Yes, but what is the point of it all?

Think about it. Look at a plant. From a seed it grows. It catches CO2 and water to make sugar and oxygen. It makes some more seeds. These seeds grow into some more plants. This we all know, this we all see. But... why? What's the purpose of this never ending cycles of life? Well, perhaps it's to make oxygen for animals to breathe, and energy for herbivores to eat. Yes, that makes sense, let's move on.

A rabbit eats plants. Its whole life, its main goal is to feed itself so to sustain its existence the longest time possible. It will produced offsprings that will survive its death. These offsprings will grow up to reach maturity themselves, and feed, and reproduce, and die. And the cycle will keep on going. But why? What is the goal of this existence? Well, perhaps it's to provide more efficient food for carnivores to eat. After all, meat provides more energy and proteins than a similar volume of grass, so in a sense, it is a better food for life forms with higher energetic demands. Let's move on.

Humans. They are said to have the highest intellect on the planet. Their ability to think abstractly has given them the upper hand in their fight for survival, in fact mankind has driven many species into utter extinction. But pause for a second, and look around you. They wake up, work for food (either through hunting or through a job which gives them income and thus access to food), they seek entertainment (not unlike cats and birds and dolphins), most find a mate and have offsprings, and as they age their children grow to take over. They aren't doing anything different. Is the purpose of the body... to try and make the brain survive for the longest time possible? If yes, this doesn't answer the question of: why?

Some would answer that the smarter you are, the more likely you're to evolve and survive. But what's the end goal of it all? Reproducing some more, according to many evolution theorists. But why? We are just spinning round in a logic cycle. To reproduce life forms evolve, and they reproduce to evolve, but no one pauses to wonder what's the whole purpose of it all.

Is the ultimate purpose of it all to create a specie of beings that has evolved further than any other, a kind of Type 4 civilisation? But then this specie wouldn't be any different - it would still seek to survive and sustain itself, just like all the species before that.

Those colonies of mussels standing still for all their adult lives until they die, those caterpillars eating entire forests, those strange creatures which no one ever sees in the deepest ocean' s abyss - why? It's as if Nature is afraid of silence. Is the purpose of life to simply break the silence of a sterile world, at any cost?

Perhaps it is my mind which has reached a limit and cannot fathom the bigger clockwork. Is the purpose of Life to simply "exist" and defy the eroding winds of Time? If so, what is it that must absolutely survive through Time? What is it that Nature is so desperate to pass down for about 500 millions years, and counting?

Is Life a new kind of information state which is to be imposed over inert Matter, ultimately converting the entire universe? In other words, is Mother Nature... having an argument with Time?

Or even stranger still... is the universe attempting to devise a way to prolong its own existence by inseminating Life within itself, Life which will surely ultimately evolve to control the Universe and save it from Thermal Death?


Food for thought.

a reply to: swanne

What's the end game?
Does there really HAVE to be a reason, though?
Maybe the reason is just to exist?

My personal answer is this....

I don't know, but I'm enjoying the journey getting there.

a reply to: swanne

Good Points.

It almost seems like it could still equate to GOD as in us all being such a being's extensions of conciousness, all in an attempt to experience everything there is to experience.

It could and would be a complete picture at some point, but possibly we all need to live in each other extension as a means of information gathering, for all we know, we're the memories of said process.

We also could be the universe's probe's or recorders, a means to " spunge " all info there is.

Ultimately though, I'd have to argue that there does in fact seem to be a rhythm to this mayhem and there is certainly a meaning / point.

The catch of that could also be, we're left over laborforce for a mission long over, no one will be back and we're kinda just on auto pilot, possibly even genetically engineered to not be able to evolve past a certain point, due to petty differences and materialistic concepts that hold back that process to instead nurture a Ricktatorship or monarchy.

Either or, you could argue that humanity would even find a way to evolve through these dystopian outcomes because we don't rely on much more than thought to evolve.

a reply to: swanne

Mebby and mebby not, but definitely food for thought especially for those of us who do not need absolute answers to the questions we ask. Over the years I have read a few sci/fi novels that have addressed your question, that is, the possibility of altering the 'natural course of universal entropy.

Your post is fun. When we ask, what is the point of it all we basically have two options. One option is to find an answer we like and then believe it, forever locking ourselves into that belief and never asking the question again. Or the other is to not find an answer that explains it all but all the while allowing us to soar to the heavens of possibility and leaving us with the ability to continue to ask the question and explore other possibilities.

a reply to: swanne

reproduction and life is purely incidental, and not mutually exclusive.

you're looking at life from our perspective. our idea of life, may not be the same all across the board. replicating may not necessarily be pivotal to life.

to try to deduce some conclusion to the meaning of life via reproduction is blinding. what you think of life may simply be equilibrium. i can ask why quantum mechanics always works in such a way that there are never any abnormalities? why dont we see trees growing upside down, why arent there pockets of places on earth where there's no gravity, why isnt there a planet that is static instead of revolving around a sun. why or how would there be a species which doesnt reproduce? there arent ever any glitches.

is the sole purpose of a planet to revolve around a star? or gravity always has a single mathematical purpose?
what we observe is not necessarily what's there or the absolute.

we cant say life is human-centric. trees nor humans, nor animals need exist for life to have a definition. we cant define it.

the point of it all is not only more than we imagine, its more than we CAN imagine.

"One throws a pebble into the water, water that is still and calm. There comes an activity, it comes for one moment, and then it vanishes. Into what does it vanish? It vanishes into the same silence in which the water was before. Water is a substance that is active by nature, and the silence, the stillness, the calmness that it shows is just the original state, the effect of its original source. This means that the natural inclination of every thing and every being is silence, because it has come from silence, and yet it is active, because it is activity that produces activity; and its end is silence."

