Life is Inconsiderate

The “great man” theory of history is currently unfashionable, having been beaten back by theorists who believe that only great waves of fate push us around rather than that individuals turn the tide. Nevertheless, someone has to cure polio. Consider that the meaning of life for many of us may be to serve as a particle in the great waves of fate that hurl some individual to glory or ignominy. The smallest detail of our interactions with others may spur them to some great or horrendous feat, or may leave some feat unaccomplished by them, the problem remaining for another to solve — perhaps in a less than timely or less than satisfactory manner. Do you take more care in your dealings with strangers and acquaintances (assuming that you already take some level of care with your friends and family)? Do you tune out the whole idea and assume everything will take care of itself? Do you feel very small and unuseful, considering the vast odds against your personally doing anything particularly interesting?

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Similarly, the biological imperative to our existence has been denied or downplayed by many; they instead argue that our reason and intellect mean we are here to grapple with intellectual questions or advance civilization or help others. Nevertheless, the simple fact is that we have some genes and a basic-level desire to engage in an activity designed to pass them on. Consider: If the point of life is to reproduce, and you are in no position to reproduce in the normal means and do not consider this situation likely to change, are you obligated to donate genetic material to a sperm or egg bank for the purposes of fulfilling the biological imperative? Does this only count as having fulfilled that imperative if the genetic material is successfully used to create a new life? If so, should you repeatedly phone the sperm or egg bank in order to figure out whether that condition has been satisfied?

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Other people tell us we exist to propagate morality as it is partially codified in a religious text (well, several different religious texts) and as it is interpreted by societal dignitaries of some sort. Consider a world in which you have been working to convert Jewish people to Catholicism in accordance with what you consider to be Christ’s wishes, and then you get to heaven and everything’s kosher. If you could go back and have another shot, would you follow a different religious text and/or societal dignitary, or would you shun certainty, comforting your directionless soul with the sure knowledge that at worst you would be lukewarmly wrong? Alternatively, consider a world in which you have worked to enact laws recognizing gay marriage, and then you get to heaven and find that Jesus cries every time a homosexual act is committed. Does this change your answer to the earlier question?

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Finally, consider a world (and a universe) that was created as part of a third-grade science project by a forgetful God with a cluttered closet. On a Godly plane of existence, universes may well be produced quickly and put in boxes for storage; occasionally, they would be unearthed, looked at briefly, and forgotten about again. The universes contained in a cluttered God-closet could well have been abandoned as soon as they were graded, and we would then be scurrying about waiting for attention from an entitiy whose focus will eternally be elsewhere. What grade do you think God got on this universe? Depending on your answer to the previous question, if you were God, would you ask the teacher if you could do the assignment over and receive additional credit? What happens when God’s family moves and God’s mom, packing up, tries to get rid of some of the clutter? And if that happens, what precisely will have been the point of considering whether life has a point?

On June 21, 2005, about a month after I posted this, I am officially disavowing this as a statement of philosophy. (But if it's funny, keep on finding it funny.) Basically, I was really tired of other people when I wrote this. It's interesting to me that I'm capable of articulating viewpoints with perfect sincerity that I look at later and say "What the hell was that?" But I bet more people than I are capable of such maneuvers; they just don't have websites.

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