“What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of
any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You
ask: Does it make any sense then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who
regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not
merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.” (p.11 Ideas) Albert Einstein
The Number 42, Einstein, Tolstoy, and the Meaning of Life
For every person, there is a unique meaning of life. Yet, when asked, “What is the meaning of life?” most would pause and search for the right words to express a proper answer. For Saint Theresa, life meant self-sacrifice in the service of other people. For a Christian it might well be righteousness. For a scientist, the meaning of life might well be achieving an understanding and knowledge of the universe. Einstein, as well as Carl Sagan spoke of the compelling pull of the “mystery” of the universe and life. For a hedonist the meaning of life might be in experiencing pleasure. But meaning is important in life, and it is the one thing most people want above all: some meaning in their life. There has to be some reason to get up in the morning and to go to work. There has to be some kind of meaning in the things that we do, and there has to be some kind of meaning in our relationships, whether it is for love or for hate. Without meaning life is empty and desolate. Meaning could well be said to be the essence of being and living.
I often ask people I meet or know, “What is the meaning of life to you?” Susan, a freind of mine gave me an astute answers. She said the meaning of life is "to connect." That would seem to make a lot of sense both psychologically and intellectually, especially in light of the importance of “others” in life, as well as the fact that many psychologists highlight that the meaning people do get is, in one sense or another, a form of “social meaning,” not to mention the Need to Belong. As Leo Tolstoy said, "The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people." The famous humanitarian Dr. Sweitzer, Einstein, not to mention Christ, Buddha, as well as Muhammed all emphasize the importance of "others" and compassion.
When I asked my son, “What is the meaning of life?” - he answered instantaneously, in the space of half a heartbeat, “42!”The fiction book, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is a classic work of literature. Sometimes a story can synthesize a question better than a long exposition. In the book, Aurthur Dent, a human who is the sole survivor of the Vogon attack on the planet earth, travels across the galaxy with three alien companions, Zaphod and Ford being from Betelgeuse Five, as well as Trillian. With an improbability of infinity minus one, these individuals come together and reach the most improbable planet in the universe, Magrathea. Magrathea, until its rediscovery by Dent and his companions, was believed to have been a myth. In legend, before the fall of the Galactic Empire, it manufactured luxury planets.
When, they reach the planet’s surface, Dent is met by Slartibartfast, a Magrathean revived by a computer after five million years. Slartibartfast explains the existence of Magrathea. Deep Thought had been a super-super-computer the size of a small city which was infinitely better than the immortal “Milliard Gargantubrain,” a computer which could count the number of atoms in a star in less than a millisecond. After being asked to solve the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, the computer informs the programmers that it will take seven and a half million years to solve the problem.
After seven and half million years, the computer is asked for the answer. The computer tells the Magratheans that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, is “42,” The descendants of the computer’s ancestral programmers, were quite disturbed by this answer. The computer responded to the irate crowd of scientists by stating “So, once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.” The story makes the point that scientifically, the meaning or meanings of life are somewhat arbitrary. I spoke with a biology PHD and her response to my question, as to the “meaning of life,” was that, scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as “purpose.” The Title of this blog-essay really should have been science has no implicit purpose, since in that a person always has goals of one sort or another means that a person has meaning in one sense or another. However, when it comes to "purpose" or a "higher or transcendent Meaning," science cannot measure or evaluate "purpose," and a higher or transcendental meaning is simply beyond the realm of science.
Lev Tolstoy, the brilliant Russian novelist and author of War and Peace, had a spiritual crisis shortly after writing that novel. He desperately needed to discover the true “meaning of life.” Being a highly rational individual and very intelligent he methodically studied all the social sciences and philosophy. “The problem facing speculative science is acknowledgement of the essence of life that lies beyond cause and effect.” Later in his book, Confessions, Tolstoy states that “rational knowledge does not provide the meaning of life, but excludes it…” (p.50 conf)
Einstein writes that it is “equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.” (p. 42, Ideas – my italics) And one could ‘assume’ that “meaning” is a determination of good and bad in, one sense or another. Konrad Lorenz, a prominent ethologist, suggests from his observations that from animal behavior and evolution it would seem that organisms, and life, as it were, have a built in, or innate, sense of good and bad.
