1. I am alive, a
member of a species we call humanity, and living on a planet we call Earth.
2. This planet is
in a system orbiting around a star we call the Sun, and part of a galaxy or
system of stars we call the Milky Way. According to human science, there are
some hundred billion galaxies in the totality of heavenly bodies we call the
Universe, although this is presumably largely an approximation.
3. Until recently
the theory of the Big Bang had become the orthodox explanation for the creation
of the Universe. But this always seemed a rather “beginning-middle-and end”
human-styled story, and now this is being questioned by others of multiple
universes or multiverses, and of an “eternal universe”.
4. While an
“eternal universe” is possibly more comforting to our minds, we have no way of
comprehending “eternal”, either in temporal or spatial terms: merely trying to
imagine it gives us a headache. In the end, though, be it Big Bang, Multiverse
or Eternal Universe, or (most likely) Other, it will probably have precious
little bearing upon our own individual existence(s).
5. One thing we
do know is that all of us will die, and all too soon as well.
6. What death
will mean for each of us, however, is impossible to know before it happens, and
very possibly not after it either.
7. We do know
that once dead, our bodies will eventually break down into the atoms of which
they were composed, said to have originated from the deaths of stars we call
supernovas.
8. While we know
we will die and our bodies break down, what we do not know is what will happen
to our consciousness upon death. Most human religions or faiths are predicated
on some version of “life after death”, an immortal part or “soul” living on,
this holding out the prospect of “resurrection” of some kind, usually of the
individual, and presumably with their own consciousness and memories intact.
9. Religions
generally centre upon an all powerful Creator, who made our world and all
things in it, and the Universe itself, who would oversee our destiny beyond the
grave, in eternal life. Given an eternity of time as we humans (fail to)
comprehend it, this state of being is usually reduced to our clean-scrubbed and
robed selves strolling peacefully down well-lit avenues, with much benign mist
and the playing of harps.
10. That we have
no human means of imagining eternity, much less comprehending what we would actually
do with it if it became ours to live, could potentially be a barrier to an
acceptance of religious belief, though for many people this does not appear to
be the case, their apparent solution being not to think about it. In that regard,
religious believers would appear to go to their graves very much like
non-believers, and those who hold that in the end we are all compost anyway.
11. Those who do
not subscribe to religious views may believe that Creator-centred religions are
little more than a fond hope of deliverance by the theistic equivalent of our
children’s Santa Claus, and hold that upon death there is nothing, and that our
consciousness, memories and personality are all extinguished with our bodily
life.
12. If there is
nothing after death, which we could imagine as a darkness (or possibly light)
going on “forever”, then it would seem to many people that their lives are futile,
a few decades of eating and defecating, having sex, fretting over sex, fretting
over love and love not had, worrying about money, moving the furniture around
the living room and stacking and unstacking the dishwasher, bounded on either
side by a nothingness beyond comprehension.
13. The 8th
Century English monk, the Venerable Bede, put this eloquently as our mere
moment of life being akin to a sparrow flitting from the night into a lit hall
and then straight out another window on the far side, back out into the night.
Thus this life can be seen as a painfully brief moment of illumination, stark
and dazzling. But, if there is an illumination, then of what, and about what?
14. The
existentialism of Sartre and Beckett confronts human existence as being
pointless, and all our often hard wrought choices, individual, moral and ethical,
being essentially meaningless too. But what then motivates us, and particularly
those drawn to such views, to get up each day, and go on with their life, trying
to be a “good person”, when their existence will end all too soon and “mean”
nothing anyway?
15. We may seek,
and find, meaning in love, in our children, in family, or in creative pursuits
such as art, writing, music. Some may find it in playing sport or barracking
for a sports team, or even writing plays about the meaninglessness of life.
16. Whatever the
case, all must find meaning in some form somewhere, somehow, or else the dark
matter of pointlessness will weigh down on us, and depression, nihilistic
disengagement, even suicide may be the result.
17. But what is
that meaning? If we are dead in a few decades and our having existed at all
almost certainly entirely forgotten within a generation or two, what is the
point, indeed? Even the celebrated are forgotten, unless they are as renowned
as Shakespeare and Beethoven. But what is 500 years, even, in the time of the
Earth, and much less the stars, than the merest blink, less than a single
wingbeat of the sparrow of the Venerable Bede? And does the memory of their
name and work mean anything to them now, returned as they are to dust, to atoms?
18. In his
classic novel of 1930, Last and First Men,
English philosopher and author Olaf Stapledon fictionally surveyed the coming
two billion years of human history. In it,
humans evolve through 18 different species, of which we are the sadly all-too-primitive
First. There is no god nor gods behind the creation of the universe in this
account, and the highest aspirations for us as humans are not worship nor ritual,
but ever remain the creative arts, literature, music and art, and what he calls
“Racial Awakening” the telepathic psychic communion of all living humans (the
Internet might perhaps be seen as a very primitive precursor of this). As well
as finding meaning through creativity, in personal terms we may find it in love
and sex, family and friendship, and charitable acts of altruism. This, it could
be noted, is similar to the ending of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, in which it is suggested that the meaning is: "Try
and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then,
get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people
of all creeds and nations."
19. At the conclusion of Last And First Men – humanity it seems is doomed when the Sun
becomes a Red Giant, and the solar system faces incineration – the ultimate
human species, the Eighteenth, possesses the ability to live forever, and is effectively
immortal. But, after a long lifespan, typically of some hundreds of thousands
of years, nearly all choose to die. Presumably, then, the beautiful and hideous
wilds of eternity are still too much even for humans of such evolutionary
advancement. And, at the very end, with the solar system and the entire human
race doomed, we close the two billion year human story with the simple
statement: “It is good to have been Man.”
20. In my
beginning is my end - Drive your cart and plough over the bones of the dead – I am
here, Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
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