The Meaning of Life

Not long ago my husband and I planned to take the two youngest and ourselves to a job in Western Samoa for at least three years and I stress the at least…..obviously we didn’t go…we packed up the house, got rid of anything extraneous (including winter clothes, a move which I now rue), convinced the kids of the wonder and excitement of it all and got passports and visas in order…then my husband’s Mum and Dad got seriously ill and the contracts we had agreed upon seemed to have ongoing and constant problems…so we sat back and sighed…should we go?? Should we stay??....and while on the verandah agreeing that the final decision was now or never, my son ran up screaming….he had somehow managed to suffer burns from lifting a heated radiator cap on his ‘project’ car, which splattered boiling steam and water rudely onto his face and torso( which in good surfy fashion was naked) and was now screaming in some pretty bad pain and shock!!!! Our answer seemed to have arrived dramatically…..

We had wanted to go to Samoa because we know it well, having lived and worked there many moons ago for three years, and having begun our romance there too…perhaps we wished to return to our youthful dreams a little, now that we are in the ‘middle’ of our lives…

Hubby and I did however go over and check out the job and do a little reminiscing so I guess we revisited our past briefly and enough to lay old ghosts and renew old friends….it seems enough also, not to need to go back and live there again!....at least not for now….

Anyway, we unpacked and settled back to life in Yamba, with a promise not to mess the kids around again…and it got me thinking…about making choices, about the past, about how to recognize the signposts on the journey and truly get what they mean??? And of course about life…..the meaning of and all that stuff…and it made me remember scenes from Monty Python’s famous movie “The Meaning of Life”…..sometimes I believe I feel we are all like the woman in the labour ward who was ignored in favour of all the machinery, including the one that went “ping’…living our lives in the shadow of technology and only as important as the industrialization/technorisation that supports us. ( don’t you recognize this in the common teenage utterance of, ‘ but this new model is so much better and everyone else has one”)….Do we fail to see the forest for the trees or our everyday miracles for the music in our ears, the screen in front of our eyes, or the mobile reverberating madly in our pockets…..

Then there is the ‘fat man’ skit….is it all about food or the impossible greed of the human condition. After copious eating and the resulting foul vomiting and the declaration of being full (which I cannot quote because of bleepable words), the ‘fat man’ is tempted to eat just one more morsel, his undoing of course because this causes him to explode…hmmmmm

So, what is the meaning of life?? What purpose and or significance can we attribute to this existential journey??? It can only be existential can’t it because if there is no meaning as the nihilists would propound than life and I and this writing may not exist in the world of purpose anyway…in which case, why I am writing this….well yes, I am sure some would say, why indeed…but they would need to be reading it first to put forward that argument and lets say this proves my point!!

Plato says the meaning of life is to attain knowledge in order to pursue a higher form of goodness….that we are bound to find the goodness in ourselves…and that in order to do this we need to use philosophical reasoning….oh yes and we all have time for that between the washing, work and taking the children to sporting events…

The Cynics ( an old Greek school of philosophy, not your dour mate who holds forth at the local) suggested that the meaning of life was all about living in accordance with nature…so we have kind of emulated this, we have made light, we have designed organisms, we have preempted natural selection, we have induced destruction and culled in order to keep the population down….we have fought for dominance….very natural…

The Jews believe that the meaning of life is to serve God….and the Christians say that the meaning of life is to love God….which postulates another question long before we get to the meaning of life….who, what and why is God?????

Buddhists in their belief that subject and object are the one thing could be converging on the edges of nihilism, but fail to totally marry this stance by giving life a purpose after all…to become ‘..enlightened’…..

Nihilists fail to give meaning to life because they say that all things have the same value ( rather like subject and object are the same) and then they say, therefore all things have no value….some like Nietzsche would see this as defeatist, as making this whole journey purposeless( Nietzsche thought that without worthy goals and striving towards better morals life was meaningless…goals intimate values not valuelessness …purpose was important to him….then so was value….perhaps this could be seen as a the real question of the modern world couldn’t it…what is the Value of life not what is the meaning????? )

Nietzsche was an existentialist and these individuals generally put forward a meaning of life that relates to the purpose we ( the individuals) give it…without us and our goals or purposes there is no meaning…..hence my comment about the journey being existentialist… you see there is in living always a purpose….we go to the toilet for the purpose of relieving ourselves, we eat for the purpose of maintaining life, I write because I want to say something( although sometimes I am not too sure what??) we eat chocolate because it feels good….and so on

In Douglas Adams' popular book series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything has the numeric solution of 42, In Life, the Universe and Everything, it is confirmed that 42 is indeed the Ultimate Answer, and that it is impossible for both the Ultimate Answer and the Ultimate Question to be known about in the same universe, as they will cancel each other out and take the universe with them.
This is what philosophers might call a logical positivist point of view! They believe that if you express the question of the meaning of life in language it is meaningless…of course because all meaning is contained in numbers….logically, there are no random numbers in the Universe( seriously, look this up you’d be surprised)
These guys say that the "meaning of life or x" is a term in life, usually conveying something regarding the consequences of life or x, or the significance of x, or that which should be noted regarding x, etc. So when "life" is used as "x" in the term "meaning of x", the statement becomes recursive and therefore nonsensical, or would simply refer to the obvious fact that the condition of life is essential for having meaning (in life). Got that???? And if x equals 42 then x also marks the spot and x hides the treasure and x is the spot……..or the x-spot so to speak…
So back to the packing and unpacking…one would of course necessitate the other, or they existentially rely upon one another for purpose, they are of equal value as a consequence and therefore could both have no value, they as ‘x’ cancel each other out….the realization of this could be seen as ‘enlightenment’ and this for some could be the will of God….and if we ‘love’ in the process then we can keep the Christians happy too …and after all this, there is a meaning to life and that is making sure that everyone is happy and justifiable…..and avoiding argument which could lead to war which could see the very probable end to life…..( and it might be justifiable to have a war in the quest for this right to happiness, because of course we all believe in the purpose of justifying our idea of right or that our right is more valuable)…and if I imbibe one more morsel of this mind bending excruciation I will like the fat man, explode……..perhaps we all will anyway?