Konrad Lorenz also suggests that “learning” may be built into the human mind and into the way that the human brain processes information. Lorenz attributes “learning” process as being a distinct drive and as a separate instinct as it were – which matches up with the prominent social psychologist Roy Baumeister’s argument that human beings have a powerful “drive to understand.” So, good and bad, as well as the “divine” might be built into human consciousness. It would seem likely, though in the human brain nonconscious and emotions work in tandem with the processes of the prefrontal cortex, that emotions, which the iconic neuroscientist Damasio argues play a pivotal role in decision making and judgment, together with drives and needs, would paly a vital role in shaping the “meaning of life.”
Each person is born into unique situations with a unique biological make-up, and so, has a different meaning for life and a unique understanding of the purpose of life (though most could be placed in categories). As Nietzsche writes, “the value of these values themselves must be called in question – and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed.” (p. 456 Nietzsche) In other words, meaning evolves in processes, and circumstances are as much a part of the equation as objective truth. So, in the unlikely chance that one could get a consensus on the “meaning of life,” it would most probably change and evolve in history as humanity develops and changes.
Any objective view of human history would demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that, through art, through religion, through spirituality, human beings have endeavored to express and shape meaning, almost obsessively in fact. In its simplest form, then, it would be rather self-evident, that human beings have a need to relate to the world-universe, and to give it meaning. So, my sense of it is that human beings do, actually have, what could be accurately termed a “Divine Instinct.”
Tolstoy observes, “Thus in addition to rational knowledge, which I had hitherto thought to be the only knowledge, I was inevitably led to acknowledge that there does exist another kind of knowledge – an irrational one – possessed by humanity as a whole: faith, which affords the possibility of living.” (Conf p. 53)
Lastly, I should mention that, in light of the fact that we can’t ‘speak or think’ of God except how we perceive and think’ of God, then God as consciousness would be a psychological as well as a theological and spiritual truth as well – as laid out in my blog-essay God is not God. The link is: https://www.spirittruthandmeaning.com/god-is-not-god-delusional-delusions
Footnotes
Viktor Frankl: http://www.viktor-frankl.com/
Viktor Frankl: http://www.viktorfrankl.org/
Dr. Harold Koenig: https://spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/index.php/harold-g-koenig-m-d
Dr. Harold Koenig: https://medicine.duke.edu/faculty/harold-g-koenig-m-d
Roy Baumeister: http://www.roybaumeister.com/
Roy Baumeister: https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/baumeisterr/baumeister.dp.php
Dr. Paul Wong: http://www.drpaulwong.com/
Dr. Paul Wong: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/paul-wong-biography/
Clifford Geertz: https://www.biography.com/people/clifford-geertz-9308224
Carl Jung: https://www.biography.com/people/carl-jung-9359134
Carl Jung: https://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/carl-jung-analytical-psychology
12 common Archetypes: http://www.soulcraft.co/essays/the_12_common_archetypes.html
Emile Durkheim: http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/
Emile Durkheim: http://faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Durkheim/index2.htm
William James: https://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726
William James: https://study.com/academy/lesson/william-james-psychology-theories-lesson-quiz.html
Keith Karren – Body, Mind, Spirit:
http://pgrpdf.abhappybooks.com/mind-body-health-keith-j-karren-ph-d-pdf-5716009.pdf
E O Wilson Biodiversity: https://eowilsonfoundation.org/
E O Wilson - PBS on Ants: http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/
Anthropologist Malinowski: http://anthrotheory.wikia.com/wiki/Bronislaw_
MalinowskiSocial Anthropology - Malinowski: http://scihi.org/bronislaw-malinowski-social-anthropology/
St. Augustine (Catholic source): https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=418
St. Augustine: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine