The Meaning of Life

Before going into this crucial question, the reader is cautioned that the issue isn't about truth in this case but rather what people believe. There is a spectrum of intellectuality. At the bottom end of the scale, people are gullible and simple solutions will suffice. At the other end are the sophisticates and for them a credible solution cannot suffer under the attacks of unbelievers as Christianity has from science. All belief systems are true in some sense. Heaven comes to those that raise their children well and hell to those that don't. When we procreate, the result is our reincarnation.

The question of the meaning of life has perplexed mankind from the beginning. By meaning it is meant that quality of life that compensates for suffering. If that quality is minimal and suffering is great, the subject may conclude that life isn't worth it and commit suicide. If on the other hand, meaning is great and suffering is minimal, then life goes on without significant problems. For our species it is crucial that meaning be found if we are to survive.

This is not an apparent problem for other species. Perhaps this is because they don't objectify joy and suffering and compare them to see if one overbalances the other. They are just there. They have no suicide concept.

If these two qualities are nearly in balance as is the usual case, the subject will experience periodic problems when an event in his life increases his load of suffering, perhaps by a very small amount. When this happens, joy must be increased or suffering reduced. A family can provide for this need, and does so instinctively.

Meaning is found by most in several places. Many find all they need in religion. Religion provides a formula for life with a reward at the end for those that remain faithful throughout. However, with the advent of heaven, hell is also called into existence. If one doesn't arrive in heaven, however that may be defined, then he must arrive somewhere else which must be unpleasant at least by comparison, otherwise the definition of heaven degrades. That place is hell, however defined.

The unfaithful don't like being consigned to hell, so they set about disproving its existence, which has the consequence that heaven is also disproved and meaning is lost.

This is not an inconsequential issue. There is now a noticeable tendency among the young to suicide and murder. This will be because they haven't been taught any concept containing meaning. In the absence of such a concept, life must remain pleasant or the consequence will be death. This is especially true for the young who have not yet become capable of imagining the future.

For those with sufficient consciousness to ponder this question, age must be taken into account. In youth, no ability to consider the question of personal meaning in life exists, so a simple story containing meaning is what is needed. Since the individual lacks the power of discrimination, the story may contain unbelievable features, such as magic. As life goes on however, discrimination begins to manifest itself and stories of life containing meaning must be believable. For the young male, the stories of King Arthur and Merlin are excellent providers of meaning. For young women, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty perform the same function.

When the individual attains significant understanding something more substantial is needed. Christianity has fulfilled this need in the past, but with the arrival of science and the consequent debunking of features of the Christian myth, something new is needed.

Returning to the question of the sources of meaning, many can find it in family survival. They view themselves as links in a chain that they wish not to be broken. For them, morality resolves into family survival, thus the Mafia.

Some few can rely on individual survival. This is beyond most because it is readily apparent to all but the very few that life will go on without them. People who fall into this category believe that individual death is the absolute end, for them at least, and they are all that matters. These people believe in death. To them it is not apparent that they go on in the lives of their children or that their soul is immortal.

Some rely on reincarnation. They seem to see that they are the reincarnation of some long ago character in the human drama and this character was significant, otherwise he or she would not be remembered. Being the reincarnation of that soul is satisfying because death becomes meaningless. If one is going to reincarnate, it is pointless to die and it might be possible to influence one's next incarnation by applying oneself in this incarnation.

For most, suicide is avoided by the religious association of it with immorality. This is effective as long as religion remains believable. As soon as one dismisses religion as unbelievable in one's inner life, the protection against suicide is lost. When suffering arrives, as it inevitably will, suicide is there, beckoning.

There was a man, an estimable character in his land, who found as life progressed, even though his public perception required him to attend church, that the Christian myth wasn't believable. This presented him with no real problem except for the need to rationalize his hypocrisy. However, eventually his wife died of cancer. When that happened, his suffering increased dramatically and suicide began to beckon. He tried to avoid it by finding a new wife, but she proved unable to fulfill the minimum requirements and so, suicide won the day.

Suffering cannot be avoided in small and large doses because of lack of understanding, especially when young. If one avoids the pitfalls of lack of understanding, there is always material need. If that is avoided, then ill health and the gradual approach of death are ever present sources of suffering. Finally, the loss of a loved one is unequaled in its ability to impose suffering on the individual.

