not the eye a thing of sun,
How could we ever glimpse the light?
If in us God’s own power’d not run
Could we in the divine delight?
(Theory of Colors, narrated in The
Principle of Reason by Heidegger)
Or as Hafiz says:
I have made the journey into Nothing.I have lit that lamp that needs no oil.
I have cried great streams
Of emerald crystals
On my scarred knees, begging love.:.
In this reflection, I will start
with some of my personal experiences with this question in the past; then I
will discuss my present understanding of the meaning of existence and how its
experience possibly can be achieved.
Third, I will discuss Ayer’s logical positivist and Wilson’s
evolutionary biologist’s responses to the question of the meaning of life, and
will conclude with a summary of this reflection on the meaning of existence.
An
Everlasting Quest and Endeavor
I was blessed to think about the
meaning of existence from childhood, as far back as I remember, I guess I was
ten years old and had a discussion with a boy from neighborhood on “why did God
create us?” The boy, who was an honest
believer, with all innocence said something that I guessed he heard from adults
in his household: “Because God didn’t want to deprive us from life.” This was not convincing to my 10-years-old
mind, I said: “This doesn’t make sense, because if there was a time that I
didn’t exist at all, so whom God didn’t want to deprive from life?” I felt childishly victorious and the boy just
repeated the same: “God didn’t want to deprive us from life.”
At 20-years-old, I was on the
Death Row in prison in Iran for my peaceful though subversive political
activism[2],
and wondering how my Marxist belief system could give me a reason to live and
die. I know that thousands of people all
around the world died for Marxist causes, which feels like dying for
justice. But “justice” has no “universal
value” in any version of “historical ontology and materialism”. It is all about appropriating any conceptual
device at the disposal of one’s sociological stance (say, class consciousness
in Marxism, or power-relations in Foucauldian discourse). Well, I felt I was dying for the proletariat
(working class) cause, but now that I was going to be executed and had enough
time to think about its meaning, from an existential point of view I found this
“answer” not satisfactory. However, I
couldn’t collaborate with the guards or the system just to save my life. First, because I was thinking I was fighting
for a just cause, even though ontologically, existentially, and philosophically
I couldn’t justify the meaning of my life and death. And secondly, I was dealing with an
existential enigma: I couldn’t betray myself and others, to cheat or lie to
myself, just for the sake of survival. I
couldn’t sell my soul to be alive. But
what does this mean? I spent seven years
in prisons, mostly because of this latter reason: unless I had come to the
realization that I was wrong, I wouldn’t save my life by pretending I was wrong
and so collaborating with the regime. We
all understand this point, but why is this the case? This is called “honesty” and “integrity”, and
I will discuss later why, I think, it has something to do with the meaning of
life.
I remember I had this image of
myself, my individual existence, my individual soul, separate from everything
and in a vacuum, and in facing my death destiny, I couldn’t satisfy myself that
the meaning of my individual existence resides only in my social performance or
determinate historical practices. I
later called this experience “the presence of non-identity”. This was an existential quest, an
emotional-intuitive truth coming from the depth of my existence, that no
historical ontology, no scientific “answer” [including "it is all about
genes"!] could justify the meaning of my life, especially now that I was on the
Death Row, facing my pending execution and having time to reflect about it.
I continued thinking about it for
the rest of my life. This was the reason
I started studying philosophy, not aligned with the mainstream intellectual
motivation of entering the field. In a
graduate seminar on Foucault & Arendt political philosophy, I started with
this experience:
Mondays
and Wednesdays were the fixed days of execution in Evin. One Wednesday, a
warden called me; every prisoner in the ‘room’ became silent, a silence that
was talking in thousands of languages: it was my turn. I was blindfolded
and met other groups of prisoners outside who like me were on death row.
At this moment I had a strange experience. In retrospect, I felt myself
detached from all my social appearances; I faced a split ‘self’, whose two
parts belonged to me, not that
one of them was false and the other true. After two years waiting for and
contemplating death, being sure this is my
destiny, my story, the
emergence of this feeling seemed not only bizarre but also in a peculiar way
both nauseating and liberating. In analyzing my feelings at that ‘magic’
moment, I felt a great sense of pleasure and fear, and at the same time, longed
for that part of myself that now, and too late, had shown itself and I had
ignored for so long. What was this part, and what does this disparity of
the self indicate? Was it the phantom of fear, the tragic sense of life,
the love of immortality, the emergence of my ‘true’ self? Was it Plato’s thaumazein, “the shocked wonder at
the miracle of Being” (HC 302)? [And within the dominance of the crude
evolutionary biology of our time, now I add, was it the call of my individual
‘gene’!] Surely, it was not fear –
however, fear was one of the catalysts of its production. Later, I found
out that we were not going to be executed immediately but were being
transferred to the “Quarantine of The Sentenced to Death,” a place for those
who were on Death Row. After two months staying in “Quarantine,” they
took me blindfolded to a second court, and asked the same questions: was I
ready to ‘recant’ publicly, to exclaim my repulsion to all my political
activities? Although I did not believe in the methods and even in the
political content of all of existing political organizations, including the
advocates of vulgar Marxism, I did not hesitate to say ‘no,’ but this time with
a split self, and the one that said ‘no’ was deeply related to the other
one. The latter, metaphorically speaking, seemed like a denied and
forgotten daimon who was
witnessing, in despair, the death of its beholder. My use of the term daimon is almost totally different to
the daimon, as the
manifestation of one’s deeds and words, about which Arendt writes:
"The
disclosure of ‘who’ in contradistinction to ‘what’ somebody is can be hidden
only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost
never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could
dispose of this “who” in the same manner he has and can dispose of his
qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the “who,” which
appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person
himself, like the daimon in
Greek religion which accompanied each man throughout his life, always looking
over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he
encounters." (The Human Condition, p.180)
In fact, Arendt is talking about that part of
me who said ‘no’, but the daimon
about which I am talking is the part which was concealed and now at the moment
of death revealed itself. Later reflections of Arendt on judgment, that I
will come to later, give a more plausible interpretation of my experience.
But for now, I just want to explain my experience as clearly as possible, the
‘experiment’ that happened in a pseudo-laboratory situation of prison and the
outcome was as shocking as witnessing an unprecedented event on the street.
The problem is that we can imagine these kinds of situation in thousands of
ways but their personal vividness and crushing effects cannot thoroughly be
conveyed by the medium of narration and words.
In the coarsest sense, I have to say, though I know it may be ‘dangerous,’ that that part of me which revealed itself was a non-social presence, it was neither a daimon, nor a self, nor even a perspective. In trying to delineate that ‘presence,’ I have the same feeling as St. Augustine in his reflection on time: “What is time? If you don’t ask me, I know; but if you ask me, I don’t know” (B 42-3). Borges tells the story of a condemned writer “to whom God grants, at the precise instant of his execution, another year of life to complete the work he had begun. Suspended between life and death, this work is a drama where everything is necessarily repeated” (LCP 56). My experience was like that of Borges’s writer to whom now God, bored enough, commands, ‘stop writing!’ In retrospect, the writer feels a sense of relief and pain by looking at all those words and deeds, which kept him alive and are still so endeared to him; they are ‘he’, his story. However, now that he reflects on ‘what kept him alive’, he finds out, strikingly enough, that the compulsion of the words was a mien, a pressure, a gesture, a veil beneath which there was a silence, not nothingness, that had multiplicated itself in those words and deeds but never can be identical to them, and from these reflections the questions, “Who am I? Who are we?” leap out of the whole of consciousness, in a Nietzschean sense, where one dispenses with the governance of language on one’s thought, and stop translating them into consciousness (GS V 354), where one laughs at oneself “out of the whole of truth” (GS I 1).
