A Purposeless Universe

We're so smart we've figured out we don't have a purpose

Aren’t modern humans the most preposterous things? We feel we’re so superior to all the rest of existence, the proverbial smart kid in class who can’t relate to the other kids. We use our technology to obliterate human beings indiscriminately, under the rubric of a justified war. The last one of those was World War II, where a certified serious madman was unleashing hell on earth. Even in that war, in the fire-bombing of Dresden, for instance, many innocent lives were taken. And of course, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse Five, says -

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”

And yet, so it goes, more horror from the horrific humans, who always say they have god on their side. Bob Dylan’s response to that was, “If god’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war.” Clever line, but no sign of any intervention yet.

That’s because god isn’t in charge of things. That being the case, who is? It’s a rather complicated question that’s been batted around for 3000 years or more. Is anyone? Is the question itself incorrectly stated?

Who’s in charge here?!

The smartest of the smarty pants kids in class are the physicalists, who say that everything in life is physical or subject to physical laws. The laws of physics, classical and quantum. They say that’s it, and if you say otherwise, they take the ball and go home. This all starts to get a little blurry when it comes to quantum aspects of things, but basically, the description of the universe is that it is absent of purpose. The universe is the result of explosive energies and chemical reactions. It goes forward on its own in a giant roll of the dice. Stuff happens, as a result other stuff happens, and so it goes, according to natural laws, which is all true, but the overall conception is that of a mechanical universe. Mechanical cosmos, mechanical quantum particles, mechanical biology, mechanisms at work all over, mechanical photosynthesis giving us oxygen to breathe and we give back carbon for the trees to breathe. A rather elegant mechanical symbiosis, but mechanical at root.

Let’s start from the big idea, rather than get too bogged down in details here.

Everything means nothing. We are part of everything. Therefore, we mean nothing.

This is called a syllogism. The Greeks came up with it as a means of rational deduction. For a syllogism to be true, all parts of it have to be true. Otherwise, you get a syllogism that is clever, that sounds true, but isn’t.

The first thing that must be established as true is the first statement. Everything means nothing. Physicalists stand by this idea. Richard Dawkins is perhaps the best known physicalist, also known as an advocate for the atheist position as far as religion or metaphysics. He has noted how many wars are fought for religious reasons. This is only partly true. Power and greed are the usual mainstays. Religion is often the convenient excuse.

Dawkins also said this.

"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” 

Cheery fellow. It is a fair statement from his perspective, though I would take issue with the all-inclusive, superior-in-tone, academic ‘we’ he invokes, as if we all observe the same thing.

We don’t.

There are various counter-theories to physicalism, certain aspects of quantum physics notably are revealing theories that dovetail with ideas such as universal consciousness, panpsychism, morphic fields. Going into religion, there is Western theism and Eastern philosophy of the interconnectedness of everything.

Going back to Dawkins, here’s another syllogism.

The universe has no purpose… nothing but pitiless indifference. We come from the universe. Therefore, we have no purpose and our lives are best described as existing in a state of pitiless indifference.

Yet we don’t feel that way, in fact, we feel the polar opposite of it. No matter what we do, whether high or humble, people approach it like it’s the most important thing in the world. Including Dawkins, who finds superior purpose in telling us there’s no purpose. We feel there is indeed significant, profound purpose to our lives. We get up in the morning and face the day with this degree of purposeful action, with no hint of pitiless indifference. This is how most everybody is. There are children to be fed, jobs to go to, enterprises to be lead, ideas to be tried, dreams to be entertained and love to be discovered. We laugh, we sweat, we exult in a day’s work well done, we walk our dogs, who never question their purpose, which is to live their lives with unbridled joy and give that back to us.

Of course, there are a few sour, benighted souls who fit Dawkins’ description of how people following this bleak idea should naturally feel. A certain percentage of people perhaps live lives of quiet desperation, but desperation if very different that indifference. If we are products of an indifferent universe, why don’t we all act that way? Why isn’t the whole human story a giant Beckett play, if this is our universal birthright, if our true imprint is purposelessness?

Because it’s howash, that’s why. Intellectual hokum. Philosophical balderdash. Seeing with blinders on. Seeing through the superior eyes of the chalkboard formula ‘we.’

In fairness to Dawkins, he does advocate caring for one another, to make suffering in this pitiless place less. “Isn’t that a purpose, Richard?” I would ask. “And since we are part of the universe, doesn’t that by definition give the universe some degree of purpose?”

In order to rid the world of superstitious religious beliefs, you don’t have gut the universe of its magic.

Up here where I live in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I drive past endless trees and I thank them deeply for their incredible purpose of giving us good air, these overwhelming green silent guards of life’s ongoing purpose.

I saw a very young deer on unsteady legs last night in my headlights over on the side of the road in the edge of the woods, and my heart went out to it immediately. I worried for its tender fragility and hoped for its growth.

Why? Why would a person birthed of a pitiless, indifferent universe feel such things? Why aren’t we all cold and mechanical? Why can we extend ourselves to embrace another life, and know that in many ways, it’s just like our own? Why can we experience invisible emotion spontaneously, without coaxing? Why does this emerge out of us?

What’s the purpose?

To not be pitiless.