VII.
Two of the final existential questions humans confront, in some form, are deeply intertwined: Is life worth living? and Is there such a thing as meaning, and if so, is it discoverable? In what ways can these issues be approached?
At the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus, in the section entitled, “An Absurd Reasoning”, the existentialist writer and philosopher Albert Camus startles us with his opening lines: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to the fundamental question of philosophy.” (P. 3) To Camus the dilemma a human faces is justifying his or her existence in a Universe that is absurd, one apparently without purpose and one in which hope is illusory. Camus asserts that belief in the transcendent, and thus the hopeful, is an illogical leap of reasoning, a sort of intellectual desperation, an attempt to hold off a conclusion that would render human life meaningless. In reply to the hopes for the existence of the transcendent, Camus writes:
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me—that is what I understand. And these two certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle—I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition? (P. 38)
To Camus, the limitations inherent in his human perspective preclude the possibility of ascertaining meaning. And yet, this does not mean for Camus that suicide necessarily follows as a rational course of action. On the contrary, humans must revolt against the absurdity of life by confronting it, by living as fully as possible, accepting the inevitability of one’s fate without being resigned to it. Camus believed that humans can be “indomitable and passionate”, throwing themselves into life totally. “The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself.” (P. 41) It is in this revolt, this refusal to stop engaging the world, this refusal to be reconciled to it, that Camus found his purpose for living.
Most people probably don’t approach these questions from the standpoint that Camus did, but they encounter them nonetheless. Is life worth living? Let’s pose two diametrically opposite cases. If a human has those whom she loves, and who love her in return, is emotionally invested in the wellbeing of her family and friends, has work that is enjoyable and useful, has frequent periods of joy, and holds out hope that reality will someday make sense to her, those reasons alone can be sufficient for living. But if a human is in constant despair, without family or friends, without joy, without meaningful work, without hope, and, most tragically, suffering from intractable pain or illness, the continuation of life may not make sense to him. Personal annihilation might appear to be the most rational choice in his situation. But in real life, the choices aren’t usually as clear cut as these examples might suggest. Humans may alternate between periods of enthusiasm for, or at least tolerance of, life, and periods where they think, “This just isn’t worth it.”. Virtually no one is entranced with life on a constant basis, but most of us find the prospect of personal annihilation unthinkable and troubling. Humans live somewhere in the gray, not easily defined middle of life, muddling through, and continuing onward through inertia and habit as much as conviction.
Is life worth living? To many people, it is worth living because they are obliged to do so—they have responsibilities, which in good conscience they cannot abandon. Is life worth living? To some it is because they have personal challenges and goals with which they are preoccupied, even obsessed. Is life worth living? To some, to abandon their lives would be to do something they cannot do—quit in the face of adversity and admit defeat. Is life worth living? To many of us, the answer is simple—as long as we have and know love, it is, despite all hardships.
What do humans mean by their search for “meaning”? Here I am not talking about the interpretation of language, although meaning in language is certainly important. Here, I mean a question which in many ways is a summation of all the others. When we consider the meaning of existence, we are asking, What was all this for? If reality is the result of the will of a transcendent being, what was that will? Why does existence exist? Is there a logical reason for it, and is it aiming at some final condition, some ultimate state that must necessarily follow from its unfolding? Was there a reason we had to go through all the frequent misery that we had to endure? Most of us hope that there is some reason for all of our adversity and for existence itself. We want the story to have a satisfying conclusion, one that will resolve all our doubts and answer all of our questions.
Some have come to the conclusion that physical reality is the result of wholly natural processes, and if there is a meaning to all of this, it is far beyond our ability to discern it. To the question, is there such a thing as meaning, they might say no, and in fact they might go so far as to say that even the act of posing such a question is nonsensical. Others might reply that they don’t know what the ultimate “meaning” of the Universe’s existence is. They might add that the only real meaning they can know is that which they make for themselves, and that in the absence of certain knowledge, this is the best they can hope for. And we must ask, honestly: in a Universe in which we are so obviously insignificant, can any meaning ever be ascertained at all?
At last, the question of life’s meaning is, for most people, intimately connected with their attitudes toward death and what might come after it. The question What happens when people die? is of tremendous interest to most of us, even if the contemplation of our own demise is unsettling. The inevitability and seeming finality of death have been the subject of more speculation and discussion than perhaps any other existential question humans face. Death is a major concern of most of our religions, a major theme in our art and literature, a major subject for our philosophers, and a significant topic in the sciences. Few subjects are studied by such a breadth of disciplines. And few subjects compel our attention so strongly. It appears that the majority of the human race believes that death is not the end of the individual ego’s existence. Most humans believe in some sort of afterlife where the personality continues, or that a process of rebirth or transmigration takes place, where some essential part of the human is preserved to exist in different forms. Of course, every human who believes in these possibilities has his or her own vision of what this afterlife or rebirth might be like, and many believers have, throughout their lives, varying degrees of certitude about post-death survival.