In the coarsest sense, I have to say, though I know it may be ‘dangerous,’ that that part of me which revealed itself was a non-social presence, it was neither a daimon, nor a self, nor even a perspective. In trying to delineate that ‘presence,’ I have the same feeling as St. Augustine in his reflection on time: “What is time? If you don’t ask me, I know; but if you ask me, I don’t know” (B 42-3). Borges tells the story of a condemned writer “to whom God grants, at the precise instant of his execution, another year of life to complete the work he had begun. Suspended between life and death, this work is a drama where everything is necessarily repeated” (LCP 56). My experience was like that of Borges’s writer to whom now God, bored enough, commands, ‘stop writing!’ In retrospect, the writer feels a sense of relief and pain by looking at all those words and deeds, which kept him alive and are still so endeared to him; they are ‘he’, his story. However, now that he reflects on ‘what kept him alive’, he finds out, strikingly enough, that the compulsion of the words was a mien, a pressure, a gesture, a veil beneath which there was a silence, not nothingness, that had multiplicated itself in those words and deeds but never can be identical to them, and from these reflections the questions, “Who am I? Who are we?” leap out of the whole of consciousness, in a Nietzschean sense, where one dispenses with the governance of language on one’s thought, and stop translating them into consciousness (GS V 354), where one laughs at oneself “out of the whole of truth” (GS I 1).
You can
see I was still a Nietzschian-Foucauldian at the time (1998). But I was searching. This was for me a quest for the meaning of
life. My friends in philosophy tried to
persuade me to forget about it, as it is a question that we can never have an
answer to it. Moreover, they argued, the
question even may not make sense philosophically. But I, along with Camus and Tolstoy, didn’t find any
other question worth asking but “why am I here?”, “what is this awareness of
existence, of death, of self, of non-self?”
I kept on asking this question until I felt there was a way out of the
maze, and I will talk about it until my day come.
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The Meaning of Existence
I mentioned how merely intellectual answers to
the meaning of life will not satisfy us.
Why? Because the meaning of life
can be achieved as a practice in the search for the meaning of life,
intellectually as well as spiritually, which means in body, heart, and
soul. As well the “the” in the meaning
of life, indicates a universal connection to the source as the
experience of the meaning of life—which means the meaning of existence is not
something subjective. However, modes of
connection to the source can be different.
This is similar to the story of the elephant in the room. Some like Wilson and Ayer deny there is any
elephant in the room and so they can’t even imagine the connection. Different traditions experience the
meaning-connection differently though they can connect to each other’s
narration, if they share their experiences with openness.
I argue that the meaning of life has to be
experienced in a sense of “wholeness” or “oneness”, which covers at least three
parts at the same time: 1) the experience of love as a whole being, 2) the
experience of being healed, i.e., the soul and heart to be cured and be at
peace, 3) the experience of intrinsic value of the ethical and the political,
and coextensively and consequently the experience of creativity.
All of these experiences is what I call the
experience of God or unity with God or a mystical experience, as the meaning of
existence.
In a different reflection note, I will discuss
Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, James’ Variety of Religious Experience, Rogers,
Jung, Palmer discussions of “wholeness”, and what is called mysticism or unity
with God in Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But in this note, I wish to write briefly
about my own take of the experience of the meaning of existence.
1)
Broken Wholeness
as the Experience of Love
In all mystical discussions of unity with God,
the starting point always is overcoming the self, false consciousness, ego, or
taking off the mask. What is the
mask? Heidegger talks about authentic
and inauthentic self. The authentic self
is the self who is released from the stronghold of Das Man (the public self),
which is the first self of every individual through which one finds one’s way
about, while this very public self covers up the transparency of childhood. Also it is the very self which gives us the
first mode of intelligibility of the world: how to behave, discuss, learn
different social rituals, how to attune one’s feelings with the dominant social
given, how to tailor our brute expectations and desires to social harmony and
make them possible, all of these are given by the public self or the first inevitable
mask. Heidegger shows how the
referential totality and significance that are given to us through social
coping and practices from childhood cover up our sense of not-being-at-home,
which is an existential fundamental in us compared to all other living beings. Human beings are not at home in this world,
because their being is an issue for them, their life and death and its meaning
is an issue for them. Even if we are
completely successful and achieve a good life, family and career, still we
won’t feel fully at home. There are
pangs of conscience, when strangers on the other side of the world are being
tortured, killed, or are deprived of food.
The ubiquitous guest of “why am I here?” and “death is coming” knocks on
the door most of the time, even if I don’t entertain the thoughts consciously. Early Heidegger says anxiety in the face of
nothing, and later Heidegger adds the experience of holly, shatter the familiar
structure of meaning and contextual-referential understanding of the world and
ourselves, and hence the genuine “homelessness” in the soul shows up again and
sets demands upon us: are you true to yourself?
What is the meaning of existence?
In order to take off the mask of ego, one has to
be able to see all of one’s
experiences, and stop fashioning oneself for oneself and others. It is not easy, as I mentioned in another
note, I asked different group of students whether they are ready to enter the
room of wishes. The only condition is
that they will receive not what they consciously wish, but who they are in the
depth of their unconscious. The room
will reveal to them their conscience, not consciousness. Most of my students didn’t want enter the
room, similar to the Writer and the Scientist in the movie Stalker by Andrei
Tarkovsky. Is it not strange that we
fantasize about the room of wishes all the time, but because of fear of our own
self, we never enter it? It shows “the
room of wishes” is always here inside our chest, and the door is a veil inside
us as well. If we tear that veil, and
bring our light into the dark side of our soul, we will become whole and hence
will become our wishes.
The experience of broken wholeness is achievable
by overcoming psychological defensiveness that causes mental cramps and
glitches on the dark and undesirable zones of experience. This self-delusion stops the open relay of
connection between different regions of brain-body-soul. By feeling secure to experience the
insecurity of letting my defenses down, and opening up to listen and see the
needs and cry of my soul and the Other, I take the first step in genuine loving
myself and the Other.
This is the venue to seek “connection” with the source
of existence. I mentioned that “the”
meaning of existence reveals itself in this connection. We are unable to fathom the enigma of love, the
elephant in the room is beyond our perception.
We are unable to conceive and perceive the divine source, but we can
connect with the divine, through the experience of losing one’s mask and ego,
on our knees, pleading to God to guide us to the right path. And with endeavor and God’s guidance we may
connect to the source. But what we
“know” as the meaning of existence is this “connection”, which is an experience
of broken wholeness and opening up to the source as such. We experience the source, but we won’t know it. A genuine experience of the meaning of existence,
is always open to different modes of connection to life, as different people in
the room experience the elephant differently.
So, the experience of the meaning of existence remains always humble and
open, as one sees God in each face, who can potentially connect to the source
in their own unique way.
I search, respect, and revere in each individual their potential and actual mode of connection with the source and am open to hear their story and overlap with them in the ecstatic bliss of connection-meaning of existence.
Dropping the mask is the beginning of love. When I see my brokenness, I embrace people in
their flaws. When I lose my
psychological defenses, I understand my own flaws and how little I know, then
as Socrates suggested, I am ready to seek virtue, wisdom, and cultivation of my
soul. In this way, one will open one's heart
to everyone, family, friends, and strangers. One becomes the good Samaritan, as Jesus said. At least one will lose one's resentment and
grudges, and the Nietzschean despise.
And one starts to learn how to love life in all its manifestations.
The love of ineffable God and life are
inseparable, because God is the source of life and life as such, so one sees in
every living being the light of God.
When one breaks out of the mundane structure of familiarity, one goes
through a gestalt switch to see the light and love in each individual. Indeed the path to the unity within and with the source, and hence experiencing the meaning of existence, goes through loving people and every living being. So, the experience of the meaning of
existence, connection to the source, and love are superimposed upon each other.
2)
The Experience
of the Meaning of Existence as Healing
What
is healing? Does healing is just for
those who have physical or mental ailments?
Can we talk about another sickness, the sickness of the soul, the
despair that Kierkegaard talks about, that is the cry of eternal within us,
when we repress, deny, or reject it? I
venture to say “disconnection” and “loss of meaning of existence” is a sickness
of the soul. Carl Jung states:
“When conscious life
has lost its meaning and promise, it is as though a panic had broken loose:
"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" It is this mood, born of
the meaninglessness of life, that causes the disturbance in the unconscious and
provokes the painfully curbed instincts to break out anew. The causes of a
neurosis lie in the present as much as in the past, and only a cause actually
existing in the present can keep a neurosis active.” (Psychotherapists or
Clergies)
We are all familiar with this sickness when we
drown ourselves in alcohol or drugs. We
“know” it even if we deny it, when we fall into addictions: workaholic,
sexcoholic, shopcoholic, gluttony (eating too much), hording, self-harm, suicide,
sadomasochism, smoking and a desire for constant stimulation, abusing drugs and
weed. We know it when we wish to
dominate others or to be dominated by others.
