The goal of philosophy is to dissect truth by means of logic, in hopes of finding answers to questions of varying scale. The most prominent, and somewhat avoided topic however, is the purpose of life. In fact, all philosophical questions and answers posed by the great thinkers of the world try, perhaps subconsciously, to shed light on the purpose of life. In hopes of understanding the purpose of life, I am writing this article with a focus on some topics that I feel may be closely linked to finding the purpose of life. This essay will chain together most of my main ideas, and as such is a good summary of my thoughts throughout the years, coupled with my analysis of other philosophies regarding my topic.
To find the purpose of life, I first ask myself the question – What is a purpose? Purpose is a reason, and implies the presence of will- a willful reason. For an action to have a purpose, the entity choosing, and in turn performing the action, must have will. The entity must believe that the action will cause some particular, desired effect. Once there is a goal behind a choice, purpose is born. Now, to say that life has a purpose is to say that life causes, or is meant to cause, a desired effect. So then, what entity gives purpose to life? At first, it may be tempting to conclude that the one who is living creates a purpose to his/her life by setting goals. These goals can be seen as a purpose. On the other hand however, it is fair to say that some “living” creatures, such as tapeworms or flowers, lack the capacity to set conscious goals in life. Furthermore, one can argue that because the living entity did not spawn itself into existence, it has no way of knowing its own original cause. In other words, the entity which creates life is the only entity that knows why it created life, because it is the only entity which possessed will at the time of its action (creating life). The created living beings may in turn, given enough mental capacity, create goals for themselves. However, these goals are only a side effect of life, but not necessarily the purpose of it. In one exception however, the goals set by the living beings may coincide with the purpose of their existence, as willed by the creator. In other words, the creator may have willed for the living beings to set goals for themselves. In this case, the living beings are fulfilling their purpose without even knowing it. But to know for certain the reason for which it was created, the living being has to ask its creator for the reason, because the creator is the only one that intentionally created the being (and remember, intent must be present for an action to have purpose). So far we’ve talked about the meaning of purpose, and concluded that only the creator of life can know the purpose of it. According to this logic, I have to ask my creator why he/she created me.
If the above paragraph sounded a lot like religion, it’s no surprise. Religion has been using the same logic as me to conclude that the purpose of life is to follow the will of god (the creator). In fact, some religions, such as Catholicism, have sacred texts in which God explains how to live according to his will. The most prevalent of these texts include the Bible, the Torah, and the Qur’an. My idea can be looked at from a different approach though, one that does not rely on gods will to dictate the purpose of life. Instead, one could ask his/her mother for the reason why she created a child. The most logical answer one would get is that the mother simply wanted a child. So for instance, if my mother created me because she wanted a child, then I have automatically fulfilled the purpose of my life. In fact, my very existence is the only purpose to my life. However, what if my mother created me in hopes of having a child that is 10 feet tall, or in hopes of having child of the opposite sex? In either of these two cases, I have automatically failed the purpose of my life. However, there is a MAJOR flaw in logic involved with simply asking my direct creator (mother), for the purpose of my life. This is because by asking my mother, I am forgetting about my father, who also took part in my creation. This is because there is no “One Creator” or “One Cause for anything. We live in a world where there isn’t only one reason for anything- a world of circumstances. I was created as a result of a series of circumstances, not just one. If I was born as a result of many circumstances, then which one of them is really responsible for my existence? If there is no one reason for my existence, is there a way to take into consideration all of the reasons for my existence? Initially, I’d say no, there is no way to inquire ALL the reasons for my existence or to know WHY I was born, and therefore impossible to find the purpose of my life. However, there are a number of reasons that compel me to think otherwise; primarily, my belief in a unified consciousness, or god. The next set of paragraphs will be dedicated to explaining how it may be possible to harness all the knowledge in the world to find the purpose of all things, including life.
