Oh, what's the bloody point?
A valid question.
What is the bloody point? Kenneth Williams made this the final sentence in his infamous diaries shortly before committing suicide. I believe it bears scrutiny.
The various reasons laid out for our existence are as diverse, complex and maddeningly contradictory as the people who inhabit this spacebound bauble we call "Earth." Some of their suggestions are frankly absurd, receiving no attention from the general public and richly deserving their ignominious status. Some however, remain quite valid, and will be examined in more detail here. Which is yours? If you find that none of these apply to you, you’re being painfully dishonest:
- We are here to reproduce and pass on our genes: The scientific view, dependent on the logical genetic processes of evolution and natural selection. Unshakeable in purpose and meaning to all those with a dash of common sense, surely? So I’d like to think. Yet science by its very essence deals with solid fact. I’ve never found the human brain to be particularly willingly receptive to stone cold factual data, especially when it comes to the matter of ourselves. Looking in the mirror on a morning, how unpleasant would it be to have a short, balding mathematician (let’s call him Raymond) calmly instruct you in the elementary facts and figures that govern your physical being. You are too ugly by far. Your present diet will see you in your grave in approximately forty-one years. Your nostril hairs are becoming too long and spindly to make you a possible mating partner. Ecetera. And, of course, when we come to something as all encompassing and sweepingly epic as that very bloody point of it all, it becomes surprisingly difficult to accept such a thing and move on. So are homosexuals fundamentally useless? Do they have nothing to offer? Lesbians are permitted, provided they artificially inseminate themselves with the seed of a man they find physically and romantically loathsome. Yes, that’s acceptable! Just as acceptable as it is for a gay man to thrust the intimate privacy of his genitals into the very thing in the world he is most anxious to avoid. What about people unable to form successful relationships, no matter how hard they try for each and every day of their lovelorn lifetimes? And those who are sterile and infertile? They may as well be shot at birth, faced with the Nazi truth that they are without biological purpose. And doesn’t it also hold true that a woman into her fifties has been rendered redundant and without purpose in life? Whilst a man of a hundred years can carry on happily pumping semen until his death day, safe and secure in his unshakeable purpose. Darwin can be pitilessly cruel at times. And with the world’s current grievous overpopulation, is it right to strip people of purpose to balance out breakthroughs in medicine and health care? We don’t seem to have a choice, as the Chinese have demonstrated capably! Sorry to go off on a long, trailing rant there (I could go on much longer), but I have a good reason – this is the one excuse behind existence that can boast of being firmly grounded in reality. Now that that’s been rendered just a little more redundant I can shake hands and move on.
- We are here for our own happiness and pleasure, to enjoy all that life has to offer: Self-indulgence. Or, to be more precise: me-me-me-me-me-me-me. Few existences are less satisfying (or involve less forward planning) in the long run. For, example, say I enjoy alcohol to an above average degree. Out I go to stock up on all those precious units with their life-giving properties. The result is short-term satisfaction offset by cancer of the liver, severe brain damage, impregnating a bunch of equally stupid women with my equally drunken heirs and dying cold, young and unwanted in a hospice. One has to be an extremely canny businessman to extract as much pleasure from life as is humanely possible, walking on all the greens whilst avoiding the sand-traps. The alcohol diatribe is an extreme case, I’ll grant you, but no matter what we do to make ourselves happy, we seem to hurt somebody else in the process. If we all try to be popular… well, we can’t, can we? People will inevitably feel left out. If we buy ourselves something pleasant as a gift (a fashionable pair of shoes, for instance, not that I consider that remotely pleasant) we merely provide more work for seven-year-old factory workers trapped in the third world. It’s a dog-eat-dog-eat-dog world out there. If we all dedicated our lives to the pursuit of personal pleasure, society would quickly fall apart. We’d all be grappling against each other in a mighty power struggle, people running around naked, punching and slapping and raping and murdering each other, not giving the slightest thought to anybody else’s needs. But that does seem to be the way the wind is blowing these days…
- We are here to obey the laws of our creator God, securing a place in Heaven: The most widely held, but also the most controversial. Swinging wide open the gates of religion brings to mind all forms of doubts, queries and blinding mental turmoils. Did I pick the right religion? Why is there suffering in the world? Is everything a sin? I have doubts about the truth of the Bible… am I off to Hell now? I haven’t sold off all my possessions like Jesus told me to… am I off to Hell now? Is God real? If God’s not real, what happens when I die? Do I just end? And on and on and on and on. People are usually so emotionally and mentally floored by these burning questions that they emerge as Agnostics (or even Atheists), preferring to blot religion out of their lives rather than suffer further heartache. But these questions persist, and I think they bear thorough examination. Hence the next blog entry.