We know it when we become vainglorious, megalomaniac, and addicted to
fame, honor, and wealth. Nothing will
satiate us, no scientific or philosophic or career success, because in the
depth of our existence, we know that there is a season for everything[3]
and everything is impermanent.
Everything is futile:
“Absolute futility,” says the Teacher.
“Absolute futility. Everything is futile.” What does a man gain for all his efforts
that he labors at under the sun?
A generation goes and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets;
panting, it returns to its place where it rises.
Gusting to the south,
turning to the north,
turning, turning, goes the wind,
and the wind returns in its cycles. All the streams flow to the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
The streams are flowing to the place,
and they flow there again. All things are wearisome;
man is unable to speak.
The eye is not satisfied by seeing
or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything,
“Look, this is new”?
It has already existed in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of those who came before;
and of those who will come after
there will also be no remembrance
by those who follow them.
“Absolute futility. Everything is futile.” What does a man gain for all his efforts
that he labors at under the sun?
A generation goes and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets;
panting, it returns to its place where it rises.
Gusting to the south,
turning to the north,
turning, turning, goes the wind,
and the wind returns in its cycles. All the streams flow to the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
The streams are flowing to the place,
and they flow there again. All things are wearisome;
man is unable to speak.
The eye is not satisfied by seeing
or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything,
“Look, this is new”?
It has already existed in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of those who came before;
and of those who will come after
there will also be no remembrance
by those who follow them.
Ecclesiastes 1 (HCSB)
Only “connection” is the healing to
this futility. Connection to mother and
father, to brothers and sisters, connection to family, friends, and strangers, connection
to trees, animals, and to insects, connection to the earth and to sky, connection to the
holly and the ineffable source in the yearning of love. Only in this connection our heart will be at
peace and embrace the meaning of our existence.
Only in embracing the meaning of our existence, we will be healed.
3) The Experience of the Meaning of Existence as Intrinsic Value of the Ethico-Political
In the third and last part of my
short discussion of the meaning of existence, I will argue that the intrinsic
value of the ethical, our rule of life and how we conduct ourselves, will hold
and bring us to the divine. It will
re-connect us to the source, and heal our wounds and restlessness in our
hearts.
As one becomes whole, embracing one's shortcomings and brokenness, the body as well as the soul, the earth as well as
the sky, the insignificant as well as the significant, then one opens up to loving
life in all its manifestations, even when one defends oneself against the
harm. Because as Carl Jung puts it: “The truly religious person has this attitude. He [or She] knows that God
has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in
the most curious ways to enter a human's heart. He [or She] therefore senses in
everything the unseen presence of the divine will.” (Psychotherapists or
Clergies).
But
to arrive at this wholeness I need to abandon the cravings for consequences. This is a strange mystery about experiencing
the meaning of existence. Lao tzu says:
“A good traveler
has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.”
In ethical realm, I
have to attune myself to do the right thing for its effect on my soul, i.e.,
for its own sake, its intrinsic value. One doesn’t need an observer anymore so that to adjust oneself to his or her observation and
expectations and act properly. One will
try not to entertain vain ideas because one knows they affect him or her instantly and
weave the webs that will entangle one's soul. One overcomes duality. One becomes who one is, and in this way, one
becomes what one wishes to be. You will
become the same person at home when alone, as when you are with a friend or
stranger. One can express one’s thoughts
loud, alone or in the presence of the other. If I embrace my brokenness and
dark side, I will humble myself to see myself as is, and in this way learn to
become better, to move towards a wholeness, which renders me the meaning of
existence.
we should love ethical
practices like a work of art, as if we are sculpting and painting our existence
through our ethico-political thoughts-actions-speaking. By this I don’t mean to censor oneself
constantly or repress dark or bad thoughts.
On the contrary, one has to let them come and grasp them and live with them and
use them as colors to paint the canvas of one's existence. In this way, one can neutralize and utilize
the dark side of one’s soul and move to a perfection, in the sense of a broken
wholeness.
The result of giving
an intrinsic value to the ethical-political practices is that:
1) One overcomes the
duality within. And one perceives that one's ethical comport is related to heaven; it is not just a secular notion.
2) One abandons the
idea that ethic0-political is only (and pejoratively) for coping with the
world, or only a superstructure, or for some benefits, or resolving some
issues, or for some other utilitarian, pragmatic, or merely practical
reasons. The intrinsic value of the
ethical is in its existential dimension.
I harm my own existence before hurting others, as I lie, steal, kill,
cheat, betray, or break my promise. One
can see that the veil of spiritual disconnection from the universe creates the
mask of isolated and abandoned self, who identifies itself with worldly gains
and the gene, as evolutionary biologists believe.
Something happens to
me when I tell a white or black lie: I have to choose the effect of what I do
to my soul. Even if I choose a white
lie, it is so because my choice in saving or destroying a life does something to my soul, which is more
important than keeping my face, or the survival of my genes. The
consequence of my ethical actions is simultaneously on my existence and on the
existence of other beings in the world and on the universe as a whole. I overcome the duality within and without by
stopping to separate the consequences of my behavior on myself and on
others. I bridge the breach between “I”
and “You” and "God", in intrinsic value of the ethical.
3) By practicing the
ethico-political as something that has value in itself for me and for others, I
overcome the nihilistic disconnect between my everyday behavior and the
universe. I will shed the fallacious
mask that my behaviors are contingent and accidental and merely historical or
contextual. I will understand well the
historicity of my behavior and its connection to the universe as an essential relationship. I reconnect to the source by every
manifestation of my existence beyond the veil of internal dissonance and
conflict, and hence I will see the essentiality of my conduct and my existence
in connection to the universe, within each and every historical context.
I will as well see my freedom in terms of possibility of deviation from this essential connection--to feel and become contingent and accidental as atheists and evolutionary biologists say-- or arriving at this connection (essential), a movement from duality to oneness. And this is the meaning of existence. I will become connected to the source or God, through overcoming duality, by embracing my broken wholeness, experiencing love in every living being, and becoming one in thinking-acting-speaking by giving an intrinsic value to my coping and conduct, to my ethico-political practices. And striving for this oneness has been the message of all genuine religions from the time immemorial.
I will as well see my freedom in terms of possibility of deviation from this essential connection--to feel and become contingent and accidental as atheists and evolutionary biologists say-- or arriving at this connection (essential), a movement from duality to oneness. And this is the meaning of existence. I will become connected to the source or God, through overcoming duality, by embracing my broken wholeness, experiencing love in every living being, and becoming one in thinking-acting-speaking by giving an intrinsic value to my coping and conduct, to my ethico-political practices. And striving for this oneness has been the message of all genuine religions from the time immemorial.
In relation to the present moment, we all know the
dream that “a secular society would be a more enlightened, peaceful and just
society,” in the course of two centuries turned into a nightmare: two world
wars, cold wars, mass industrialization and consumerism, colonization and
modern slavery, moral decadence, animal factories and destruction of
environment, extinction of 20% of species, and the prospect of human made
global warming, droughts and floods, which are likely to bring about mass
extinction. I guess it is so clear and our task is to make it clear for the youth that the event is coming, the effect of our unbridled industrialization,
speciesm, capitalism, inequality, and identity politics on life on this planet,
the flood is coming. The meaning of life is this coincidence of individual survival, our species, and
most species. The event that renders meaning to our life, where those who try
to save their lives will lose it. Is it
not the case that everything is coming to the surface now? That I or my family and future generations
can't survive in our little capitalism and survival of the fittest: the
fittest, ironically, now means, dependent origination, connection with each
other and other species, and sacrifice, a strange meaning of love, and that love is
the only engine of survival? This is no
more a theory, philosophy, or religion. All
philosophies and religions alluded to this event, that is coming. We have to ask colleges and universities to
change their mission statement and vision. It is THE time for a new mission and vision
and it is to inform and organize about the event. But maybe as Nietzsche's old man with the
lantern (but for the contrary reason and as the consequence) I have to break
the lantern and say: "my time is not yet.
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not
yet reached the ears of humans. Lightning and thunder require time; the light
of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen
and heard. This deed is still more
distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it
themselves"; the time has not come yet.
