Today, I was faced twice with this question of the meaning of life; once in my social thought and theory lecture, and again on the bus chatting with a friend.
Interestingly, life is contradictory. The moment we are born, we start the process of dying. And yet at the same time, we cannot die without living. We live to die. So, we all must die one day. And what do we do in this process of dying? We, humans, as consicous, thinking animals, find a purpose in life. We ask: why are we here? What do WE want to do? Of course, in my course of sociology, I learnt that WE have no control of our lives. We live our lives to serve the society's needs, not ours. Thus, ALIENATION. We cannot get to do the things we wished to do. We struggle to work, all just to be paid to live. We get estranged from our human self to become machines/objects of the workforce to produce labor for society. We (most of us, workers) struggle to get a pay rise, we put in more hours to show loyalty just to get promoted, and in exchange we give up our individual self to society.
Then comes to the interesting question I encountered with my friend on the bus. She was asking my colleague, if he had all the time, all the money in the world (and thus need not work) what will he do? He didnt know!!!! "slack" He said. "live a day by a day merry-making. No plans, just pass each day."
That set me thinking. If I were him, would I feel the same way? That I exist for no particular reason! I am given this consciousness, given emotions just to pass each day and just die?!? Then I would think: WHY did I exist? That the universe created a thinking being with a soul... just to die? Or do I live to ensure the thriving of society? Everyone is born, works, reproduce and die, so that the next generation can continue the work that is done by the previous generation, so that society thrives. What is society? Is there a particular reason why society, although ensures our lives are in order, but also bring much suffering to us? As you know it, society has its ills. Crime, war, and deviance exist in all society. Why, for so many generations, society is still unable to bring us happiness? Why do many people feel meaningless in their lives despite the fact that they ensure society thrives?
I was thinking of an answer to this in theology, in my limited bible knowledge. God created man with emotions and consciousness so that he could think and feel, to reciprocate the love that God had for His creation. But, man's eyes (through eating the forbidden fruit) was opened good and evil, and thus both good and evil reigned in his body. Thus, the nature of man became dark. Anger, jealously, envy and all the vices was in man. It was these vices that caused disharmony among themselves. The Hobbeian theory stated that all man are nasty evil savages, who knew how to rationalise, so that by giving in to others they can get to benefit as well. That is the basis of the start of the social contract, as well as society. Society is a place where people give up their rights to the sovereign (be it government, or any forms of authority) in exchange for a comfortable life. Society definitely has its ills. That is because people cannot get what they need even though their rights has been surrendered to the sovereign and they react in such a way that harms others, because of the evilness in man. Thus to me society is actually a fallen world formed when we are separated from God and born with the darkness that entered the first man. Meaning in life for me thus cannot be found in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm.
PS: Whatever that I written above, is solely my own opinion and I don't profess it to be the absolute truth. I understand there maybe many ways to look at this issue. But its my blog! And these are my thoughts!!