- We are here to learn more about why we are here: Which I presume is why you’ve read this far to begin with. Adopting this policy assumes that we cannot ever establish a solid, firmly grounded vision of why we truly are here. We can merely scrape a little more dirt off the diamond of existence, lay another brick upon the great edifice of the sum total of human knowledge. Because won’t life dissolve into meaning absolutely nothing if that noble goal does come to fruition? To pass into that great enlightenment? Yes, no, I’m not sure… I don’t have the sufficient impetus or energy to find out. To me, such an interest should remain just that, and not mutate into an all-consuming obsession. An obsession that may well prove unattainable anyway. Sorry, Buddha. Our purpose in life should be a springboard for more exciting activities, not one massive, soulless contradiction.
- We are here to experience love: That’s all well and good, I suppose, although it is something of a mathematical improbability that we will all receive love in its purest and most perfect form. The more reckless we become in love, the less and less likely it seems that we will accomplish its procurement. We can’t seek it out, we can’t lie or cajole or seduce to achieve it – we must simply let it be. Oh, how glorious. Another life quest that’s dependant on doing nothing whatsoever. That just doesn’t really satisfy me. Love won’t last forever either, despite what pop culture likes to tell you. The only possibility of completely perfect love is that experienced between a parent and a child, which tends to be bombarded into submission by exterior factors anyway. But the grand majority of people are on the search for perfect romantic love, which doesn’t exist. A rare case to the contrary (can’t think of any myself…) is the exception that proves the rule.
- We are here to serve and assist others: The opposite to the pleasure argument. Now, it’s all well and good in theory, but has anybody reading this ever put it to the test? Oh, horror of horrors is it boring. Maybe I’m just self-obsessed and deprived of human feeling, but I can only help feed the starving children of Africa for so long. Satisfaction and pride soon enough decompose into mild resentment and weariness. Mother Theresa deserves to be enshrined among the most legendary Olympic athletes for sheer athletic stamina in the face of something so mind-numbingly dull. One must create a personal gain for it to remain worthwhile. The Puritans never found their suffocating lifestyles a chore because their unwavering faith assured them a place in Heaven. At the end of the day, all deeds (good or bad) can be traced back to something selfish. There is something we want to get out of it, or we wouldn’t bother. No, sir. Religion remains the primary motive behind this practice, and, most of the time, this philosophy can be linked back to that point.
- We are here for no reason whatsoever: I find this difficult to believe on any level. To take this to heart, a person must revoke all of the above philosophies in their lifestyle. This is poorly thought out and fundamentally lazy. Whether people despise being pigeonholed or not, you can’t physically exist unless you can be described in no uncertain terms. Nihilism is a good word. So people who subscribe to this line of "thought" might as well pick up the pistol, mount the scaffold, jump off a skyscraper and otherwise drown themselves into instant oblivion. This philosophy is self-defeating and not really a philosophy at all.
In conclusion, I think that the first three options (science, self, spirituality) are the main instigators behind how we live our lives. I will investigate these in much greater detail over future blog entries, hoping to draw a neat little circle around the best one for me. Until next time…
posted by James C. Swanton at 11:04 PM
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