So now I go back to
my childhood question: why did the source, God, create us? Why do I exist? If my son asks me this question, what would I
say? Could I say, as my childhood friend
said, “because I didn’t want to deprive you from life, I brought you to the
world”? And wouldn’t my son respond the
same as me: “This doesn’t make
sense, because if there were a time that I didn’t exist at all, so whom didn’t you
want to deprive from life?” The
difference between my question about God creating us and my son’s hypothetical
question of me is that God is eternal and I am mortal. I would tell my son: “I need you, not because
I want to add more to 7.4 billion overpopulation of the world, or to preserve
my petty genes, as I can imagine I could adopt a son or daughter and love him
or her as much as I love you. Because I
love your mom and you are born out of love, and in you we experience love, in
loving you. We brought you to the world
because we need to love.” Maybe, and
only maybe, in this respect, not bringing an offspring to continue one’s
bloodline, we are similar to God in that the creation of life and every being
in the universe by God is because of overflowing of God’s love.
If everything is
contingent upon the source or God, i.e., the only essential and necessary is
God, who is the light[4] of
universe and Being, then every existent thing is contingent and accidental
compared to God. And all the ruminations
of human thoughts and actions and all the rays of existence come from God’s emanations. Light upon light. Existence is originated in the Source, the womb that gives birth, in the act of
love, as we are born in love and we will die in love. We are the outpouring, outflow, effusion of
the eternal act of love. In everything
is the essence of God, and our existence is contingent upon that light.
Logical
Positivism: Erasing the Question
Ayer’s
logical positivism has a caricaturist perception of the question and holds that
the question of meaning of life is meaningless, because there are only
succession of facts and nothing else. First,
he reduces “meaning” to “purpose”, and accordingly as “purpose” is a subjective
and intentional notion, therefore we can’t ask about the meaning or purpose of
existence, which is impersonal. Remember
that we are talking about modern philosophy, in which Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle’s teleology are already discredited, and philosophy after the
Cartesian moment, as Foucault puts it, has been reduced to intellectual
activity of an epistemological subject. We
have also passed 19th c. declaration of the death of God, and in the
time of Ayer it was fashionable to erase the questions of metaphysics, God, the
ethical, and meaning altogether. Ayer states:
“But how can life in general be
said to have any meaning? A simple
answer is that all events are tending towards a certain specifiable end: so
that to understand the meaning of life it is necessary only to discover this
end. But, in the first place, there is
no good reason whatever for supposing this assumption to be true, and secondly,
even if it were true, it would not do the work that is required of it. For what is being sought by those who demand
to know the meaning of life is not an explanation of the facts of their
existence, but a justification….In short, from the point of view of justifying
one’s existence, there is no essential difference between a teleological
explanation of events and a mechanical explanation. In either case, it is a matter of brute fact
that events succeed one another in the ways that they do and are explicable in
the ways that they are. And indeed what
is called an explanation is nothing other than a more general description. Thus, an attempt to answer the question why
events are as they are must always resolve itself into saying only how they
are. But what is required by those who
seek the meaning of life is precisely an answer to their question ‘Why?’ that
is something other than an answer to any question “How?” And just because this is so they can never
legitimately be satisfied.” (The Claims of Philosophy, A.J. Ayer)
As I mentioned before, even if we
“know” everything, how and why things are, which is humanly impossible, even
then the tension of the meaning of existence will be only rested in union with
(love of) God. So unlike Ayer, I believe
neither explanations of facts, nor rational justification can by themselves
release us from the question of the meaning of existence.
What is the difference between “explanation” and “justification”? In explanation, we want to know how things work, usually by explaining the causes of an event, a process, or a system. For example, evolutionary biologists seek to explain how life is organized according to the genome structure. Even if we know and can explain how genes organize life as such, even if we know how genes themselves came to be, to understand their causes, still it is not a justification for the meaning of life. To say that we are just an accidental being is not an answer to the meaning of life, but an expression of despair and nihilistic frustration, which has been imposed upon us by evolutionary biology. I will come to this later.
But what is “justification”? Justification is basically finding “reasons” for some event, process, actions, or system. If I can explain the rational ground of my existence on this earth, so somehow I could justify my existence, i.e., why I exist. Justification follows the principle of [sufficient] reason: Nothing is without reason, which has two ends to it, as Heidegger puts it, one is finding a cognitive rationale for events and actions, and the other says beings have an ontological reason, ground, or cause for their existence. Explanation follows causal chain of events, actions, or facts that bring about certain effect. Reason and Cause are sometimes interchangeable, but basically to find a reason for existence is more than finding the causes of existence, though they are interconnected[5]. For example, If I ponder why I am here, I know I am here, I know I exist, I know I will die, I know I can think and within my very thinking, my rational and existential thinking for now and during all the ages before, from the time we started speaking, I could have asked “why” I am here; I look for a reason, a ground [Latin rationem [Nominative] ratio “reckoning, understanding, motive, cause”]. I don’t want to know just what caused me to be here, but if I want to know what caused my existence, it is because through that “how” still I want to know “why” I am here, which basically means I wish to understand the rule of universe and God’s will and what is the role of my existence within this general pattern. It seems obvious that “rationally” we can’t arrive at a justification of our existence. It seems impossible to understand the rationale of God’s will or the rules of universe comprehensively. I will discuss it again when pondering Wilson’s “The Meaning of Human Existence”.
So, Ayer believes asking the
question of the meaning of existence is pointless, because it can never be
satisfied. In a sense as the question
doesn’t find its answer in any factual knowledge, it is absurd or
meaningless. This means that the
principle of sufficient reason, that everything has a reason, cannot be applied
to our own existence, not because it is difficult to find a reason for it, but because it is logically and factually impossible to find it, and then he concludes: so
it is meaningless to ask such a question!
He states:
“That is to say, it may be
answerable at any given level, but the answer is always a matter of describing
at a higher level not why things are as they are, but simply how they are. And so, to whatever level our explanation may
be carried, the final statement is never an answer to the question “Why?” but
necessarily only an answer to the question “How?” It follows, if my argument is correct, that
there is no sense in asking what is the ultimate purpose of our existence, or
what is the real meaning of life. For to
ask this is to assume that there can be a reason for our living as we do which
is somehow more profound than any mere explanation of the facts; and we have
seen that this assumption is untenable.” (The Claims of Philosophy)
This is the gist of Ayer’s
argument, to reject everything non-factual or metaphysical as nonsense. Those who know about the history of
philosophy and logical positivism know well that this zealous adherent to
“facts” and only “facts” and excluding everything else as absurd or meaningless
lost its logical-philosophical value long time ago by Popper and Wittgenstein
himself who gave rise to Vienna Circle from whom Ayer got his belief system.
“The
declared aim of the Vienna Circle was to make philosophy either subservient to
or somehow akin to the natural sciences. As Ray Monk says in his superb
biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990),
“the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of
manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna
Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in
the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have
nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural
sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be
solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the
problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed
the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical”
(6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a
man who had renounced metaphysics. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle
had got Wittgenstein wrong, and in so doing had discredited themselves.” https://philosophynow.org/issues/103/WittgensteinTolstoy_and_the_Folly_of_Logical_Positivism
So, one may argue that not only the question of the meaning of existence is meaningful but it is fundamental. Because it is a FACT that we are here on this planet, that we know we die, that we don’t know what is this whole universe and our existence about. It is a FACT that we deal with an enigma, it is a FACT that we have received thousands of years scriptures with striking similarities that talk about God and indeed they did cultivated us all over the world and in the course of time to become who we are now. And it is a “fact” now that our ethos and ethical truths are more reliable than scientific truths. Even if we can causally explain away consciousness, the “I” who asks the question of the meaning of existence can’t be reduced to its causes, i.e., an intellectual “knowing” of causes doesn’t satisfy and provide an “answer” to it, because the question of the meaning of existence is deeply an existential question and only through an existential transformation of consciousness, it can be experienced. I will elaborate these points more when I discuss Edward O. Wilson’s book “The Meaning of Human Existence”.
Ayer tries to show how a belief in God also won’t
give an answer to the question of the meaning of existence:
“But now, it may be objected, suppose that the
world is designed by a superior being.
In that case the purpose of our existence will be the purpose that it
realizes for him; and the meaning of life will be found in our conscious
adaptation to his purpose. But here
again, the answer is, first, that there is no good reason whatsoever for
believing that there is any such superior being; and secondly, that even if
there were, he could not accomplish what is here required of him. For let us assume, for the sake of argument,
that everything happens as it does because a superior being has intended that
it should. As far as we are concerned,
the course of events still remains entirely arbitrary. True, it can now be said to fulfill a
purpose; but the purpose is not ours.
