Let’s face it, God is dead. The only religious belief that can survive with a straight face these days is of the harmless variety. Pleasant church picnics and cultural visits to the mosque, community masses and colourful Hindu festivals -- wonderful things. If people start taking religion too seriously, eyebrows of worry start to rise, and few people really want a return to the good old days of church and state being bedfellows again (see the Dark Ages). The golden path to godly perfection and eternal bliss has been well and truly scrubbed away by the amoral brush of the rational mind. We do not know for certain where we are going after we die, and no amount of mass delusion is going to change that. The easy-ish answer of God and scripture is over. Religion is reduced to an interesting cultural antique, and a useful glue for charity-sector organisations.
Are we, then, lost in the cold cosmos with nothing to guide us? Without absolutes, are we not doomed to quarrel and strife? I would say no. Firstly, nothing causes quarrels like two groups of people both claiming to have absolute answers to absolute questions. Any debate between two fundamentalists is a prime example of this. They will never be able to find ultimate common ground and will always end up missing vital things in common. Without absolute belief we are inviting less violent disagreement, and more discussion. We can have the modesty to admit we might be wrong, and search for alternatives. This scepticism seems to be quite widespread, at least among the people I have met. An emphasis on individuals finding their own path has sprung up time and time again in my philosophical conversations. However, being able to think for yourself is not enough: being sceptical is vital to escape falsehood, yet it leads to nowhere but more scepticism. If we stay sceptical we are now confronted with a 'relativism of meaning': where reality comes down to the whims of individual people or groups, with no means to determine right or wrong outside of that, and with all views being equal in that they are ideally suited to their conditions. How do we escape relativism and anchor ourselves in something more reliable?
I think a lot of depressives could be cured of their ailments (starting with myself!) with a simple realisation: the universe is not meaningless by default. Nature is a realm outside of meaning, or meaninglessness. These two M-words are an invention of the human tongue, and should be left in the realm of the human tongue. What I am saying is that fundamentally we do not have the means to accurately depict reality from our position as individual human beings, experiencing reality from only one perspective. That does not mean reality is not out there, it just means it is beyond us; at best we can get a general idea of it. The sciences will greatly enhance our understanding of specific processes, but science is not one huge body of theory working in the same direction, but a battleground of ideas striving for supremacy, with brilliant experts on both sides clashing one against the other. There are no absolute answers in science, and there never will be. What we can find, however, are probabilities, and these provide us with the means to either improve the material conditions of our species or annihilate one another with ever-shinier weapons. We still have not completely escaped the clutches of relativism (for who do you believe when confronted with two great theories?), but at least now we are in the more comfortable territory of possibility. We don't have any absolute 'right and wrong' which exist beyond humanity, but we do have some damn good probabilities that are more than mere guesses.
Now, let us return to this notion of meaninglessness as a purely human concept. Trying to define it is a tough one. My own thoughts of meaninglessness come from the lack of permanence we are facing and the fleeting nature of our existence on this mortal span. Effectively, I am suffering from limited-time-angst. We will all someday perish, and in a thousand years few of us will be remembered. This lack of finality is rather dour, but should quantity of time be considered more than quality of it? The cosmos is vast, slowly moving through the aeons, and we are tiny specks of dust on the (insert analogy here). Our moments of love are fleeting. Our creative joy comes and goes at its own pace. We spend most of our lives in a state of dull plodding labour for the profit of pointless institutions; you dig a hole, I will fill it up. So it’s mostly quite shit. We could call our individual moments of passionate connection and artistic triumph worth the struggle. If these good things are just tiny moments of joy at least they are something quite genuine, and give us a little something to live for. Quality over quantity?
The meaning of life cannot be produced in a two page article, nor in a hundred thousand million word book written by re-arranging the stars into those queer little runes we call words. If the meaning of life could be produced in such a format, you can say goodbye to philosophy, wonder, mystery and art. All another person might be to you is a single inn on your journey, and this journey is all we are entitled to. It leads nowhere nice in the end, not unless you are something of a fetishist for being buried and devoured by hungry worms and such. It is quite funny though that meaning has to have to an end point to qualify as meaning. It seems to be a very "goal-orientated" capitalistic way of thinking, informed by our culture. In order to stick two fingers up at this aforementioned capitalist institution, with its inevitable 'go get 'em philosophy' market, I will end on this open-ended, pointless (but not worthless?) message.
There is no meaning in life, nor is there an absence of meaning. No one is going to give you any easy answers, and anyone who does is playing upon the insecurity all higher animals feel when faced with existence. Embrace the freedom offered to you by the collapse of cosmic authority by chasing artistic dreams, making the mystery a harmless way to pass your time and win a small snatch of pride in doing so. Debate and discussion must be permanent, so get stuck in and do not be afraid to stick to a solid position; if it turns out to be an improbable position, let it crumble. Forget the destination, there is none, just make the journey worthwhile and always, always try to be a kat on the way.
Selim 'Selim' Talat
