Friends, the disappointing mystery of life is revealed towards its end. It is rather a dastardly act I know but it is understandable. If humans knew near the beginning of their lives what they know near the end, then we might’ve ceased to exist long, long ago.
Most forms of life get about the business of living their lives without questioning. Some insects have a few days. Some have a few weeks. Other creatures have months and years. They are born, some reach puberty, then they procreate like crazy, and die. Their progeny then continue the meaningless cycle of life and everything is ordered as nature intended.
But humans, some of whom are endowed with a bit of intelligence and a larger than usual brain, have an expectation of living for three-score years and ten. They have the ability to look at themselves, at their world, at the universe, and, eventually, ask, "Why?" This capacity is what brings us undone, especially as we age and grim reality of all existence dawns.
Humans have, unlike other forms of life, the ability to change their world, to pollute it, to poison it, to blow it up, even to create life. But they don’t have the ability to change the process of being born, procreating, then, once their progeny is established, dying in largely unpleasant ways then, ignominiously, turning to dust.
Of course, humans have tried to change their reality, oh, god, how they’ve tried. Religions have come and gone like New Year Resolutions. Gods of wonderful shapes and sizes and names have come and gone. Theologies, simple and complex, have kept artists busy for millenia. Conceptions of various paradises exempt from sickness and death have flourished in every corner of the earth generation by generation. Virgins and angels and hell and burning, all have had their day. Still do!
But the reality of life cares nothing for man’s foolish fantasies. The cycle of life continues and man, like every other life form, is forced to obey its edicts. You’re born, you live, you reproduce (or, depending on your sexual inclinations, you don’t), then, if sickness or accident doesn’t intervene, you grow old and die. That’s it! End of your story. What a let down, eh?
If man had little or no intelligence, life would be much easier. The pointless cycle of life would go on to infinity but man wouldn’t worry, wouldn’t think, and wouldn’t feel angst. He too would just kill and copulate with wild abandon like everything else and simply make hay while the sun shines.
But most of us have sufficient intelligence to eventually see what is happening and, faced with life’s ultimate reality, the realists among us shake our heads at its pointlessness and, on occasion, feel sadness, perhaps even anger and disappointment that we endured so much to achieve so little.
As I said, some fiend…
Life and death are indeed complex and emotional issues.
Nature while difficult to comprehend does seem to have a basic flow chart.
Nature operates on a very large scale in both time and resources which approach infinity.
The prime requirement is survival.
All evolutionary processes must start with the basics. The chemistry, physics and location must provide an environment contusive to the evolutionary process.
Nature fails a lot more than it succeeds. But on a scale approaching infinity even a very small percentage of success can add up to be a very large number.
One evolutionary element that can lead to a very successful species is intelligence which can lead to awareness of self. We humans find ourselves at this stage of evolution.
While a good number of planets that start the evolutionary cycle may never develop a species with intelligence much less one with awareness many will do so just given the massive amount of resources nature has.
Since evolution is an ongoing process what happens on a planet where nature has created and intelligent species with awareness?
Since the prime requirement is survival it seems to follow that the school of tooth and claw will be a common process on any planet where evolution is progressing.
What this means is that most if not every intelligent species that attains awareness will likely be a violent, arrogant and greedy species.
At some point this species will dominate its planet and its population will outgrow the planet’s resources. It is all due to the fact that any planet would only be a finite resource base.
As the competition for recourses heats up, the likelihood of global warming, wars, pollution or any number of other challenges bringing the whole thing to a halt is very high.
At this point nature is changing the rules. Where once competition was the test mode now the species will need to cooperate on a global level.
It is kind of like moving up a level in a video game.
My guess is that most species at this level will fail. ….GAME OVER…..
We humans are at this level. Nature really does not care if we move on to the next level.
There are billions of other planets where the process will end here. There are plenty others where the dominate species will pass through the tooth and claw stage and create a world where cooperation and peace will prevail.
Nature is not concerned with an individual of any species. Nature is only concerned with the process. This is very harsh especially for a species that has attained self awareness.
However, if we humans can get rid of all the baggage we accumulated as we struggled through the tooth and claw school of hard knocks we may be able to provide our progeny a much better and longer life.
My money right now is on…. ….GAME OVER…..
As far as death is concerned, who would “really” want to live forever? At some point in time we would become so bored we would go crazy.
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A very interesting comment, David F. I, like you, wouldn’t want to live forever.
Three score years and ten is more than enough to work out what it’s about and what it’s not! Cheers.
P.S. Thanks heavens for wine.
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On this evolutionary theme, perhaps the words of Lord Keynes, the economist, writing some 80 years ago, applies:
“Suppose that 100 years hence we are eight times better off than today. Assuming no important wars and no important increases in population, the economic problem may be solved. This means that the economic problem is not if we look into the future the permanent problem of the human race. Why you may ask is this so startling? It’s startling because the economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has hitherto been the primary most pressing problem of the human race. Thus
for the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem, how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy leisure, how to live wisely and agreeably and well.
There are changes in other spheres also which we must expect to come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. The love of money as a possession as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyment in the realities of life will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi- pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialist in mental disease. I see us free then therefore to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue, that avarice is a vice, that the extraction is usury is misdemeanor, that the love of money is detestable, and that those that walk most truly in the paths of virtue and seeing wisdom are those who take the least thought for tomorrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful, we shall honor those who can teach us how to plot the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are
capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. But beware, the time for all this is not yet. For at
least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not, avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. Only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight. Meanwhile, there will be no harm in making mild preparations for our destiny in encouraging and experimenting with the arts of life as well as the activities of purpose. But chiefly do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic problem or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and more permanent significance. It should be a matter for specialists like dentistry. If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.”
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Blogging was bogging me down and I zoned out of what was happening in the world. So now I wonder why question, for is ignorance not bliss? Then i realized that we have been lied to in school. That lie being that we shall be the future leaders of the world. I looked at where we stood and realized that we can abuse or be abused. To be ignorant is to be abused and to abuse is to not be ignorant. So we must choose. This is our cruel world to either inflict suffering and pain or to have it inflicted on oneself.
The way I see it questioning can liberate us from this cycle or it can make us the abusers.
Cheers from Free Journal!
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Hey, Jim, thanks for your thought provoking comment. You say that: ‘When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance…’
Humans, being what they are, will never reach this state. I think of Murdoch who has acquired billions but he is still driven to accumulate billions more. At a more simple level, even the most typical human in Western society, once they have a house and a car, then want a McMansion and a BMW.
Damian, thanks for calling by. Yes, questioning is important but it’s something that our masters fear. The ignorant are easy to manipulate and exploit! Always have been.
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Thanks for sharing, David. I myself wanting to live four score years, and find that surrounding myself with dogs, cats, trees and music in a comfortable environment makes life bearable since indeed friends, relatives, and lovers come and go as you get older, and if you are a Socrates-type. I am fortunate to be healthy so no poison for me. I look forward to hearing more from you, kind, sensitie soul.
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