God is out of our way / Nature is my teacher
Purpose is a word we have created. We have each of us loosely learnt the meaning of this word, and now we play with it, like a cat does a woollen ball. Purpose, however, is far beyond a mere, human word...
Supposedly, we live in an era where god (absolute purpose) is dying, and this has apparently caused rather a lot of mischief among people trying to find their way through their relatively comfortable lives. Yet one should not be shaken by the slow, tortured death-rattle of god - He was never true to begin with. To say that the death of god means the end of an absolute purpose for humanity, is akin to saying we can no longer fly because our steamship had succumbed to paddle-rot, and is now beyond repair. Old humanity (to continue this dodgy metaphor) was trying to fly with a boat, something that quite simply cannot be done. The inevitable death of religion is nothing to be lamented, for no one in those religions ever flourished on anything beyond childish ignorance and a need to belong (innocent and understandable traits). Religion was no provider of meaning to people beyond arbitrary dogmas; ultimately, it was an archaic means of controlling people, and therefore a purely political entity, completely devoid of any spirituality. We should celebrate the decay of religion, it is one more veil removed from our mortal gaze, and has opened the door to...
...absolute meaninglessness? Individuals acting after their own self-interest to fulfil some short term, materialistic goal? Create-yourself-consumer-capitalism? No. Only someone who truly expected the old god to provide their life with meaning and purpose will feel downhearted by His slow demise. Only the weak and the vulnerable soul will find any form of satisfaction in the mundanity of all-consuming materialism. In fact, the death of god is very much a necessary part of our ascension into the lofty realms of purpose! Let us celebrate, one and all, for now we are truly free from ignorance, and the path to understanding has been paved for us.
Many will tell you then, that it is now up to humanity to guide itself, and create its own rules. This assumes that we are capable of doing so through language and obvious conscious effort. Indeed, it is a romantic idea that human beings will generate their own purpose by coming to some conclusion in the individuals mind, but sadly it cannot be done like this.
We are creatures of in-built ability; sometimes this materializes in an unexplainable genius, who can create things beyond what a pure 'blank slate' could generate. This is understandable - of course we will flourish, that is what nature has designed us to do! It also means that finding our purpose does not rely purely on our own conscious acts of self creation, but on an understanding of our place in nature and therefore of self discovery. Besides our conscious efforts must stand the equally important understanding of our essence – to grasp what it is to be born a creative being.
Your body is a biological machine, and we must not discount the innate abilities of that machine in creating our purpose: Think of an artist painting, a writer writing, a musician playing, all of these creatives have made some conscious decision to create, and require training to hone their skills - but once they start the creative process, it is their bodies that take over!
Everywhere we see the triumph of the machine beside humanity. Indeed, what would we be without our machines but uncreative struggler’s in the bosom of wild nature. We are more than this, we are a powerful element of ordered nature. We are not removed from nature, for it exists in the creature that is currently typing, and reading, this article. Humanity is only left with this 'create yourself from scratch' mindset when we view ourselves as somehow completely transcendent to, and opposed to nature. And this mindset leads to the emotional torture of self-creation-without-foundations, in which we have nothing more than shaky conscious experiences to build on. We cannot just magic meaning for ourselves out of thin air; that is quite simply self-delusion.
In conclusion, everyone is skilled, everyone is valueable. Not one human being on this planet deserves to be sold short (even an animal should be left to flourish if its suffering can be avoided). We are a part of nature (the 'brain' part), we always were, we always belonged; god was just a foolish way to seperate ourselves from our real objectives for the sake of political power.
What seperates us from our nature now is our reliance/worship of experience to gain knowledge and our extreme scepticism of there being any meaning at all (all very useful tools, but taken to their extremes they have major drawbacks).
The only problem is, not everyone has been given the materials and encouragements needed to actualize their innate potential; not everyone has been given the opportunity to stand proud as the mirror of nature, the most creative being in the known universe. Our purpose is to discover what it means to be human, and then to create on top of this foundation as an individual person, eventually providing this thriving opportunity to everything that breathes.
By Selim 'Selim' Talat
