Beyond self-satisfaction: Another discussion of purpose and meaning

Something I posted not quite eight years ago:

Posted yesterday at Slog by Charles Mudede:

Perhaps more important than any inner gratification I might find in the notion that I am not alone in one of my more obscure beliefs is the proposition itself. I do believe there is a purpose to life. I do believe it involves sticking around to find out how the whole Universe ends. We cannot, as individuals, accomplish this goal, so we must endure as a species.

We humans are the only known witnesses to the Universe. Someday, we will find others, and we will teach what we have learned, and learn from them what they have learned. The key is lasting long enough for that to happen.

It's also a very romantic notion because it means we do matter in the larger scheme of the Universe, that we aren't simply a random accident of ratios.
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Notes:

Mudede, Charles. "The Reason for Reason". Slog. March 7, 2008. http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/03/the_reason_for_reason

 

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Thats beautiful. And I agree with it. To me its a kind of looking in the mirror to see what we are made of, what we mean to us and how we are. We being the universe.

A sort of incipient universal narcissism perhaps, that our life and times are nothing more than an opportunity to ooh and aah at ourselves.

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yeah but that the concept of evil and good is irrelevant on a universe scale.

 

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think of us as cells in an organism...each doing their own business, making sure we get nourished well and multiply and interact with proteins with other cells and such...meanwhile by doing just this we fulfill the grand scale of the organism unaware of the design we are part of.

 

You seem to be aware.

 

I can relate to it, but I cannot fully understand that purpose of me as a cell in an organism to me in universe...it is as if a cell with no brains and intelligence tried to understand that it is one of the trillion cells needed for integration of this organism function which is in itself totally unrelated to the indirect simple functions of me the cell.

 

If you are born of Adam, sit like him
and behold all his progeny within yourself.
What is in the jar that is not also in the river?
What is in the house that is not also in the city?
This world is a jar, and the heart-spirit is like the river;
this world is the chamber, and the spirit is the wondrous city.

Mawlana Jalal ad-din Rumi

Mathnawi IV: 809-811
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
“Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance”
Threshold Books, 1996

 

I could be wrong, but it seemed like other posts of yours have seemed to claim a deeper awareness of what is going on than this rather mechanical cell analogy indicates.

 

Rumi is out there on the edge with the mystics of other religions, that region where they begin to look the same. Are you out there too, SAM?

 

well tell me how you see this awareness? I just seem to come to conclusion that it is impossible to realize truly the purpose of self in the greatness of universe, all this realizations are just illusions to keep self on right track, living on.

 

Aren't they all the same? Just different ways of getting to the same place?

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I cannot prove that they either do all lead to the same place, or that they do not.

However, if it were true that all would lead to the same place, this would mean that it ultimately does not matter which religion or philosophy one would practice.

If it ultimately does not matter which religion or philosophy one practices, then anything goes.

If anything goes, nothing makes a difference.

If nothing makes a difference, human action is for naught.

If human action is for naught, we cannot get anywhere. There is no goal for us to reach, we can never arrive anywhere, and all there is is the same mixture of pleasure and pain that we have now, for ever and ever.

Considering this, the proposition that all religions/philosophies lead to the same place, is pernicious.
If one wishes to accomplish or attain something, one has to believe that one path is superior to all others. Which implies that only one path can be the right one.

 

You contradict yourself.
To call something "the right track" implies the purpose is already known - that the purpose of self in the greatness of universe has already been truly realized. Without such a realization, there could be no notion of "being on the right track".

 

You skipped a beat there.

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well than I guess we share this main purpose with the rest of the universe, to live. I do realize that now.

 

Explain. How does the sentence you bolded not fit in with the course of others?

 

A cell has decided that many other cells are deluded and cannot know what the purpose of things is. This cell has a lot of faith in its ability to be objective, in fact as much faith as the other cells it is critical of. It is very sure of its epistemological rules and limits and the limits of other cells. You could call it a kind of negative philosophy, with claims about what cannot be known, but even this is founded on a great deal of certainty about what is possible.

 

Actually, I don't think so. But I do think there are mystics from a number of the major religions who speak similarly. I tend not to feel like their goals are my goals and I would call myself and be considered religious. Also within each of the various traditions I don't think the members are aiming at similar states, goals, or places, even if they use the same words sometimes.

 

You're assuming you're anybody. That all sizes can fit you. That your own substance has no limitations or needs.

 

How do you figure that?
I have made no such assumptions.

Of course people have different predispositions. But the argument was not about that. It was about whether all religions/philosophies have the same goal.