Meaning and Value of Life
The discussion about the meaning of life is extremely confusing because the word ‘meaning’ might mean ‘purpose’, ‘significance’, ‘usefulness’, ‘relevance’, ‘value’ or something similar. When we discuss the meaning of life, we must also clarify whether we talk about the meaning that an individual feels or if we talk about the meaning that an outsider gives to a person’s life independent of what this person feels and aspires. Parents, for example, might think that the meaning of their son’s life is to take over the father’s business or kingdom but the son feels a calling to become a ballet dancer, rapper or monk. We should also consider in our discussions what the meaning of mankind as a whole could be. If the existence of mankind has a meaning, we might as individuals share it or live in conflict with it. We don’t live alone. The meaning of an individual life could be to contribute as an obedient member to the purpose and wellbeing of society similar to every cell in a human body that contributes obediently to the life of a person. In a scientific view, life develops in a biological process by which nature manifests itself and assures its own existence and survival. An individual life is part of nature’s manifestation. Nature needs for its existence the lives of living beings. There will be no nature without living beings. Catering to this need is in nature’s view the main meaning of an individual life. Procreation is the purpose that Mother Nature has in mind for individuals. Once we have created offspring this purpose is achieved and no other purpose or meaning is left except to be a tiny biological particle of nature until we pass away. We might also include in our considerations the possibility that the creator of life, for example God, had his own ideas about the meaning of his creation. This assumes that God has intentions and feelings similar to humans which ‘God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). If this is the case, God might not have acted altruistically but might have created humans for no other purpose than for his own glory and entertainment. This could be from God’s perspective the meaning of his children’s lives. Give him pleasure. Please him! Human beings with philosophical inclinations don’t want to leave it at biology. They have the unstoppable urge to discover higher meanings behind and above biological processes. Since science, rationality and logic do not help to find higher meanings, people enter the worlds of religions, philosophy and speculations, in which even the sky does not form a limit. As a result, we find in the history of mankind a myriad of widely diverging publications about the meaning of life. There is no opinion that has not been voiced somewhere at some time. There is not the slightest consensus. An essay about the meaning of life in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists in its bibliography 172 titles, including works of Camus. Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and other philosophical heavyweights. Studying all these books takes a lifetime without really adding meaning to life. Many thinkers declare that the meaning of life is to do what they think people must do. Churches say that the meaning of life is to love and to praise and please their respective Gods and to be a good member of the church. The meaning of life is for them to live a life that God and your church wants you to live. Governments might say that the meaning of life is to love and to defend the fatherland and to be a good citizen. Parents often say that the meaning of life is to work hard, to gain a spot in the sun and to become a shiny member of the glorious family. Yet others claim that life is absurd because it has no meaning. They either think that suicide is the right answer or they recommend to seek pleasure as long as life lasts. Life is not absurd but seeking its meaning is absurd. One opinion that dominates the discussions is that human beings are the most important and most valuable things on earth and in the cosmos. This common illusion is the starting point for the search of a higher meaning. Christians base this opinion on the above-mentioned biblical statement in Genesis. But non-Christians don’t need the Bible to claim that humans have the highest importance and value in the world and in the cosmos. They say this because they know it, they feel it. However, we should look at the incredibly huge size of the cosmos and its many billion years of its existence. Astronomers have discovered the quasar that they called J0529-4351. It is the brightest known object in the universe. Its light, they say, has taken more than 12 billion years to reach our earth. The black hole that powers the quasar has allegedly a mass about 17 billion times the mass of our sun and is growing by the equivalent of one sun per day. Astronomers have baptized ‘Porphyrion’ a supermassive black hole that they have recently discovered. It is 7.5 billion light-years away from our planet and has a length of 23 million light-years. The jets of energy that Porphyrion ejects while sucking in astronomical amounts of stellar masses, travel at almost the speed of light. They have a power output of the equivalent of trillions of suns. In comparison, the life of a human being and actually the life of the entire mankind and of our planet are extremely miniscule and short-lived. In a cosmic view, the ephemeral and microscopic existence of human beings practically boils down to non-existence. These facts should instill some modesty. The largest sandy beach on our earth is Praia do Cassino, which stretches over 241 kms along the coast of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. We should have the modesty to acknowledge that one human life is as important for nature as one grain of sand that makes up this beach. On the other hand, we can proudly say that the beach needs us. The beach cannot exist without sand. If we search for the meaning of life, we should not seek for a general or absolute meaning that every individual life shares with the lives of other people. Everybody is free to decide what the meaning is. Everybody can freely change the decision whenever circumstances or preferences change. The meaning of life, in my opinion, is to manifest oneself and to exist as part of nature and in the specific environment in which we live. Life is the manifestation of oneself in this world. The task is to develop the features and the potential that nature has given each of us with different strengths and to develop this into a life story. Consciousness is one element of our natural features that we received by birth. Animals also have consciousness to judge by behavior that animals show in response to certain events. Scientists use functional MRI (fMRI) to make impulses in the brain visible. These impulses indicate that animals are to a certain extent as conscious as human beings. Education adds human language. This distinguishes us from animals. I like to argue that someone manifests his life not only with conscious awareness of himself and of his circumstances. Animals do the same. In addition, a person manifests himself as a human being with his language if he uses his language not only as a tool for daily communications but also as a tool to put his consciousness into an intellectual shape. I don’t want to impose this opinion on others. Everybody is free to have other ideas of life’s meaning. Meaning of life is a personal affair, not a judgment by outsiders like theologians, philosophers or governments.