For many humans, the idea that there might be no afterlife is intolerable. Why? First, because the idea of our non-existence terrifies many of us. After years of being, in effect, our own little Universes, it is inconceivable for many of us to imagine these Universes disintegrating into nothingness. The feeling might be described as I AM; how could I not be? For other humans, if there is no hope of an afterlife, there is no hope, period. Life would be a meaningless, futile act of mere survival. If there were no afterlife, it would mean that all their loved ones who had died would be gone forever. There would be no joyous reunions, no embracing of lost parents or lost children, no prospect of being reunited with those whose passing was made less painful only by the prospect that the separation would not be permanent. Most people simply cannot face this level of hopelessness. For others, the idea of no afterlife is intolerable because it would mean, ultimately, that there is no justice in the Universe. It would mean that the virtuous are unrewarded; that those who have undergone terrible suffering will not find the compensation of eternal comfort and mercy; and that evil humans who have not been punished in life get off the hook, so to speak. Many people simply cannot believe in such injustice. And for some, no afterlife means that there is no resolution to the personal issues and problems with which they may have struggled all of their lives, and no answers to questions that have disturbed them almost as long. Many people cannot abide such a lack of resolution. For a lot of humans, a combination of these beliefs is at work. There are those who also might look forward to the afterlife as a vindication of their faith and the prospect of being united with the One, the Sacred, the Almighty, the Divine. Little wonder so many humans have, still do, and always will believe that death is not the end. They might even believe because they embrace a version of Pascal’s Wager: If they believe in an afterlife, and none exists, they won’t be aware of it, and will be none the worse off. If they don’t believe in one, and one exists, then the consequences of their disbelief might be grim indeed.
For those who do not believe in an afterlife, on the other hand, it can stir in them the urge to live as intensely as they can within the time they have. If our time truly is finite, then what is aspired to must be achieved in the here and now. There will be no second chance, in this perspective. Experience must be seized; life must be encountered. Conversely, some who have no faith in an afterlife might be morose, convinced that the only true proposition is, “Life is hard and then you die.” To such people, life might not seem only meaningless—it might seem not even worth the effort.
VIII.
We do not encounter these existential questions in nice, orderly sequence, nor do we encounter them in neat, easily discernable, clearly marked situations. We encounter them in the flesh and blood world of everyday life in ways that are often muddled and filled with contradictions. We might never ask ourselves any of these questions in straightforward language, even if we sense their presence; they may always simply be undefined feelings deep within us, never examined in any serious way. And most disturbing of all, even if we do confront them directly, we may never find answers that satisfy us. The existential questions of life can pose challenges that perhaps we are not equal to. If we cannot be certain about why humans exist, what is right and what is wrong, or whether death is the end or not, we might be filled with unease and a sense of incompleteness, as if important business had been left undone. The way a human deals with the questions of existence tells us important things about them. Those who never think about these issues are personifying Plato’s famous quote: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Those who believe they have all the answers to them may actually be arrogant and self-deceived. And those who seek answers in an open-minded way, modestly, and with a sense of humility, may be better positioned in life than most people.
IX.
We were summoned into the world through an act that was not willed by us. As infants, we exist and perceive but we do not understand. We find ourselves thrown into a family (or some other group of caregivers). We find ourselves immersed in a particular way of life, which we come to assume is normal. We float in the river of time and we see the days pass in succession, not realizing what time itself is. We find ourselves in a particular historical era, although we are utterly unaware of this for many years. We are selves, being shaped by impulses, experiences, actions, reactions, personalities, and circumstances the nature of which we do not comprehend, but we cannot yet step outside of these selves to examine all of this. We interact with others, and we gravitate back and forth between the exterior world of this interaction and the interior world of our emotions, memories, impressions, and hypotheses about this interaction, the inner world of our emerging consciousness, the place in our brains where we process and absorb experience. This is our common inheritance as people, the reality each of us faces.
As we grow, and more and more see ourselves (usually) as a part of something larger than just us, we come to realize that the world is huge, life is complicated, that we don’t always understand what happens to us, other people can be challenging or frightening to deal with, and that much of existence just seems to be downright mysterious. Every human who has ever lived has, in my view, lived a version of this same story. Every human has found himself or herself in a world that was in many ways beyond their comprehension, but in which they were nonetheless forced to act and gather information.
Now let us remind ourselves that in addition to these personal challenges, that the following things appear to be true:
--Humans live in a frame of reference that they cannot escape and which prevents them from touching the Ultimately Real.
--Humans find themselves living in a Universe in which they are absurdly insignificant both spatially and temporally.
--Humans find themselves confronted by questions that they cannot always answer, or even formulate clearly, but which seem to be of the utmost significance, and which appear many times to have no certain answers at all. They are forced to seek answers to these questions with limited knowledge and restricted understanding—and they will never have anything else.
Moreover, the only tenuous links these humans have to the world outside of their own heads are forms of communication which by their very nature are imprecise and approximate. Humans are trapped in a reality in which total mutual understanding is impossible, one in which their motives are often obscure or completely hidden even to themselves.
It is these frequently confused, physically vulnerable, often talented, mentally isolated, unpredictable, surprisingly resilient, incredibly adaptable, virtually incomprehensible beings who have made and experienced the history of the world ever since the line between really bright ape and really limited human was crossed in some forever-lost moment of the past. We are going to look for the reasons why these beings want answers to questions that are often unanswerable, and why they have evolved to want and need answers to the particular questions they do. We will seek to understand (in part) the reality in which we find ourselves, and how that reality came to be. It is to the search for answers to these questions that we will now turn, even as we realize that after all of our searching and all of our examination, that the answers may still elude us, as a butterfly gently hovers beyond the grasp of a fascinated two year-old.
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