I wonder if the point of this existence is just to experience the physical reality. We have this great world to experience through a flesh/bio shell. We just needed to take a break from the spiritual realm for a while.

Maybe this reality is simply an amusement park.

I think there is no purpose for the plants they are just doing what they have to do, I mean it`s not like the plants have a choice to either do it or not do it.

even if they had a brain and free will to decide to do it or not do it they don`t have the physical ability to stop it.

it`s a lot like asking why does the muffler of my car do what it does every time I drive my car? why does the muffler do what it does, what is it`s motivation to do it? it does it because it has no choice it doesn`t have the ability to decide to do it or not do it, and even if it did have the ability to make that decision it doesn`t have the physical ability to act on that decision.

originally posted by: swanne
Yes, but what is the point of it all?

All 'meaning' ('purpose'), like beauty, exists in the eye (perceived thoughts) of the beholder.
There is no 'meaning', no 'point' inherent in anything!

Relating to a thread running throughout your posts, all that exists is Here! Now!
All 'future' and all 'past' exist in the 'thoughts/ego' of the beholder.
Every moment of Universal existence exists already, Here! Now!

"The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be. They are descriptions of patterns that exist, all at once... " - Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman
All 'eternity' at once; Here! Now!!

There is only one moment (Planck moment; 10^-43/sec; "almost" one billion trillion trillion trillionths of a second!!!) of the entirety of existence/Reality/the Universe!
All existence, ever, is one, literally, 'timeless' moment!
Now!

"Reality is a synchrony of moments!"

All existence IS the 'Singularity'!

All that exists, ever, exists for the 'duration' of the Universe!

a reply to: swanne

Each day I wake up and look out my window, i ask myself the same question. Why?

Asking why, is an absolute waste of time.

a reply to: Alexander the Great

And, why do you think that?

a reply to: swanne
Why is this cartoon funny? Because it's true, at least from an evolutionary perspective:


Humans can ask different questions but isn't the answer the same?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Hehe, good one indeed.

But I think that somehow, the ability to ask existential questions arises from intelligence. This is because only beings capable of abstract thinking are able to ask this question.

Perhaps that consciousness has multiple evolutive stages, just like a human during his growth from a baby to an adult. Maybe the ability to question existence is not just a human fad, but actually a necessary process for all animals which reach abstract thinking, a process through which it'll then be possible to proceed to the next level of consciousness.

In other words, I am proposing that the question I ask in the Original Post might very well be necessary for our continued evolution.

a reply to: swanne

Philosophy and religion deal with your question on occasion, and there is a lot of good thought there, but I don't know that any human has ever come up with "the answer". Perhaps "because God says so" is the best we've got. I don't know that we can know the answer, and so I've spent my life mostly on other open questions.

Good to see you here again.

a reply to: swanne

The purpose is love. God is love. Concept reproduction or the translation of the Spirit is love. There is no greater good than love. There is no law against love. Everyone and everything is trying to translate love as they see it. Every time someone showed you love, that was there purpose. Every time you showed another love, that was your purpose. Even when we do # wrong it's still us trying to do what we think is good.

"In other words, I am proposing that the question I ask in the Original Post might very well be necessary for our continued evolution."

I tend to believe that for us humans it is sort of a curse--although I don't believe in curses, demons, etc. Perhaps a better description is it's a condition of humanity and the power our brains have to apply reasoning and logic to questions that have no answers. Here's how it all makes sense to me.

Why are new islands formed? It's not the product of conscious thought; it is a confluence of several geologic conditions. It is a process that simply *is*. Or not. Meaning has nothing to do with the process.

A squirrel does not awaken from sleep and think, "welp--time to go eat and then ensure continuation of our species." It's not the product of conscious thought, although animals do feel hunger, etc., and are driven by it. But it doesn't occur to squirrels to wonder why they do it. They simply *do*. Or they don't. The meaning of life is not a concept in a squirrel's reality.

Plants are the same way. They are a function of their component parts, and they simply function with no need for meaning, because meaning is irrelevant to the process.

We humans, however, have the often troublesome tendency to seek an explanation for something we don't understand. Most of what we do (save for autonomic lower-brain functions such as breathing, etc.) is done via a conscious thought process.

As we work through these processes, we are faced with many decision points that can take us in an unlimited number of possible directions. Making these choices is often simplified by the introduction of things like past experience, cultural/religious/social mores, memetics, rules, and personal expectations.

Because we're not 'programmed' to operate the same way that plants and animals do, our logic and reasoning force us to question our own motives; we have to make choices. And there are a LOT of bad choices. Oh, I've made some of my own in the past, and I will make more before I croak, I guarantee.

This extra brain power we humans have makes life really hard sometimes. Life is painful. Yeah, I know there are many animals besides humans with the ability for higher thinking, but I'm fairly certain humans are the only animals that actively worship gods--and that fills a lot of the 'causality' blank spaces for a whole lot of people.

Making life as good as possible for myself, my family and friends is important to me. I'd rather be exhausted from doing meaningful things, than be well-rested from laying around doing nothing. That is what gives meaning to life on my little planet.

There's my version of 'because' to your question of "why." It works for me. I'll bet there are many different approaches that work great for other people.

The path of least resistance disproves any theory the scientific community could put forth. Because growth is not the logical path for their model of death worship called science.

a reply to: swanne

There is no purpose. It all just is.

The one thing i can say is that life seems to be the only thing working against entropy. The universe is devolving while life creates order.