| Skills/Subjects: | essay |
I recognize three views, observe two views, and actively engage in one view: super-macroscopic, macroscopic, and microscopic.
Macroscopically, I am completely negligible and have absolutely no use to this particular universe except in terms of entropy and act as a physical manifestation of energy. There is no goal I can accomplish alive than dead. Thus, life has no real purpose to the one living it.
Microscopically, I am completely accountable and have every use to myself and those around me; thus, I can describe my overall philosophy here as humanist. In order to please myself — an action brought on by both my particular species’ traits of self-preservation and the resulting psychological justification of accepting the microscopic — I do things that I enjoy. I choose microscopic philosophy, because my first-person goal is to enjoy and make the most out of life; therefore, if i were to embrace the macroscopic view i’d either be a social outcast (which would suck because i’m a social creature) or just kill myself off somewhere and avoid this altogether. Thus, life has purpose to everyone living it together – this is the default setting for all organisms that do not actively destroy themselves.
There is also a super-macroscopic view in which all ideas and faculties are rejected, as there is no possible way of actually knowing anything. This is where the “we’re all just a figment of something’s imagination” idea fits. Since there is no way of knowing anything here, it is just as negligible a prospect as whether the pigeon that just crapped on my shoulder ate worms or 5-day-old fries off the street. It’s still poop on my shoulder and I’ll just wash it off eventually. (Because this is so negligible, there is no reason for me to even consider it at all except for philosophical musings such as this essay, and even then the reader here may as well forget about it. The only thing that sentence and these proceeding it contributes to is the arrangement of electrons for my pleasure.) Thus, life has purpose only to the one living it.
These views are all mutually exclusive, in that to accept one view the other views must be completely rejected as personal everyday philosophy. This is where the trouble of god comes in. God, as interpreted by the more popular religions on Earth, spans all these mutually exclusive views: god controls the entire universe (macroscopic) and expects each particular organism to live according to particular rules (microscopic) to proceed to the afterlife that is completely denied by pure science observed by humans (super-macroscopic). I suppose in some quantum universe-hopping way several religious views are possible, such as reincarnation (sans nirvana-type things, unless you eventually get stuck in a particularly nice universe at some point in your quantum universe-hopping) and “soul” habitation.
This matter of souls is another issue where the “existence precedes essence” comes in; an instance of relativity. The only way souls could work is if the super-macroscopic were true, as how are souls introduced and removed? Although, souls could be particular arrangements of energy (a concept describable macroscopically in our universe), which could inhabit multiple hosts much the same way a gnat inhabits multiple ears. It’s just a matter of how to make both stay in your head before the soul gets frustrated with their shortcomings and forces it out.