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April 10 - May 4, 2021
It is possible for optimists and pessimists to agree on the facts and yet disagree in their evaluations of these facts.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
My own view is that a deep pessimism about the meaning of life is entirely appropriate, but that this should not be confused with total nihilism about meaning in life.
Earthly life is thus without significance, import, or purpose beyond our planet.
If loving and serving God is our purpose, the act of creating us sounds like that of a supremely narcissistic rather than a supremely beneficent being.
This purpose smacks of circularity.
the depth of the widespread human need to cope with the harsh realities of the human predicament, including but not limited to the fact that our lives are meaningless in important ways.
Not all of earth is as bad as North Korea, but North Korea is part of “God’s earth”; so are Afghanistan, Burma, China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Zimbabwe, to name but a few appalling places for many to live.
they all occur within the jurisdiction of a purportedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God.
It is much more likely, given the evidence, that our lives lack cosmic meaning than that God exists.
“to reproduce and pass on its genetic material to the next generation.”
When people wonder whether their lives have meaning, they are not likely to be reassured by the observation that they are (merely) a mechanism for replicating genetic material.
It merely provides an explanation of how rather than why we came to exist.27
Instead, people are concerned that the universe (including our own planet and its powerful natural forces) is indifferent to us, that nothing we do makes any difference beyond our planet or in cosmic time, and that human life has no purpose.
Knowing that there is no life anywhere else in the cosmos would bring no solace to those who fear that human life is cosmically meaningless.
We usually, and plausibly, think that we have a much greater impact on our planet than we do on the rest of the cosmos, and that although our planet is as indifferent to us as the rest of the universe, we are at least able to exercise more control over our planet than we are over other parts of the universe.
After all, he says that he does “not mean to deny that the universe we inhabit is bleak, blind and indifferent.”
Similarly, it can be entirely reasonable to relieve headaches and prevent harms to children and yet worry that one’s life as a whole—or human life in general—has no cosmic purpose.
our lives lack the cosmic meaning for which humans so often yearn.
“the fact that the most beautiful and enduring of human artefacts will eventually turn into dust is not a reason for denying that its creation was a worthwhile and meaningful task.”
“Yes, we know that many activities are meaningful sub specie communitatis and sub specie humanitatis, and we are pleased about that, but we are alarmed that our lives have no cosmic meaning. Nothing you have said allays that concern.”
The problem with this, however, is that if it is not worth seeking something that one cannot attain, it can still be appropriate to regret the unattainable.
Regretting the absence of cosmic meaning, it is sometimes argued, is very different from this because there is no conceivable way our lives could have cosmic meaning.
If our lives are irredeemably meaningless sub specie aeternitatis, and no conceivable alternative circumstances could have made things otherwise, it is still the case that our lives are (cosmically) meaningless.
However, I see no reason why we should not regret the absence of some good merely because it is unattainable.
Just because we cannot have cosmic meaning does not mean that we should not think it would be good to have.
The meaning we have from various human perspectives does not give meaning to the entire human enterprise.
The terrestrial meaning is good, but the absence of cosmic meaning is bad.
Our lives can be meaningful, but only from the limited, terrestrial perspectives.
If we lack cosmic meaning but have other kinds of meaning, then some things do matter, even though they only matter from some perspectives.
There is no such thing as the meaning of life. Many different meanings are possible.
We are nonetheless warranted in regretting our cosmic insignificance and the pointlessness of the entire human endeavor.
We serve no purpose in the cosmos and, although our efforts have some significance here and now, it is seriously limited both spatially and temporally.
Therefore does it not seem that Being is a misstep
Both the deficiency of meaning and the poor quality of life are features of the human predicament.
feeling that one’s life is meaningful contributes toward enhancing life’s quality, and feeling that one’s life is meaningless contributes toward reducing the quality of life.
Even when both the good and the bad are mere dumb luck, it is the bad that precipitates the gnawing questions.
The quality of human life is, contrary to what many people think, actually quite appalling.
I believe that while some lives are better than others, none are (noncomparatively or objectively) good.
Thinking that one’s life is better than it actually is can make it better than it would otherwise be.
it does not follow that one’s life is actually going as well as one thinks it is.
Although each fate does not befall every one of us, our very existence puts us at risk for these outcomes, and the cumulative risk of something horrific occurring to each one of us is simply enormous.
Our lives contain so much more bad than good in part because of a series of empirical differences between bad things and good things.
Chronic pain is rampant, but there is no such thing as chronic pleasure.
The worst pains are also worse than the best pleasures are good.
Thereafter, from one’s early twenties and on, one begins the long, slow decline.
Even when fulfilled desires are everything that they were expected to be, the satisfaction is typically transitory, as the fulfilled desires yield to new desires.
Life is thus a constant state of striving. There are sometimes reprieves, but the striving ends only with the end of life.
Notice too that while the bad things come without any effort, one has to strive to ward them off and attain the good things.
Thus, one hopes to live a life that is, by human standards, a long life, and we hope to gain expertise in some, perhaps very focused, area.