Consciousness is a thing. There is only one of it. We say “I want a book”, but we do not say “I want a consciousness”. The latter phrase seems wrong because we know that consciousness is one thing, there aren’t many of it. There is a possibility that our individual selves are only temporary subjective experiences. I believe that consciousness is one single thing that is naturally distributed into all matter. However, some compositions of matter, such as brains, possess more consciousness than others, due to phenomenon yet unknown to science. In other words, there is something about matter that attracts consciousness to it. Due to their complexity, some clusters of matter can do this better than others. To better understand my view, consider the following analogy. In some new videogames, the player is thrown into a fictional world that serves as a home for many video game characters that are controlled by the computer’s artificial intelligence. In these games, the player is free to do whatever he/she wants, and the world needs to react in a realistic fashion. Imagine a digital city containing hundreds of characters; these characters have needs, such as food and sleep, and are able to go about their own business, react to environmental changes (namely those caused by the player), and seem aware and separate form one another. Although the game characters seem separate from each other, each and every one of them is controlled by one thing- The computer itself (more specifically the CPU). The processing power of the whole computer is what gives game characters their own artificial intelligence- it is simply distributed as needed into the characters. So in that sense, though the characters are all separate and have their own AI, they are all a part of the same thing! The computer is just separating its computational power temporarily, until the game is closed. Theoretically, because the AI of the characters belongs to the computer, the computer should be able to access all the information gathered by the characters, thus making the computer all knowing (in terms of the game world). Now think of the characters as real people in the “real” world, and consider the computer’s processor to be consciousness. In this view, it is very possible that god, the creator, is just an accumulation of all the knowledge, and experiences gained by every conscious thing in the world. Perhaps the “holy spirit” is all the free floating consciousness, and souls are chunks of the Holy Spirit that animate those who possess them.
By being close to each other, humans are able to reach heightened levels of consciousness. For example, when I am with my friends, or at a party, or at school, I feel much more conscious than when I am walking home alone. Another example of collaborative consciousness between humans is the ascension of fear. Oftentimes, humans are simply scared of what they don’t know, even if there is no logical reason to be scared. For example, I feel much better walking into a dark room with my younger sister, than doing so by myself, even though my sister obviously cannot defend me against any danger. In fact, having my sister around in the face of a real danger would only make things more difficult, as I would have to protect her as well as myself. Being with another person however, no matter whom, keeps people in check, and away from insanity. Why do you think people scared of the dark? It is because darkness attacks not simply the person, but the sanity of the person. Why are ghosts scarier than tigers? Because when a person sees a tiger, his/her reactions are almost purely governed by the stimulus responses- fight or flight. In the face of a real danger, there isn’t much room in the mind for fear- only survival instincts kick in. However, a surreal event such as seeing a ghost will not trigger stimulus response, because the mind cannot recognize whether the danger is real or not. The mind is left with fear. Once there is another person to confirm or dismiss the danger, fear declines. This is why people need each other in dark places and times.
We are all the same consciousness. With that in mind, it may be possible to find the purpose of my life by gaining a higher level of consciousness. Because I don’t think that anything can truly die, I assume that upon death, each and every one of us rejoins the “Holy Spirit” (free floating consciousness), and becomes all knowing. However, the idea that the purpose of life is in fact its opposite (death), is not appealing or logical. The Holographic Universe is a somewhat popular theory started by David Bohm and Karl Pribram and later expanded by Michael Talbot. It describes the universe to be somewhat holographic. If you take a holographic film with a hologram of a tree encoded in it, the tree is not visible to the naked eye. Instead, a laser must be shone through the holographic film, which results in the projection of a three dimensional picture of a tree on the other side of the film. The interesting property of the holographic film is that if it were cut in half, each half of the film would still produce a full tree if a laser were to be shone through it. If the hologram were to be cut in 15 pieces, then 15 full trees would be produced from each 1/15th section of the hologram. This is obviously a very unusual characteristic; this means that each section of the hologram contains the entirety of the image, rather than parts of the image.
If the universe is anything like the holographic film, this would imply that like in the holographic film, the entire universe is contained in every tiny part of itself. This view of the universe can easily explain supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, while most other views of the universe simply ignore supernatural phenomena altogether. For instance, conventional physics cannot yet explain instantaneous signaling between subatomic particles or people. It is shown that in some instances, if one particle is affected, it will always affect another particle instantaneously. However, it is impossible to send instantaneous signals, since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Another such phenomenon is when a twin is hurt and the other twin feels the pain. Instead of viewing this as an instantaneous signal however, the phenomenon can be viewed in another way. If the entire universe, including knowledge, is contained in every part of the universe, then it is no longer difficult to suppose a situation in which people can access information stored in each other’s heads, with no need to signal each other, because all knowledge of the world is actually inside each of our heads.
