Purpose in a Meaningless World
Meaning
Have you found your purpose yet? Do you have a clear understanding of your life's mission?
For the longest time I have been trying to figure out what my mission on this earth could be, what I came here for, what the reason of my existence could be and why I should continue taking part in this game of life. In this post, I want to cover these exact questions, tell you why there is no point in searching for purpose outside of you and at the end tell you what I practically make of it all. Ready to go? Let's get started.
Peeling the Onion
Before getting into my acutal thoughts on purpose, let's first get straight on what we are actually talking about here. Cambridge Dicitonary defines purpose as the reason for doing something or the aim to which an action is directed. In a more visual form, it is knowing why you get up in the morning and knowing what for you do your daily work. And sure, you might say: "I get up in the morning to go to work, make money and feed my family." And that would be a totally respectable answer to the reason of your act of getting up. But how far could you convincingly sustain this chain of reason-based arguments? At what point would you not be able to find a purpose anymore? This chain of reasons to our actions is what I call the purpose onion. At the core of it lies the action itself. Moving from the inside out - I know that makes no practical sense in terms of an actual onion - the different layers represent new reasons that all link up. The interesting point is where you reach the final layer. Behind it, there is nothing. You have peeled all the layers. So what now?
Purpose is a myth
One of my key findings from the last few years of reading and thinking is that purpose is a myth. Let me explain. For a long time I have been trying to find some cosmic purpose to my life, some great mission that has been awaiting me before I even came to life and that I was simply born to fulfill. But the more I carefully dissected this idea, the more it became obvious to me: There is no objective or cosmic purpose to life. The world simply doesn't care. Imagine two versions of the universe, one with earth the way it is and one with an empty and cold one. From the perspective of the universe, the two scenarios are simply two different states, nothing more. Apart from the different physical compositions, there is no judgement the universe makes. It doesn't care because it doesn't think, it just exists and behaves according to certain physical laws. This means that things like purpose, passion, good and bad, love and hate merely exist on our human, emotional frequency. Only through our living eyes there is an emotional difference between a murderer and a teenager helping an older women across the street. Other than that, they are again just different physical states. In philophy, this realization of cosmic meaninglessness is referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. It states that nothing derives from nature itself. Values and judgements are purely a product of our thinking, but don't actually exist. In regard to purpose, it means we are the source of it, we are the origin of spirit and values and not the world around us. The world around us is simply our cold and indifferent host. It is a meaningless world we live in. All meaning we must forge ourselves. To come back to my initial statement, purpose is a myth when we try to find it outside of ourselves. Only from our perspective, things begin to mean something. Only with our minds does kindness create purpose, does love create purpose, does change create purpose, does life even have a purpose. It is of course objectively meaningless to create purpose on our human level. But it doesn't matter, because nobody cares. For the sake of our own wellbeing, we can still create it. Although it is just for ourselves, we can still find purpose in our otherwise meaningless world.
if you blew up our solar system alone you wouldn't be able to find us or any of human history with the naked eye. But from our perspective, this is huge.
Jim Carrey
Natural Distraction
Uff, admittedly the last paragraph might have been a bit of a stretch. And truth be told, it took me a very long time to get to this idea of cosmic meaninglessness and even more time to actually internalize its truth. But isn't that strange? How come it took me so long to disover this now obvious seeming and somewhat undeniable reality about life? What I believe to be the answer is that nature simply doesn't want us to now! From physical needs, relentless desires, our self-absorbed minds to the endless narratives we as humans are so keen to build around everything we encounter. All of these things hold us back and distract us from even getting close to those higher layers of the purpose onion - the realization that whatever we do, it is ultimately for nothing but ourselves. To me, it almost seems as if nature itself had a mind. That for some odd reason it wanted to keep us in the dark. And sure, from an evolutionary, survival-driven standpoint, this all makes sense. Our species wants to keep itself going and the feeling of purpose does seem like a fundamental element in achieving that. What remains a mystery to me though: Why would our cold and indifferent universe bring forth such beings like us, who so desperately and continously seem to be trying to hide themselves from their obvious lack of purpose? Could this be a clue to the existence of god? I leave it up to you to make up your mind.
Positive Nihilism
I admit, the fact that ultimately nothing matters and no one cares can be pretty bitter at first and at least left me with a great sense of emptyness for a long time. Luckily though, we have smart people like Mark Manson - author of the subtle art of not giving a fuck. In his book, Mark talks about how there are two ways of going about the cosmic meaninglessness of our existence. The first and more easily visible one is what I call negative nihilism. It is saying: "Fuck it, nothing matters. So why live? I am going to kill myself." And whilst I do think everyone has the right to decide whether they want to live or not, this first approach is a pretty messy one and at least for me personally never really seemend convincing. The second way Mark talks about is what I call positive nihilism. It is saying: "Nothing matters. So why don't I just stop being so fearful, anxious and passive all the time and instead just start doing things because I can?" Different to negative nihilism, which uses the lack of meaning as a justifaction to reject life, Mark's second approach still acknowledges the same truth, yet uses it to legitimate life. It is about realizing the meaninglessness of life as freedom to go discover and pursue, not a limitation.
There is no need to search. Achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! (...) You are already free!
Dan Millman
Conclusion
Although difficult to see through our busy and hectic eyes of day to day life, which create the illusion of everything around us being so massively important, the reality is that at the highest level, nothing really matters. From this cosmic perspective, what you do, say and think isn't good nor bad, isn't meaningful nor a waste, it just is. You yourself are the source of judgements, values and meaning. Once understood, you become the forger of your own values, your own opinions and your own understanding of what is important and what is not. Although objectively meaningless, you make things meaningful by doing them intentionally, by simply deciding for them to be meaningful. When other people tell you to behave according to their understandings of what is important, you can only laugh, because you know their opinion is just as meaningless as yours. There is no one to impress. Because there is no one watching. So you just do things, because you can. And it becomes your only reason.
I opened my eyes and behald reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing.
Søren Kierkegaard
Sources of Inspiration
Mark Manson