And just as, on the previous assumption, it merely happened to be the
case that the course of events conduced to the end that it did, so, on this
assumption, it merely happens to be the case that the deity has the purpose
that he has, and not some other purpose, or no purpose at all. Not even this unwarrantable assumption
provides us even with a rule of life.
For even those who believe most firmly that the world was designed by a
superior being are not in a position to tell us what his purpose can have
been. They may indeed claim that it has
been mysteriously revealed to them, but how can it be proved that the
revelation is genuine? And even if we
waive this objection, even if we assume not only the world as we find it is
working out the purpose of a superior being, but also that we are capable of
discovering what this purpose is, we are still not provided with a rule of
life. For either his purpose is
sovereign or it is not. If it is
sovereign, that is, if everything that happens is necessarily in accordance
with it, then this is true also of our behavior. Consequently, there is no point in our deciding
to conform to it, for the simple reason that we cannot do otherwise.” (The
Claims of Philosophy)
When I read these comments, or Wilson’ s ideas
about the meaning of existence, I feel like a two dimensional being, ensnared
in the prison of words and facts, tailored to its words and limited
perception, unable to understand a multidimensional world, adamantly denies its
existence as being illogical and non-scientific, because of lack of
imagination. These are strange
arguments, for these reasons:
1)
Suppose whatever Ayer says is true about the
deity, if I know that everything is determined according to God’s purpose, and
I could understand God’s purpose, this should potentially give me a rationale
for my existence, because Hegel’s dictum makes sense that
“freedom is realized necessity.”
2)
However, Ayer talks about us as if we are dead
particles in God’s plan, because of the fact of God’s sovereignty and
predestination. What is the problem with
this way of thinking? Well, first of
all, lack of imagination. If we are not
dead particles. i.e., it matters to us how we should rule our life, how we
should behave, and what the meaning of our existence is, then our relation to
God is the relation between two conscious, aware, loving beings. The latter being, God, is the ground of the
former, our being. In this
conscious-aware-alive-love relationship, God guides us to evolve to
God-consciousness (taghva, piety, purity).
One may say, if I train my dog to live with me and behave in certain ways,
knowing exactly the outcome, which is coexistence and love, it doesn’t mean
that everything is arbitrary for my dog, because it is not my dog’s will to be
trained, and he hasn’t planned the outcome. Even if this analogy doesn’t hold for the relation between us and God. In another note, I mentioned:
“let’s use this thought experiment: imagine we want to save an endangered species, and so we create a special habitat for them to be secured from excessive danger. We know that these animals will deteriorate if we turn them into pets. They have to move and have a natural life style, thus we let some of the predators in to stimulate them to be active for survival. Some of them may die due to their frail predisposition, but based on our probabilistic calculations, we know the species as a whole will flourish and survive. In this thought experiment, though the analogy is barely similar to our love relationship to God, we can see that the predator (evil or Satan) is used as the condition of survival and growth of a species. In our thought experiment, we are the master of process and know the outcome, and in this process the species will prosper and flourish. And it doesn’t mean that the predator and the endangered species are the same, on the contrary, the ultimate goal is to save the endangered species from the domination of predators.”
“let’s use this thought experiment: imagine we want to save an endangered species, and so we create a special habitat for them to be secured from excessive danger. We know that these animals will deteriorate if we turn them into pets. They have to move and have a natural life style, thus we let some of the predators in to stimulate them to be active for survival. Some of them may die due to their frail predisposition, but based on our probabilistic calculations, we know the species as a whole will flourish and survive. In this thought experiment, though the analogy is barely similar to our love relationship to God, we can see that the predator (evil or Satan) is used as the condition of survival and growth of a species. In our thought experiment, we are the master of process and know the outcome, and in this process the species will prosper and flourish. And it doesn’t mean that the predator and the endangered species are the same, on the contrary, the ultimate goal is to save the endangered species from the domination of predators.”
4)
One can see how “modern epistemology” works in
Ayer’s thoughts. Everything is
intellectual. If I don’t know exactly the whole rule, and the
outcome of all my behavior is predicted by God, then everything is arbitrary
and nothing has meaning! One may wonder,
“Why?” Why can Ayer not see that for
beings like us freedom is possible only against the background of certain limitations
and God given rules? We are not
omnipotent. This is the general problem
with Western Enlightenment that it can’t process our limitations and wants to
play the role of God. Ayer complains
that under all these conditions there is no rule of life for us, because God is
sovereign and the outcome of our behavior is clear to God. Very strange argument. It seems Ayer has never looked into any
scripture and see for himself how God in thousands of ways tried to teach us a
multiplicity of rules of life. The most important one is the Golden Rule, and a
host of ethical verdicts with a series of arguments, examples, and experiences, which is the point of God’s predestination.
Existentially, Ayer confounds us and our relation to God with a rock and
its relation to us. But God has been telling us there is a difference between
good and evil. God teaches us to learn
to be good, and yes God knows exactly who can’t do it, and because of our OWN conscious decisions we end up corrupting or purifying our
God given disposition. If God knows
everything, it doesn’t mean that in the process we, as conscious-alive-aware
beings, who our being is an issue for us and ponder the meaning of our
existence, will not evolve in the process.
Reflections on the question of the meaning of
life is an antidote to nihilism. But how
can we reflect on the question? Can we
arrive at an answer to the question of the meaning of our existence by, for
example, discovering the physical foundation of consciousness? In another word, can we explain “why we are
here?” by explaining how the consciousness who asks this question comes into
being from interaction of physical objects?
Ayer believes a factual explanation of consciousness will not satisfy
the question of meaning of existence; as well Wittgenstein didn’t believe that
we can ever address the question of meaning of existence by natural
sciences. Obviously, we are looking for
principle of sufficient reason to answer the question. But what if the meaning of existence can fundamentally
be illuminated by ethico-mystical experiences, which don’t exclude reasoning
and phenomenological or poetic description to “show” how the experience
appears. I already discussed it and will come to it again at the
conclusion of this writing, but for now let’s examine Edward O. Wilson’s “The
Meaning of Human Existence”.
Wilson's Evolutionary Biology:
The Meaning of Human Existence
As you can imagine, the meaning of human existence
for evolutionary biologists (Pinker, Dawkins, Wilson, etc.) with certain
variations is the survival of genes.
Yes, this is the new god, the new Golden Calf: survival of genes. And survival of genes will explain everything
to us, the meaning of existence, the ethical rules we should follow and political
decisions we need to make. Evolutionary
biology’s intervention in answering the question of the meaning of existence
and our ethical comportment seems, along with its technological robotizing and
leveling off all values to the satisfaction of genes, to be the most dangerous
and nihilistic account of the meaning of existence that aberrations and
excesses of Western Enlightenment have come up with. Wilson explains the meaning of human
existence in this way:
a.
Wilson uses the term meaning as causal
explanation. “The ultimate explanation
answers the question, why this particular hardwiring and not some other?” Imagine we could bring a robot to life and it
becomes aware of the fact that it has a world, a self, emotional connections
and love, and will die and then asks us, “Who am I? What is this awareness and consciousness?”
And in response, we show it the wires that created it. Do you think this would be convincing to
it? Wilson doesn’t ponder the question
of irreducibility of consciousness that has been raised by so many philosophers
in both Continental and Analytical traditions (Nagel[6],
Searle, and Chomsky, Heidegger, Merleau Ponty are the famous ones).
b.
We were created not by a supernatural
intelligence but by chance and necessity as one species out of millions of
species in Earth’s biosphere. However, “Godlike,
their [the early humans] descendants have saturated a large part of Earth, and
altered to varying degree the remainder.
We have become the mind of the planet and perhaps our entire corner of
the galaxy as well. We can do with Earth
what we please. We chatter constantly
about destroying it—by nuclear war, climate change, an apocalyptic Second
Coming foretold by Holy Scripture.” (p.176) Wilson says that “we” chatter and
indeed implemented the destruction of life on this planet, but as always turns
a blind eye to who these “we” are. It is
obvious that African tribes are not responsible for climate change but
scientific and technological advance and industrialization. It is obvious now that we have brought the 6th
mass extinction of species by the mass consumerism of those who based on a
‘superficial science’ perceived their existence as an accidental pinnacle of
the survival of the fittest. It is so
obvious now that the destruction of the earth is a side effect ramification of excesses
of the Western Enlightenment. Wilson,
nonetheless, ignores all these “facts” and accuses religions as the most virulent
parasitic danger to human species!
c.
