Tome of Wisdom

Originally written March 6, 2006
To properly answer the question of the meaning of life, one must begin with life itself. What is life, and what does it mean for life to have a meaning?

When we speak of “life,” we are referring to things that have experiences, not to machines or to other inanimate objects. Inanimate objects can have a purpose, if they were created. But if they have no conscious experiences, they cannot be said to be living in the sense we are interested in. There can be no meaning for an object that cannot experience or comprehend the meaning.

So, we may ask: what is the meaning of life for a cat, or a frog, or an insect, or a bacterium? Presumably, all these different species of life experience the world in vastly different ways. A bacterium might be able to sense light. An insect can see the world. A frog can feel wet or dry, hungry, thirsty, pain, fear. A cat, and any other mammal, can probably see and hear many of the same things we can.

What is the meaning of life for all these different types of animals? On one level, life is purposeless and undirected, since at the lowest level all animals are collections of particles following set physical laws. But in another, very different sense, animals direct their own destiny. Animals have feelings and experiences, and respond to the world accordingly.

For example, a frog feels hunger and in response eats flies. The experience of hunger is unpleasant; the sensation of fullness pleasant. The frog feels dry and in response looks for water or mud. Even the lowly bacteria or jellyfish, while it may not have feelings or vivid experiences, does respond to the world. It is uncertain if such life forms respond in a set, determined way, like a machine, or respond the way we do, by having unpleasant experiences and taking action to have a more pleasant experience. It is likely that many lower life forms respond like a machine. But it is also likely that many more life forms than we acknowledge respond to the world in much the same way we do, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. For animals that respond this way, much or all of their existence consists of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. So, this is part or all of the meaning of life for certain animals.

Of course, the question we are interested in is: what is the meaning of life for humans? Insofar as we are like the rest of the animals, we are motivated by pleasure and pain. But we are interested insofar as humans are different from other animals. However, humans are more similar to the rest of the animal kingdom than a lot of us like to acknowledge. Many animals have emotions such as fear, anger, affection, and boredom. A fair number of animals are intelligent enough to learn from experience, communicate with each other, and use tools. Humans are not alone in being curious about the world. So much of what we will say about humans in the following discussion applies to other animals as well. But let us suppose, at a bare minimum, that humans are all these things, but on a higher level on the scale of complexity.

It is clear that many of the mechanisms for pleasure and pain exist because they are useful in promoting an animal’s survival. Fire causes pain because fire damages the animal. Food satisfies hunger because it nourishes the animal. Sex feels good because it leads to propagating the species. So there are many kinds of pleasure and pain that have no intrinsic purpose other than as methods for helping us survive. However, this does not prevent such experiences from having a deeper meaning, a meaning which is unique to the person experiencing it. Humans are notorious for doing things and thinking things that have nothing to do with survival, or are even detrimental to survival. This is because humans rarely think about survival when seeking pleasure and pain. They are thinking about what kind of meaning they can get from the experience. Humans don’t have sex in order to propagate the species; they have sex because it feels good and because they want to be closer to their partner. Humans don’t eat merely for nourishment, but to experience new tastes and smells as well. The same is probably true of many animals.

However, it would be faulty to suppose that humans only seek pleasure and avoid pain at all times. We toil away at our labors, and they are fulfilling, but they are not always enjoyable. Furthermore, it is a known human tendency to fight for dearly held beliefs, or for one’s country. Fighting is rarely a pleasurable thing. There is also altruism, for example mothers dying to save their children. All these things have one thing in common: they are done not because they are pleasurable, but because the person is thinking about the meaning of their actions.

So, such things cannot be explained as merely a seeking after pleasure, or as mere survival. Rather, we must turn to something else to explain it: meaningfulness. The meaning of life for humans is simply to seek meaningful experiences, to do meaningful things. When looked at this way, human behavior begins to make sense. But what kinds of experiences are meaningful? Humans enjoy each other’s company. Humans have an innate curiosity about many things, a curiosity which they go to great lengths to satisfy. Humans like to create, like to go for glory and immortality.

But such statements about what is meaningful are overgeneralizations. Any species has much variation within it, and humans are no different. There will be much variation within any human population. Innate abilities vary, emotional responses vary, and life experiences vary. Humans are also very flexible, and thus can adapt to many different lifestyles. This is why it is faulty to impose any such statement upon all of humanity.

Because of human variation, everyone has slightly different ideas on what is meaningful, which is why there are so many conflicting lifestyles in the world. When these ideas become too different, people get into heated discussions, or even turn to violence. Such beliefs tend to be held very deeply and dearly, which makes agreement or compromise difficult.