In further support for the holographic model of the universe, scientists and doctors have known for a long time that different bits of information are not stored in separate parts of the brain. A famous experiment was conducted in which rats were taught how to run a maze, after which portions of the rats brains were removed. The scientists thought that if the rat could no longer remember how to run the maze, they would have discovered which part of the rat’s brain the memory of how to run the maze was stored in. However, they found that even upon disassembling the entire brain, the rat’s memory of how to run the maze could not be removed. This experiment supports the holographic Universe model because it shows that every part of the rat’s brain contained the whole memory of how to run the maze. So if the holographic model of the universe is true, and people are all the same consciousness, what implications does this have to finding the purpose of life? I discussed before that only the creator knows why it is the he created. However, I concluded that there is no single creator, and that more than one circumstance is responsible for all things (including life). If there is a connection between all of the consciousness in the world (as exemplified by the video game analogy, the ascension of fear, and the Hologram theory), then all the will (or “circumstances”) that caused my life is actually contained within me, so I do not have to inquire outside sources for an answer. Therefore, by “praying to god” (seeking a heightened consciousness) one is actually looking within him/her self to find the purpose of life. I do honestly believe that finding the purpose of life is very possible, if not inevitable for me.
Now, I would like to point out that the purpose for the existence of a living being may or may not appeal to the living being. For example, chickens in a farm are raised only for their meat and eggs. By dying and giving away their meat and eggs, the chickens are fulfilling their purpose. However, who is to say that the will of the creator is supreme to the will of the living being? Why do we even look to inquire the will of our creator to govern our lives? Perhaps people are scared that if they do not fulfill their purpose, they will be punished, or discarded (hell?). So then if our “purpose” does not matter, by what guidelines should we live our lives? I took a different approach on my second attempt to unearth the purpose of life. I looked at trees. Now trees, if left unharmed, can live for a very long time. But what exactly causes a tree to die? Surprisingly, the primary factor to a trees death is its own growth. Trees, like humans, have necessities for life; nutrients from soil, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. Only in the presence of all of these requirements can the tree begin the process of photosynthesis, which is the very process that keeps trees and other plants, alive. When a tree grows, it requires more and more nutrients, water, and sunlight to support itself. Unlike humans who can shrink (lose weight) in times of low energy consumption, trees cannot reverse their growth. Normally, trees die when the available amount of water and nutrients is not adequate for the size of the tree. Theoretically, if a tree were to stay small, it would be able to live for a much, much longer amount of time, as smaller trees deplete the nutrients in their soil at a much slower rate. Now don’t get me wrong, in some cases it may help to have a stronger overall structure, to defend against nature (eg. wind). But in general, smaller trees can live longer. So why then why do trees grow despite the ill effects of growth to survival? This tree analogy is a good way of looking at how people should lead their lives. In short, live as big as possible, and fill life with pleasure. In the end, it matters not how long we live. For example, a person could live for three-hundred years but be kept in a closet his entire life. This tells me that time is not an accurate measure of accomplishment.
The last point I’d like to make is that not everything MUST have purpose. In fact, if there was a purpose to everything (including life), then the final goal would never be reached. For example, if the purpose of complex molecular systems is to produce life, one can ask- what is the purpose of life then? If there is a purpose to life, one can simply ask what the purpose of the next purpose is. In other words, an alternate way of looking at life is that it is the final goal. The purpose of our consciousness, our brain and our bodies, is to create life. Therefore, one does not need to ask what the purpose of life is; we’ve already reached the purpose. I find this interesting because most people today seem to believe that EVERYTHING has a purpose. This is because people mix up the words reason a purpose. Sure, there is a reason for everything, as all events are caused by previous events/circumstances. However, reason is not the same as purpose. Something can have a reason to exist, but no purpose. For example, a chunk of wood lying on the ground may exist because it fell from a tree which was struck by lightning. However, there is not PURPOSE for its existence. As I stated before, there is a flaw in logic in thinking that everything has a purpose, seeing as no “final” purpose would ever be achieved this way. Finally, the “purpose” of life (or the best thing to do with it, since it does not have a real purpose) is simply to LIVE!
-Hayk Amirbekyan
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