“There is no evidence of an external grace
shining down upon us, no demonstrable destiny or purpose assigned us, no second
life vouchsafed us for the end of the present one. We are, it seems, completely alone. And that in my opinion a very good
thing. It means we are completely free.”
(p.173) So, the thirst for the meaning of our existence, the fact that despite
our scientific knowledge we really don’t know about the universe and our
existence has been quenched by a simple answer: we are the result of an accident. Does this make sense? It is like a bat says, if it could speak,
everything is constituted by our own sonar system. It makes complete sense to bats, so it is
true. As Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos puts
it:
“Any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes reason’s validity and cannot confirm it without circularity. Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out in something that is grasped as valid in itself—something without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible.”
“Any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes reason’s validity and cannot confirm it without circularity. Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out in something that is grasped as valid in itself—something without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible.”
It simply
means reason can’t explain itself away through an evolutionary theory because
it has to take its own tools (reason) to justify itself.
Moreover, one
doesn’t need to be a scientist or philosopher to understand we are not
completely independent and free. I am
connected to biosphere and biosphere is connected to the universe. It is a fact that I even as an accident
wonder the meaning of my-earth-universe existence and no evolutionary account
can satiate this sense of awe of existence.
Wilson,
however, is so sure that he has resolved the riddle of human existence by
showing how we have become social beings: our advanced social behavior is
similar to ants and termites (existential levelling off). “The most complex societies have arisen
through eusociality—meaning, roughly, the ‘true’ social condition. By definition, the members of a eusocial
group cooperatively rear the young across multiple generations.” (p.19).
Eusociality is
a rare phenomenon. “Out of hundreds of
thousands of evolving lines of animals on the land during the past four hundred
million years, the condition, so far as we can determine, has risen only
nineteen times, scattered across insects, marine crustaceans, and subterranean
rodents. The number is twenty, if we
include human beings.” (p.19)
Eusociality in addition to nesting and campsites in pre-human hunter-gatherers caused mental growth. “A premium was placed on personal relationships geared to both competition and cooperation among the members.” It gave rise to extended memory and inward imagination of future interactions between individuals in the group. Altruism also got a hold based on two competing theories: kin selection and group selection. The first one is Dawkins Selfish Gene, which is basically the idea that the individuals favor collateral kin (relatives other than offspring), making it easier for altruism to evolve among members of the same group. As it is all about genes, the theory of inclusive fitness believes that “[c]omplex social behavior can evolve when group members individually reap greater benefits in numbers of genes passed to the next generation than losses from their altruism, averaged through their behavior toward all members of the group.” (p.23). The second theory is “multilevel selection”. “This formulation recognizes two levels at which natural selection operates: individual selection based on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between groups.” (p.25)
Eusociality in addition to nesting and campsites in pre-human hunter-gatherers caused mental growth. “A premium was placed on personal relationships geared to both competition and cooperation among the members.” It gave rise to extended memory and inward imagination of future interactions between individuals in the group. Altruism also got a hold based on two competing theories: kin selection and group selection. The first one is Dawkins Selfish Gene, which is basically the idea that the individuals favor collateral kin (relatives other than offspring), making it easier for altruism to evolve among members of the same group. As it is all about genes, the theory of inclusive fitness believes that “[c]omplex social behavior can evolve when group members individually reap greater benefits in numbers of genes passed to the next generation than losses from their altruism, averaged through their behavior toward all members of the group.” (p.23). The second theory is “multilevel selection”. “This formulation recognizes two levels at which natural selection operates: individual selection based on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between groups.” (p.25)
By turning the
direction of attention from cultivation of the soul, which is more than
altruism, to passing genes, evolutionary biologists actually ground any possible
sense of altruism or cultivation of the soul, centuries of asceticism,
religious meditations and yoga, centuries of rituals of purification and
transcendental and mystical experiences in a desire for dispersion of
genes. Then they have a difficult time
to convince the already deluded population in worshipping survival of their
genes to care about social values, because after all if it is all about my
genes, I will cooperate as long as practically I have no choice, but then I
will diverge to serve my own whims and desires, because the meaning of life as
‘survival of genes’, hedonism, cynicism—and at the end not even giving damn
about one’s or other’s gene—as the cause and effect of nihilism, come in one
package.
Wilson
concludes “the meaning of human existence”:
“Human
existence may be simpler than we thought.
There is no predestination, no unfathomed mystery of life. Demons and gods do not vie for our
intelligence. Instead, we are self-made,
independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological
world. What counts for long-term
survival is intelligent self-understanding, based upon a greater independence
of thought than that tolerated today even in our most advanced democratic
societies.” (p.26)
The words
“self-understanding”, “independent”, “alone”, “independence of thoughts” and
most of all “self-made” beg the question.
In what sense Wilson could give us a satisfactory causal explanation of
the above mentioned terms? How did thought
came about? Do we have a full
explanation of thinking now? Can we
reduce consciousness to anything even if we suppose it is caused by brain (John
Searle and Nagel’s arguments about ontological irreducibility of consciousness)? What does it mean to talk about human beings
as “self-made”? These and many other
questions never get an answer neither by Wilson nor by any other evolutionary
biologist.
d.
Wilson also has the last word about the meaning
of conscience and moral issues. He
thinks we are conflicted beings and have a sensitive conscience due to the fact
that “[w]e are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and sinners, champions of
the truth and hypocrites—not because humanity has failed to reach some
foreordained religious or ideological ideal, but because of the way our species
originated across millions of years of biological evolution…Bear in mind that
during organic evolution the unit of natural selection is not the individual organism
or the group…It is the gene (more precisely the alleles, or multiple forms of
the same gene). The target of natural
selection is the trait prescribed by the gene.
The trait can be individual in nature or outside the group. Or the trait can be socially interactive in
nature with other members of the group (as in communication and cooperation)
and selected by competition among groups.” (p.29) Consequently, conscience and
honor, sin and virtue, are the product of individual selection (competition between
individuals in one group) and group selection (competition between groups). And this is the meaning of human ethical
endeavors:
“So it came to
pass that humans are forever conflicted by their prehistory of multilevel
selection. They are suspended in
unstable and constantly changing positions between the two extreme forces that
created us…To give in completely to the instinctual urgings born from
individual selection would be to dissolve society. At the opposite extreme, to surrender to the
urgings from group selection would turn us into angelic robots—the outsized
equivalents of ants.” (p.32)
Can I persuade
my son to care and love living beings because the meaning of human existence is
the natural selection of our or indeed his genes? And that altruism and conscience matter due
to natural selection of groups. And he
shouldn’t be too altruistic as he might turn into the outsized equivalents of
ants. If my son asked me that “what is
wrong if I give in to my instinctual urgings if it preserves our genes?” All I can say is that well, giving in to our
instinctual urgings will dissolve society.
But if he insists “hypothetically if I give in to my instinctual desires
and it preserves our genes at the expense of death of thousands of people in
society, then what is wrong with it?
Evolutionary biologists like Wilson who reduce human consciousness and
ethical practices to preservation of genes, indeed are responsible for the
destruction of the fabric of society, degradation of human and all living
beings, and promoting nihilism.
e.
With this kind of reasoning, Wilson surely can’t
convince anyone to cultivate one’s soul, when everything is reducible to chemical
stuff called the gene or more precisely the alleles. It is strange that evolutionary theory and the
meaning of human existence as the survival of genes has a nihilistic effect on
individuals, as, we know, it gave rise to the century of the self, hedonism,
mass consumerism, and self-destruction.
It is not difficult to understand why.
This theory creates a breach within the individual between dead or
unaware genes and one’s own soul or awareness; it creates a wedge between
individuals and groups; it creates a gap between human beings and other
species; and it develops an absurdity that can never satiate the soul of the
individual in search of meaning.
f.