The great appeal of religion is meaning. Christ demonstrated that his view of God was sufficient to withstand the worst that life could serve up, injustice. It has since been demonstrated in millions of cases that it is sufficient to withstand any other form of suffering imaginable. However, it is only available to the faithful and for the average person to achieve faith, the story has to be credible. The Christian myth is becoming progressively more unbelievable. This becomes apparent to those with access to the other interpretation of life, science.

Science is a very good explanation for life but is totally devoid of meaning.

Nihilism, the acceptance of the notion that life is in fact meaningless, is being experimented with by some, but the general expectation must be that it cannot stand up to suffering.

Due to the draining away of the believability of Christianity, a possible approach might be to dissect it in order to find the meaning within it in order to see if that meaning can be transferred into some more believable vehicle, say science.

The meaning found in Christianity lies in the concept of God. If one is the creature of some superior being, then one most commonly will wish to be viewed positively by that superior. As long as we see our parents as superior, we wish to be accepted by them and therefore bend our efforts to comply with their wishes. As we lose the sense of their superiority, our need to fulfill their wishes declines. God is so far superior to us and so free from condemnation that he fulfills this need even as our parents are discovered to be less than godlike in themselves.

As Christianity declines in believability, which is occurring because of long standing claims that can't withstand the scrutiny of science: virgin birth, raising the dead, restoring sight to the blind, the resurrection, His God also loses believability by association. God continues to exist as the source of the masculine principle, but He becomes remote and uninterested in individual lives.

The answer to this problem is the discovery of another superior being capable of withstanding the scrutiny of science and demonstrably connected to individual lives. As was demonstrated in the section devoted to her, Gaia is capable of fulfilling this need.

Gaia should be considered to be the sum of life on this planet. She is that entity formerly known as Mother Nature, though that concept was so degraded by Christianity that a new name is justified. Every living thing is a manifestation of Gaia. She is obviously opposed to suicide, since it is so rare in the natural world. Apparently, it is only justified when suffering is great and no other solution is available and natural death isn't imminent.

Meaning is provided by Gaia in the realization that we are participants in her own struggle to survive in the very long term. Each of us is trying by our own efforts within our own lives to find some effective method of survival. That is the purpose of this essay and the reason for its publication.

Gaia is God's representative on earth and His method of creating life. When we communicate with Gaia, we are talking with God's emissary. Gaia is like God's chief of staff. God doesn't speak our language since He is so vastly greater than we, but Gaia does. Any communication from the environment to us that we have no part in, is a message from Gaia. The most personal of these are feelings (not arising from our own thoughts) and dreams.

Fear is Gaia informing us that we are unprepared for the experience that is approaching. We may turn that fear into panic, if we are immature. We may conclude that we are sufficiently prepared to risk it and that the reward justifies the risk. Joy is Gaia's reward for completion of a task meaningful to her and well done. We may take too much credit, if we are immature. We may conclude that we did it on our own and owe no debt of gratitude for our success, but without Gaia's direct participation in the provision of the feelings necessary to the discrimination between good and bad moves, we couldn't be successful in anything.

The value in recognition of Gaia lies in discriminating between her communications to us, which we can absolutely rely on, and our own self generated feelings resulting from our own thoughts, which if over relied on will lead to self reinforcing loops or megalomania as it is sometimes called.

Feelings are attached to every experience of life. Those that are unreliable are those that attach to our own thoughts. This is why animals are seldom wrong, especially those not attached to humans. They don't think much so they aren't much afflicted by spurious feelings. When confusion resulting from irrational human acts confronts them, they will try to understand and may succumb to insanity in the same way that humans sometimes do. The book and movie, The Horse Whisperer describes an excellent example of this.

In summary, human culture is suffering a loss of meaning in life because of the effect science is having on religion. This leads to rising numbers of incidents of murder and suicide. The crimes of children are directly attributable to this cause. The solution is the recognition of another superior being consistent with the discoveries of science and that being is Gaia. The simplistic statement that transmits this meaning is that when we act in violation of Gaia's wishes we will suffer, when we act in accord with her wishes we will experience her rewards, joy and success.