Meanings of Life Oct.

3 Meaning in Creation and Religion

--Work and family may seem insufficient, because you die and then so what? Posterity, creation
and religion are efforts to go beyond this. Consider our ikigai theory once again: we seek
significance, to ultimately matter, and posterity, creation, and especially religion can provide this.
--All ikigai provide senses of personal significance. But the ikigai of work and family provide
significance that is mostly (although not entirely) this-world in orientation, and that thus can easily
vanish. Posterity, creation, and religion provide a significance that is longer lasting, and perhaps
transcendent. But why, then, do most people not adhere to these forms of significance?

Posterity
--Posterity connotes the sense that after you die, you will be remembered. “My discoveries in
this research will benefit humankind…” “I will be famous; my name will live on after I’m dead…” “I
will die, but the company I founded will live on…” “I will die, but my children and their children will
know that they have a better life because of what I’ve done…” Most of us will be remembered a
few decades after we die, but after everyone who has known us is dead, we will be forgotten.
But a few people are not forgotten. Posterity is the dream that you will not be forgotten.
--Different levels of posterity: Christ and Buddha on the one hand, names in footnotes on the
other: anybody who has a child may live forever. But does it matter? From a non-religious point
of view, if you’re dead, so what if you’re remembered? Yet posterity is a major motivating factor
in life. Consider “posterity” as gaining significance in an imagined “universal grading system.”
--One form of posterity is individual, but another is collective. Consider, for example, “dying for
your country”: you die but your country lives on, making your death worthwhile. Is this an illusion?

Creation
--Why do a few people in society become artists? Most people live for work and family, but some
few people live for the novels they write or pictures they paint. Why? What does it mean to be
“creative”? Some create only for money and worldly success. Others create because they feel
great joy when they create, but then, why are so many artists and writers alcoholics and suicides?
--Some create in the pursuit of transcendence: of lasting beyond themselves through their
creation. We go to museums and look at the works of dead artists, and listen to dead
composers: Beethoven, Van Gogh, etc. They have transcended their own lifespans. Many hope
for this kind of transcendence, but few can ever attain it. Nonetheless, this myth of
transcendence is deeply powerful, in part because it can’t easily be disproved while you are alive.

Religion
--If religion—any religion—is true, then the human problem of the meaning of life is solved:
religion, by definition, answers the question of meaning. Religion is unlike any other meaning
of life that we have considered. All other meanings of life are only partial and provisional.
Religion, by definition, is total: its meaning encompasses everything, and applies to everyone.
--In earlier periods of history, it seems that most people held to religion as a taken-for-granted
reality, much like we hold gravity or electricity today. People in those earlier eras had no
reason to doubt: in this sense, the ultimate meaning of life was for past societies held much
more securely than it is today. It is insecure today partly because of the development of
science and technology, but even more because of relativism. If everyone believes the same
thing, then no one will question religion, but in today’s world there are so many different beliefs
that they all relativize one another—who can say what is ultimately true?
--There is an inevitable conflict in religious believers between spiritual universalism and social
relativism: believers may feel that their beliefs are true for everyone, but if they urge that too
strongly, they won’t have any friends. Thus, many believers keep quiet about their beliefs within
their pluralistic social worlds: but isn’t that a contradiction? Shouldn’t they proclaim their beliefs
to everyone, if indeed they are true for everyone? If you are a Christian or a Muslim and believe
that non-believers will eventually suffer terribly, then isn’t it a moral duty to try to convert them?
--If everyone could believe in a common religious belief, this world might be a far better place; but
in today’s world, this dream seems impossible, and because of this lack of commonality, all
specific beliefs are thrown into doubt. The question for any non-believer is, “Wouldn’t you be
happier if you believed?” The answer may be “yes”—so why can’t we believe? The question for
any believer is, “How do you know you’re right?” The answer may be, “you can’t fully know…”