In the last part of my discussion of Wilson’s
ideas about the meaning of existence, I will focus on chapter four “The New
Enlightenment”. Now, what is the new
Enlightenment? Indeed, it is the Empire
of Man, as Wilson quotes Bacon. It is a
reductive method to level off all the differences in a unified theory to
explain the universe and the meaning of humanity by the laws of science and in
a nutshell: cause and effect. He somehow
laments that in 1800s Romantic tradition of literature rejected the presumptions
of the Enlightenment, but he calls for its revival now in 21st c. He projects a bizarre picture of science—science
fetishism or scientism- as the alchemy that is revealing the nature of universe
through testing competitive hypothesis by being totally committed to facts and
also what he calls “the continuum”: “the idea of variation of entity and
process occurring continuously in one, two, or more dimensions is so routine in
most physics and chemistry as require no explicit mention. Continua include such familiar gradients as
temperature, velocity, mass, wave length, particle pin, pH, and carbon-based
molecular analogs”. Wilson believes our
reasoning has such a wonderful power that in principle it can know everything. I wonder how any evolutionary biology
theorist can make such a claim. Wilson adamantly
rejects the doubts of the prominent philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who
convincingly and based on scientific evidence argues that not only scientific
paradigms are not a continuum in all aspects but also they are incommensurable
in some aspects. On the contrary, Wislon
gives in to an extravagant conclusion that “[i]n time, likely no more than
several decades, we will be able to explain the dark matter of the Universe,
the origin of life on Earth, and the physical basis of human consciousness
during changes of mood and thought. The
invisible is seen, the vanishingly small weighed.” (p.50).
Chomsky, who actually calls himself a
representative of Western Enlightenment, holds that not only these knowing-all
grandiosity is wrong but also limitation is the condition of possibility of
knowledge. I will end this part, with a
long quotation from Chomsky’s Science,
Minds, and the Limits of Understanding:
“Locke and Hume, and many less-remembered figures of the day,
understood that much of the nature of the world is “inconceivable” to us. There
were actually two different kinds of reasons for this. For Locke and Hume, the
reasons were primarily epistemological. Hume in particular developed the idea
that we can only be confident of immediate impressions, of “appearances.”
Everything else is a mental construction. In particular, and of crucial
significance, that is true of identity through time, problems that trace back
to the pre-Socratics: the identity of a river or a tree or most importantly a
person as they change through time. These are mental constructions; we cannot
know whether they are properties of the world, a metaphysical reality. As Hume
put the matter, we must maintain “a modest skepticism to a certain degree, and a
fair confession of ignorance in subjects, that exceed all human capacity” –
which for Hume includes virtually everything beyond appearances. We must
“refrain from disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations.” It is
the imagination that leads us to believe that we experience external continuing
objects, including a mind or self. The imagination, furthermore, is “a kind of
magical faculty in the soul, which…is inexplicable by the utmost efforts of
human understanding,” so Hume argued.
A different kind of reason why the nature of the world is
inconceivable to us was provided by “the judicious Mr. Newton,” who apparently
was not interested in the epistemological problems that vexed Locke and Hume.
Newton scholar Andrew Janiak concludes that Newton regarded such global
skepticism as “irrelevant – he takes the possibility of our knowledge of nature
for granted.” For Newton, “the primary epistemic questions confronting us are
raised by physical theory itself.” Locke and Hume, as I mentioned, took quite
seriously the new science-based skepticism that resulted from Newton’s
demolition of the mechanical philosophy, which had provided the very criterion
of intelligibility for the scientific revolution. That is why Hume lauded
Newton for having “restored [Nature’s] ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in
which they ever did and ever will remain.”
For these quite different kinds of reasons, the great figures of
the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment believed that there are
phenomena that fall beyond human understanding. Their reasoning seems to me
substantial, and not easily dismissed. But contemporary doctrine is quite
different. The conclusions are regarded as a dangerous heresy. They are derided
as “the new mysterianism,” a term coined by philosopher Owen Flanagan, who
defined it as “a postmodern position designed to drive a railroad spike through
the heart of scientism.” Flanagan is referring specifically to explanation of
consciousness, but the same concerns hold of mental processes in general.
The “new mysterianism” is compared today with the “old
mysterianism,” Cartesian dualism, its fate typically misunderstood. To repeat,
Cartesian dualism was a perfectly respectable scientific doctrine, disproven by
Newton, who exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact, contrary to what
is commonly believed.
The “new mysterianism,” I believe, is misnamed. It should be
called “truism” — at least, for anyone who accepts the major findings of modern
biology, which regards humans as part of the organic world. If so, then they
will be like all other organisms in having a genetic endowment that enables
them to grow and develop to their mature form. By simple logic, the endowment
that makes this possible also excludes other paths of development. The endowment
that yields scope also establishes limits. What enables us to grow legs and
arms, and a mammalian visual system, prevents us from growing wings and having
an insect visual system.
All of this is indeed truism, and for non-mystics, the same should
be expected to hold for cognitive capacities. We understand this well for other
organisms. Thus we are not surprised to discover that rats are unable to run
prime number mazes no matter how much training they receive; they simply lack
the relevant concept in their cognitive repertoire. By the same token, we are
not surprised that humans are incapable of the remarkable navigational feats of
ants and bees; we simply lack the cognitive capacities, though we can sometimes
duplicate their feats with sophisticated instruments. The truisms extend to
higher mental faculties. For such reasons, we should, I think, be prepared to
join the distinguished company of Newton, Locke, Hume and other dedicated
mysterians.
For accuracy, we should qualify the concept of “mysteries” by
relativizing it to organisms. Thus what is a mystery for rats might not be a
mystery for humans, and what is a mystery for humans is instinctive for ants
and bees.
Dismissal of mysterianism seems to me one illustration of a
widespread form of dualism, a kind of epistemological and methodological
dualism, which tacitly adopts the principle that study of mental aspects of the
world should proceed in some fundamentally different way from study of what are
considered physical aspects of the world, rejecting what are regarded as
truisms outside the domain of mental processes. This new dualism seems to me
truly pernicious, unlike Cartesian dualism, which was respectable science. The
new methodological dualism, in contrast, seems to me to have nothing to recommend
it.
Far from bewailing the existence of mysteries-for-humans, we
should be extremely grateful for it. With no limits to growth and development,
our cognitive capacities would also have no scope. Similarly, if the genetic
endowment imposed no constraints on growth and development of an organism it
could become only a shapeless amoeboid creature, reflecting accidents of an
unanalyzed environment, each quite unlike the next. Classical aesthetic theory
recognized the same relation between scope and limits. Without rules, there can
be no genuinely creative activity, even when creative work challenges and
revises prevailing rules.
Contemporary rejection of mysterianism – that is, truism – is
quite widespread. One recent example that has received considerable attention
is an interesting and informative book by physicist David Deutsch. He writes
that potential progress is “unbounded” as a result of the achievements of the
Enlightenment and early modern science, which directed science to the search
for best explanations. As philosopher/physicist David Albert expounds his
thesis, “with the introduction of that particular habit of concocting and
evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do anything. The
capacities of a community that has mastered that method to survive, and to
learn, and to remake the world according to its inclinations, are (in the long
run) literally, mathematically, infinite.”
The quest for better explanations may well indeed be infinite, but
infinite is of course not the same as limitless. English is infinite, but
doesn’t include Greek. The integers are an infinite set, but do not include the
reals. I cannot discern any argument here that addresses the concerns and
conclusions of the great mysterians of the scientific revolution and the
Enlightenment.
We are left with a serious and challenging scientific inquiry: to
determine the innate components of our cognitive nature in language,
perception, concept formation, reflection, inference, theory construction,
artistic creation, and all other domains of life, including the most ordinary
ones. By pursuing this task we may hope to determine the scope and limits of
human understanding, while recognizing that some differently structured
intelligence might regard human mysteries as simple problems and wonder that we
cannot find the answers, much as we can observe the inability of rats to run
prime number mazes because of the very design of their cognitive nature. https://chomsky.info/201401__/
Conclusion
The question of the meaning of
existence has been considered as an urgent question by Tolstoy and Camus. Both acknowledge that we can’t proceed and ignore it as the fundamental question of life and philosophy. Tolstoy shares:
“Five years ago, something very
strange began with me. I was overcome by
minutes at first of perplexity and then an arrest of life, as though I did not
how to live or what to do, and I lost myself and was dejected…At first I
thought that those were simply aimless, inappropriate questions…But the question
began to repeat themselves oftener and oftener, answers were demanded more and
more persistently… I felt that what I was standing on had given way, that I had
no foundation to stand on, that that which I lived by no longer existed, and
that I had nothing to live by… ‘Well, I know,’ I said to myself, ‘all which
science wants to persistently to know, but there is no answer to the question
about the meaning of my life’” (My Confessions).
