Why We Came and What We Do

The lockdowns and social distancing over the past many months, compliments of the COVID-19 pandemic and government edict, have provided humankind with ample opportunities for self-reflection and periods of “what’s-it-all-about-Alfie” ruminations. Kind of like, why are we here and what’s the point of it all when a microscopic “bug” can bring all purposive activity to a standstill? It certainly sent me to the book shelves and my computer, dusting off old copies of my college philosophy textbooks and surfing the internet for theological postings. And that led to some far-ranging speculation.

I revisited David Hume’s 1779 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in which his speaker Demea asserts to his fellow debaters Philo and Cleanthes:

The whole Earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want stimulate the strong and courageous; fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent; weakness, impotence, distress attend each stage of that life, and it is, at last, finished in agony and horror.

To which Philo responds:

This very society by which we surmount … wild beasts , our natural enemies, what new enemies does it not raise to us? What woe and misery does it not occasion? Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud—by these they mutually torment each other, and they would soon dissolve that society which they had formed were it not for the dread of still greater ills which must attend their separation.

Well, if that was the 18th century view, it would seem to me, judging by the context of the present times, things have only gotten worse! The 19th and 20th centuries were one long series of ghastly, merciless warfare. And the 21st has begun with the vast suffering on a global scale appearing only to escalate. So where might one turn for some counter assessment, or at least a rational explanation offered in a more positive light?

I remembered C. S. Lewis aspired to make the case for a just and loving God’s existence in spite of His earthly creation’s prevalence of misery in the book The Problem of Pain, so I retrieved the slim volume and began thumbing the pages. For Lewis, God’s attributes of omniscience, omnibenevolence and omnipotence pose no contradiction with the suffering experienced by humanity. One might say he sees pain as God’s “guardrails” to shepherd us in maintaining the straight path of God’s way. One of the best known quotes from the work declares, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Furthermore, Lewis sees pain as one of the means of refining our human character. And that reminded me of Mother Teresa and Catholic doctrine—that suffering purifies and brings wisdom to the soul of the sufferer.

Well, casting the inquiry more deeply into that spiritual and religious framework, the books Life after Life by Raymond Moody and Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton came to mind. Moody convincingly establishes that the soul survives the demise of the body; however, Newton goes much further. He describes a realm where the disembodied soul exists between lives (yes, he makes reincarnation sound plausible) and actually participates in selecting the next physical life to be experienced, that selection process depending upon what further wisdom and enlightenment that particular soul is seeking so as to advance spiritually. The soul, then, is actually responsible itself, in conjunction with “Divine guidance,” for choosing the difficulties to be faced in the next life. And that takes us to the “bottom line,” of sorts.

If “the other side” is an ambience of peace, harmony and clusters of souls lovingly interacting and studying together, such as Newton depicts, then why should one expect the physical world to be the same? What would be the point of incarnating here to gain knowledge? As a guru once opined when a friend of mine asked whether hell existed, “Just where do you think you are now?” Indeed, what aspect of life doesn’t involve some form of challenge, conflict or competition? A writer of fiction learns early on that regardless of masterful descriptions and colorful characters, the core component of the craft is conflict. If there is no conflict, there is no story. Yes, art imitates life. And, admittedly, it is through struggle, mistakes and competition that we learn.

Looking about, we witness existence pretty much, if not more so, as Hume described it—life feeding upon life, constant ongoing struggles and competition from sport and commerce to war among nations. The battle of the sexes. The political grasping for power. And in literature it’s been observed that basically three categories of conflict exist: man against nature, man against man, man against himself. Yes, it all revolves around conflict.

So, it would seem to make more sense to embrace our conflicts and battle them through, gleaning whatever lessons we may take away, knowing in the end we’ll depart, as it is often phrased, “to a far better place.” The universe appears designed on a foundation of oppositions, not on universal brotherly collaboration. Apparently that’s left to “heaven.” Perhaps a philosophy such as Buddhism with an emphasis on the avoidance of suffering may actually have it all backwards. The practitioners just might be missing the whole rationale for their coming here. And the souls of those adherents may risk facing quite a series of “do-overs”! At least, since pain is one mandatory part to the picture, that might be one comforting way to think of it.