However, humanity does have its limits, and we can make statements that fall within these limits as long as we acknowledge that they don’t necessarily apply to everyone. Just as less complex animals have a finite set of behaviors and motivations, humans also have a finite set. Humans are more limited than other animals in some ways, but in other ways are much more complex and thus have a much wider range of possible variation.

To gain some perspective on all this, it is useful to go back and think about what it means for something to be meaningful. A precise definition for such a word is elusive. However, this much can be said: once one has had a meaningful experience, they view it as having been important. If we seek meaningful experiences, we are doing what is important to us. This is true whether somebody chooses to do good or evil, right or wrong, pleasurable or painful. If the only important thing in your life is to make money, you will pursue money above all other things, stepping on anyone in your way. If your friends are important to you, you will try to please them. If personal integrity is important to you, you will seek to do what you think is right in all things. In all these things, meaning is the primary motivator, not pain or pleasure or survival. And that which is meaningful for you is the same as that which is important to you.

However, don’t some lifestyles have more meaning than others? In other words, aren’t some priorities more meaningful than others? Take one man, who works at a factory his entire life, tightening the same bolts every day, and comes home day after day, eats, and goes to bed. Take another man, who works hard to educate himself and to build virtuous habits, who makes many friends and teaches and learns from them, who goes out and has many experiences all over the world. Surely the second man has lived a more meaningful life than the first, since he has more meaningful priorities and he acts on them?

This brings back the thorny question: are there goals which all humans should aspire to? Or are we all so different that we must simply follow are own priorities? It’s possible that both statements are true. When we create something new, we are adding meaning to the world. This is why it would be terrible if we were all exactly the same. But on the other hand, humans are not so different in some things, such as commonsense rules about fairness and justice. There is much that humans can agree on, as science amply demonstrates. So where is the balancing point between these two facets of life? Once one has found meaning for oneself, where do others fit in?

Observe how people have answered this question throughout history. Observe the great variety of competing religions, philosophies, and ideologies in the world, which have grown up over thousands of years of thought and practice. They are all addressing the question of the meaning of life, directly or indirectly.

Since these competing ideologies conflict, they can’t all be correct about the meaning of life. But as long as an ideology is meaningful to somebody, it does contain a kernel of truth, however small or insignificant. If the purpose of human life is to seek meaning, then what better way than to find out what is meaningful to everyone else around you? If one were always alone, stuck with one’s own thoughts, this would be a limited and unfulfilling existence indeed. But once other people enter the picture, this opens up a whole world of new ideas and experiences.

Even evil or unpleasant experiences are meaningful when they teach. Some ideas and experiences are meaningless and senselessly evil. But the only way to avoid bad ideas and experiences is to avoid all contact with other people, which would also mean avoiding all the potentially meaningful experiences. So, the overall effect of interacting with others is a net increase in meaningful ideas and experiences.

So what does this mean for our lives? It means that, regardless of how satisfied we are, we should continually be seeking for new meaning. If we seek for the meaning of life, we thereby gain meaning.

The answers we seek about the meaning of life seem to be subject to a sort of evolutionary process. In any evolutionary process, there is variation in a population, and that variation which is most able to propagate itself is most likely to survive over time. In the realm of ideas, those ideas which appeal to the most people are most likely to survive, since they are most likely to have a lot of believers and to be propagated and enforced by their believers. Of course, the history of human ideas makes it clear that the most popular idea is not necessarily the correct one, and some pretty foolish ideas have been propagated over centuries or even millennia. This is one reason why it is so difficult to figure out the meaning of life. People are enamored with beautiful-sounding ideas, but do not think enough about their truth.

Looking at how humans use science, we see that the most useful ideas are also more likely to survive. Correct ideas about the world lead to won battles, to machines that work, to cured diseases. Mathematical and scientific ideas are therefore very useful and more likely to survive. It may not be possible to make verifiably correct statements about the meaning of life, due to the uncertain nature of the evidence. But we can perhaps try to maximize the usefulness of our ideas. If we wish to live meaningful lives, we should seek ideas and experiences which maximize meaning, not those which are the most popular or which fit into a particular ideological framework. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or pleasing an idea is if one cannot reach the intended goal with it. The only ideas and experiences which deserve to last throughout humanity’s existence are the ones which maximize the meaningfulness of life, and minimize the senselessness and evil.

Humans are like all other animals, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But they also seek meaning. One can gain the most meaning from life by doing what one feels is important, and also by being open to the ideas and experiences of others. There is a great variety of human experience, so not everyone agrees on what is meaningful. But taking all this variation together, we might be able to glean some stable, useful answers from it about the meaning of life.