Albert Camus as well declares: “Judging
whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental
question of philosophy. All the rest—whether
the world has three dimensions [or more], whether the mind has nine or twelve
categories—comes afterwards.” (The Myth of Sisyphus).
Ayer’s logical positivism tries
to “erase” the question by saying that we know nothing but “succession of facts”
and as the question of the meaning of life seeks a justification for life, not
an explanation of the factual causes, it is tantamount to an absurd or
meaningless question. As well, the assumption
of a creative God, Ayer argues, can’t really justify life or renders it a
meaning. I analyzed Ayer’s both accounts
and showed that how logical positivists' claim that "only factual statements are
meaningful" is fallacious, and how his discussion about God’s predestination suffers
from lack of imagination. Moreover, the
modern epistemology is not adequate to answer the question of the meaning of
existence. Anyone with a bit historical
knowledge knows well that from the Cartesian moment in 16th c.
intellectualism became the centerpiece of philosophical knowledge. I argue that actually the question of the
meaning of existence can’t get an “answer” through propositional knowledge,
i.e., we can’t issue a statement and say “this is the meaning of existence,”
while we can use epistemological knowledge as a guidepost. Equally, I rejected that the meaning of
existence is absurd or can’t find any “answer”, but the answer is not given to
an all-knowing subject, as Edward O. Wilson in his book The Meaning of Human Existence tries to show. It is not reducible to causal explanation,
nor to any single theory of justification.
I analyzed Wilson's causal explanation, his evolutionary biology that the gene or more precisely the alleles,
are the “meaning” of human existence, whose function can be explained through
kin and group natural selection. I tried
to show that this causal explanation can’t satisfy even a robot, if it comes to
consciousness, leave alone a human being who has an existential comport in the
world, because ontologically consciousness is irreducible. Wilson's explanation is reductive and the
consciousness that tries to reduce its own foundation to the genes, first, as
Thomas Nagel argues, has to take the validity of its reasoning for granted as
the foundation in order to come to explain away the ground of its existence in
genes. Second, Wilson’s ethical
deduction that the duality between egoism and altruism is due to individual and
group natural selection of the traits prescribed by the gene, paradoxically is
nihilistic and in practice detrimental to the existence our and other
species. In the centuries ensued after
crude Darwinism, and turning the gene into a new god, we see the rise of
centuries of the self, mass consumerism, ethical decay and irreverence for all
living beings, seeing and abusing them as our “resources”. Moreover, Wilson acknowledges that “of all
the continua mapped by science, the most relevant to the humanities are the
senses, which are extremely limited in our species”; nonetheless, he advocates an extravagant
idea of Western Enlightenment in which the Empire of Man will finally know
everything. I briefly discussed how
Wilson easily invalidates the limitations set by Thomas Kuhn on sciences, and
turns a blind eye to Chomsky’s arguments about the limits of understanding.
I started this reflection on
the meaning of existence with my own account and I finish this conclusion with
repeating my thesis:
I
mentioned how merely intellectual answers to the meaning of life will not
satisfy us. Why? Because the meaning of life can be achieved as
a practice in the search for the meaning of life, intellectually as well as
spiritually, which means in body, heart, and soul. As well the “the” in the meaning of life,
indicates a universal connection to
the source as the experience of the meaning of life—which means the meaning of
existence is not something subjective.
However, modes of connection to the source can be different. This is similar to the story of the elephant
in the room. Some like Wilson and Ayer
deny there is any elephant in the room and so they can’t even imagine the
connection. Different traditions
experience the meaning-connection differently though they can connect to each other’s
narration, if they share their experiences with openness.
I
argue that the meaning of life has to be experienced in a sense of “wholeness”
or “oneness”, which covers at least three parts at the same time: 1) the
experience of love as a whole being, 2) the experience of being healed, i.e.,
the soul and heart to be cured and to be at peace, 3) the experience of
intrinsic value of the ethical and the political, and coextensively and
consequently the experience of creativity.
All
of these experiences is what I call the experience of God or unity with God or
a mystical experience, as the meaning of existence.
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[1]
Hegel, in writing about Angelus Silesius, identifies mysticism with pantheism,
which is not accurate. He wrote: “Now
the pantheistic unity, raised up in relation to the subject that senses itself
in this unity with God and God as this presence in subjective consciousness,
would in general yield the mystic as
it has come to be formed in this subjective manner even within
Christianity. As an example I will only
cite Angelus Silesius, who with the greatest cleverness and depth of intuition
and sensibility has spoken with a wonderfully mystical power of description
about the substantial existence of God in things and the unification of the
self with God and of God with human subjectivity.” (Quoted in Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason p.35)
[2] I have to confess that I don’t take pride
at those political actions as I see it now immature and not even fair, as the
Islamic just had come to power by popular uprising and almost immediately Iraq
attacked Iran. Despite the fact I don’t
agree with some of Islamic Republic’s actions such as restrictions on freedom
of thoughts and speech, I don’t think it was fair or sound to call for the
overturn of the Islamic Republic government two years after it took power and
amidst war with Iraq. But anyhow I was
arrested and unjustifiably was condemned to death. I was two years on the Death Row, and I had
enough time to reflect about the meaning of my existence. I was a young Marxist and was pride of my
“scientific philosophy” as we used to call Marxism at that time. Marxism is a version of “as if” I know the
answer. Marx, with all other professors
of historical ontology, hold the self-congratulatory view that determinate
historical practices are all and all to who we are. It is self-congratulatory because they indeed
say they are “outside” these historical practices to see how history
constitutes us. Contextual understanding
of events and sociology of knowledge are meaningful, nevertheless, thinking in
terms of totality is misleading. The
problem of historical ontology (whether in terms modes of production or discourse
and relations of power) is that adamantly it holds that the subject as such,
totally is constructed by those historical practices.
[3]
Ecclesiastes 3-(NIV):
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to
die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do
workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made
everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human
heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that
there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they
live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of
God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can
be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear
him.
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
16 And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness
was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
17 I said to
myself,
“God will bring into judgment
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed.”
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed.”
18 I also said to
myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like
the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same
fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is
meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all
return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes
down into the earth?”
[4]
God
is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of God’s light is like a
niche within which is a lamp, the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were
a pearly star lit from a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the
west, whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire. Light upon light.
God guides to God’s light whom God wills. And God presents examples for the
people, and God is Knowing of all things. (The
Quran, 24:35)
[5]
Wittgenstein
separates “cause” and “reason” in this way: “In what
sense are laws of inference laws of thought? Can a reason be given for thinking
as we do? Will this require an answer outside the game of reasoning? There are
two senses of "reason": reason for, and cause. These are two
different orders of things. One needs to decide on a criterion for something's
being a reason before reason and cause can be distinguished. Reasoning is the
calculation actually done, and a reason goes back one step in the calculus. A
reason is a reason only inside the game. To give a reason is to go through a
process of calculation, and to ask for a reason is to ask how one arrived at
the result. The chain of reasons comes to an end, that is, one cannot always
give a reason for a reason. But this does not make the reasoning less valid.
The answer to the question, Why are you frightened?, involves a hypothesis if a
cause is given. But there is no hypothetical element in a calculation.
To do a thing for a certain reason may
mean several things. When a person gives as his reason for entering a room that
there is a lecture, how does one know that is his reason? The reason may be
nothing more than just the one he gives when asked. Again, a reason may be the
way one arrives at a conclusion, e.g., when one multiplies 13 × 25. It is a calculation,
and is the justification for the result 325. The reason for fixing a date might
consist in a man's going through a game of checking his diary and finding a
free time. The reason here might be said to be included in the act he performs.
A cause could not be included in this sense.
We are talking here of the grammar of the words "reason"
and "cause": in what cases do we say we have given a reason for doing a
certain thing, and in what cases, a cause? If one answers the question
"Why did you move your arm?" by giving a behavioristic explanation,
one has specified a cause. Causes may be
discovered by experiments, but experiments do not produce reasons. The word
"reason" is not used in connection with experimentation. It is
senseless to say a reason is found by experiment. The alternative,
"mathematical argument or experiential evidence?" corresponds to
"reason or cause?"
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/wittgens.htm
[6]
Nagel: What is it like to be a bat? http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf
