THOUGHT: WHAT DO WE LIVE FOR?

What do you believe in? What compels you to wake each morning and retire each night? I just don’t get it. Life is supposed to be survival and procreation, but we’ve stripped ourselves of that. Why is it that [you] participate in demise—by contributing to a system that only mocks our very being? Life isn’t capitalism. And it isn’t survival. And it isn’t procreation–[it is no longer what it should be]. Why should I work to earn powers and prestige and money? What for, for death, for distribution? I just don’t get it. I have to believe in something to convince myself that there is some sort of worth. But I can think of nothing. Bah, God! I am living to redeem myself and reach eternal life and heavenly bliss? Biology proves otherwise. We’ve stripped ourselves of biology. I cannot believe that we are living only to destroy ourselves, but that is what I see. So, what is it that you believe in? Why is it worth it? For love? Ok, after that? Happiness…I know it can’t be that. There is something more, and it’s not that thought of never finding it that bothers me, it’s that I have nothing to believe in. And if I have nothing to believe in, then my troubles are for what?

My response:

Your questions open a huge number of doors to explore. I mean, right off the bat, “What do you believe in?” is a huge question. For now, I’ll try to take the more methodical approach and go one by one. What do I believe in? God damn, that is a good question.

I think to answer this question I must look at my life and how I have ended up where I am now. The reason I start this way is that I think that there are two aspects of importance to my answer. First, there are principles and boundaries that I obey without thinking. Second, there are things that I aspire towards and consciously make decisions in light of. Well, I believe that there isn’t any reason for living. There are no reasons for any of this world that we so easily accept as real. Without a god, what meaning can be found in a world that appears to have been evolved from simpler worlds (i.e. evolution is real and well studied). This implies a faith in science over a faith in theism; and this is with good reason. If we have not observation, the scientific method, calculation, verification, testing, repeatability, modification, refinement, extrapolation, proof, failure, competition, all these things, then how can we rely on anything we see? Religion offers the answers without the stringent testing and evaluation. It doesn’t make sense. So without a god–no reason to believe in one–where is there meaning if not from within one’s self? Reason without a god means that we cannot derive reason for life from something external other than looking at what evolution seems to have led us as creatures to do. Evolution seems to have led Homo sapiens as a species, just as all the other species existing, to continue to exist. By that, the answer to the question, “Why am I here?” is to make it possible for someone else to be here and ask that question. For what do we have if not everything we perceive? What do I believe? Well, I believe that all we have is our emotions. These are things that are built in and we cannot deny their effects nor the force they put upon our happiness and will. Also, with these emotions a great many things are happening that we often don’t understand without a lot of study and guidance. These things result from a predisposition as a creature reacting to present day situations. When I feel like a strong monogamous relationship with a great woman is the only thing I really aspire toward as a life goal it is a response to biology and the psychology that I grew up with. I may be wrong about the interpretation of the psychology, but the effects are real and they mean everything to me. An important point is that these feelings don’t have to make sense. They are real to me. What do I believe? I am the universe. I don’t meant that I think I am the center of everything, nor do I mean that I want it that way. I mean that there is nothing real in my mind outside the interpretation my mind gives it and therefore the world I experience is a result of my thoughts, emotions, senses, and reasoning. It seems, then, that what is ultimately important is achieving a mental satisfaction. I say it this way because I believe that saying life is about maximizing happiness is incorrect. We define ourselves differently than just finding happiness. We define ourselves by success and triumph, our relationships with fellow men and women and the status we perceive they belong to. We all want to feel important as well as immortal. We all want to feel like we matter and we derive that from other people and how they treat us. We also want to feel like our mark on the world is real so we have pride in our products; whether that be our work or our family or our relationships with other people.

What does compel me to wake in the morning? Without thought, I get up and do the things I don’t think about; fulfill sexual desires, eat, find entertainment, more sleep, and somewhere in there I do some things that I have been, not only conditioned for but, convinced that I need to do in order to get many of the things that make me feel a little better. It’s almost like as human beings we are always on the edge of cliffs, fearing the fall, looking for extended hands to pull us away from the edge, but secretly wondering what the fall is like. I mean, we all fear death innately or explicitly, but it defines us; it tells us that some things are just not really worth very much to life. And if we are aware enough, we realize that nothing we can buy makes us feel like we are being pulled away from the cliff. Others…a big house, big car, big television, big ego, big religion; these things are disguised as things that keep you from falling off the great arrow of time, but really they are things to take advantage of the fact that people are afraid of falling. I wake up in the morning because I know that I don’t need all this bullshit and that there is something about life that I love more than anything else. I can’t put my finger on it. I know that life is utterly meaningless. I know that I don’t’ have a purpose, but I also know that there is a real world out there. There are people I care about and that care about me. I don’t explicitly tell myself that these people are why I get up in the morning, but that is exactly why I get up. I feel real as long as they acknowledge that I am real; and they get the same from me. I get up in the morning because I know that the world offers me anything I want and that I do have things I want that I can get. The tough question for everyone to ask themselves is what they want. That question isn’t so easily answered without definitions. It has taken a lot of years and mental struggle to get near this answer and I don’t think it can be had by merely hearing it. You have to live, struggle, think, and understand to begin to refine what is important and why. I know that people are important to me and I am pretty sure this is universal among human beings. Defining your relationship with mankind and the psychological issues that drive you is another question that must be answered. I have my own preliminary answers that seem to make sense, and those are the ones that help me make sense of how I feel and where I stand in the world.

You mention capitalism and that is important. Capitalism has large impacts on people. It sets out to define what is good, bad, desirable, meaningful, and what will make you feel better and worse. It does this without concern for what people really need or what is healthy, but to create better consumers and fulfill the end that capitalism is designed to maximize. People have to see the system for what it is and realize their own part in it. We all struggle to free ourselves from it and the more we understand it the more we can escape it. I think I have a pretty good understanding of it, but the allures of such technological and convenient products are inescapable in a modern society. But I see it. I know the mistake (I’ll just call it that) that has been made, but it is a much greater question again to ask what progress is and why or why not is the current state right or wrong. This all comes down to awareness. Understand as much as you can and you’ll be on your way to living a more sound life.

But you are always left with the skeptical eye. So what if you understand it all?! What the fuck am I supposed to do now? In one way I see the question, but in another I see a side effect causing it. There is a reason there is some angst and that must be addressed. Where are you from in terms of family and friends? I would bet that it has at least a little bit to do with asking the question about life being utterly meaningless. Anybody can ask the question, but to have a sort of disgust for life as only leading toward death in some wicked cycle where we all just create more life so that it too can die, that drive is from anger. I’ve felt it. I know it. And nothing can help you escape it because I think in an important way it is tied to the very emotions that you do not trust. I say, “Life is Pointless/Priceless” but the simple fact is that you are alive. Take that as a starting point and then ask why you are alive–and not in the “meaning of life” sense, but how your physical being came to be. Then ask what things you have control of and what things you care about. Ask why you care about them. But try to understand that there are things you care about that perhaps you might not have acknowledged as such. This journey, I think, is not really all that easy. Things reveal themselves without warning or pattern. My point is, I’ve felt like crap many times before. I’ve been depressed without reason and have done things as a result of it. Depression is beyond reason, just as a lot of happiness. Life is about the things that don’t need to make sense. To live a better life is to live without malicious influence and to live for life as much as possible while keeping that analytical eye ever so open. The future can be predicted with enough information, but don’t miss the present. The present is where life is.

Why do you need something to believe in? Loosely, you have to believe in something. It is like the mathematician has faith in science, even though at its very end lies the grandest of all questions that will never be answered. What drives the question in the first place? It implies value in belief. Belief is just a word for a mental disposition that people without enough information lean on. Belief is a comforting idea that says, “You can stop worrying about that part now. Just trust me.” Belief is just another way to satisfy the mind. I require more reason and logic than a lot of people. But still, there is some level of belief that I must retain for sanity. I know that solid objects act in certain ways–I believe this. But this belief is backed up with history–yet another belief, that history is real. What else have we got? Believe that you are real and that you feel real things. Believe all that seems obvious, but question everything–even the obvious. Learn what was stupid to believe and what things are harmful to other believers. Build a library of things that can safely be believed, and many of those entries will follow science. I think people–religious people, especially–don’t know how to handle uncertainty. I don’t understand the origin of the universe, but I don’t have to. I am satisfied with the answer, “I don’t know.”

I am reminded of the scene in Fight Club when Brad Pitt is burning Edward Norton’s hand with acid and is trying to get Ed to realize that his pain is right here, right now, and to embrace that which life has enabled him to experience.