O W N HY

Pieter van Fop

Life has no meaning a priori It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but
the meaning that you choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness
and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the
unreasonable silence of the world.
Albert Camus

Utterly pointless, says the Teacher. Absolutely pointless; everything is pointless.

Ecclesiastes 1:2

Look at the following elementary argument:

(1) Life has no inherent meaning
(2) There is no need to live if life has no meaning
(3) Thus there is no need to live life
It can be a valid argument. It is a depressing argument, but in other words it can be formulated that
life has no objective meaning. The following essay will look at the last mentioned, not the subjective
meanings that one can ascribe to oneself. The argument above will be broken down into the three
statements, then the validity of the last statement will be assessed. The preposition why we tend not to
acknowledge the fact that life is objectively meaningless will also be looked at. Why we can go on
will be the main purpose of the essay. How is it possible, if one believes that life has no objective
purpose or telos, to create a meaning, in other words, playing your own God. The problem is then as
follows:
(1) Life has no inherent meaning
(2) I need to create meaning
(3) If I create meaning, life has meaning to me
(4) Life therefor has no inherent meaning, but has meaning to me.
Is it possible to create meaning, i.e. to lie that your life has meaning, and carry on living? The answer
is yes, because looking around you people are functioning and not worrying about it.

(1) Life has no inherent meaning

For more than 2000 years this feeling of meaninglessness has been with thinkers. We as humans tend
to appreciate things more if there is meaning coupled to it (take for example sentimental objects that
are worthless in themselves). It is easy to form an argument that humans are like the last mentioned
worthless things in themselves (except maybe consciousness). Two statements can be made about
being: you dont have a say in your existence and you have no choice in what form you get. If you
do not have a say in the afore mentioned, how can your individual life have an inherent meaning
(except if something or someone chose it)?

(2) There is no need to live if life has no (inherent) meaning

Is this necessarily true? The following can be a counter argument:

Well, thats the end of the film. Now, heres the meaning of life. (An envelope is handed to her.
She opens it in a businesslike way.) Thank you, Brigitte. (She reads. . .) Well, its nothing very
special. Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get
some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and
nations (Monty Pythons the Meaning of Life).
We have concluded that life has no inherent meaning, but maybe that is in itself the meaning of life
(coupled with the quote and the focus on everyday life and actions).

(3) Thus there is no need to live life

This can be formulated in different ways, or reached in many ways. If you have a teleological (goal
orientated) view two statements can be made:
i. I state a goal and fail achieving the goal, thus my life purpose (goal) is meaningless and a
failure.
ii. I state a goal and achieve the goal, but afterwards I have no meaning, after I reached my goal
life has no meaning, thus the above statement.
Also, someone can just say life has no inherent meaning, why live a moral life (and fulfil social
cohesion) if there is no reason to do so?
Above we looked at three ways in how life can be meaningless and thus not worth living.
(This is obviously very basic and does not do justice for the complexity of life.)

An Attempted Answer

Why do we do anything? Why? If we have a teleological approach to life we live to succeed or

achieve the goal, but is that goal in itself a reason why we live? No, it is just a reason for a specific
person, or group (e.g. Christians or Buddhism). A teleological explanation is thus not satisfactory
because not everyone has this goal orientated view on life. Also, a goal orientated life can be ad
infinitum (e.g. goal A achieved, move onto goal B then C). There must be another answer.
In an article Gregory Bassham (2015) gives an account of Julian Bagginis meaning of life:
we shouldnt think about life as teleological, with one single goal, or a string of infinite goals, but that
meaning can be found in the present by only living our lives. Living in the present is a good try at
answering or giving a reason for life, but this can quickly regress into hedonism. Hedonism in itself is
not a reason Why we would do anything like a ten-hour workday. The answer is thus not
satisfactory. (Bagginis answer is not only living in the present but trying to find a balance between
living in the present and having a goal for the future.)
I will agree with Basshams conclusion about Bagginis balanced theory of a meaningful life:
not everyone can live such a life, but that does not make their lives meaningless. Why then do we do
stuff? Bassham closes the article:
In the end, Monty Python may have got it right: perhaps meaning isnt anything very
special. Maybe it is all around us.
This is also not satisfactory: How can someone with security of food, education and money be
compared to someone with no money or food? Where a safe life is not a given? They cannot be
compared, but still both (the secured and unsecured persons) live life, keep carrying on. They dont
resolve to suicide in either case. Accepting life and getting meaning from all around us is thus very
arbitrary and subjective.
I suggest that we humans are fundamentally curios beings. (One of the recent examples can
be of social media where people constantly check for updates etc.) Why do we do things? Because we
are curios, we want to look at how things change, how things update, how the game of life is played
out. There is no fundamental goal, or meaning in itself, rather there is this need to see things play out.
Curiosity drives our lives: what can I personally do to change this game?, and then the aftermath
of looking at how you changed it. For example: The studies in biology and experimentation for
extending human lives. We do not know the consequences of a population of six billion people who
live for an extended period of time, the cost of living and eating so much food etc. on the planet, but
we continue to think about living longer because it intrigues us, we want to see what happens next.
The attempted answer is elementary, but with further insight, more work being done, the
answer will be more rigid, if not broken down completely.

References

Bassham, G. 2015. Lifes Purpose. Think. 14(39): 19-25.