Providing Context and Meaning For Our Lives

As human beings it's important that we put our lives into perspective, so that we can better understand ourselves and others.

Universe

We need to put ourselves in the context of our universe and neighboring universes. There's other lifeforms out there and we need to acknowledge that. We need to live in harmony with all alien beings and find some common purpose.

History

Our past has a huge impact on our behavior today. We need to think about not only when we were cavemen, but also apes and marsupials. Then we need to go back to when we were fish and simple animals. Through millions of years not only have our eyes developed, but also our behaviors, all driven not by the need to survive, but the need to feel good. After all, that's what really drives the universe.

Cells

Living cells are vastly complex. I believe the first cells arrived on Earth from space debris. It took far more than a billion years for a cell to evolve — the work actually began soon after the Big Bang went boom. So, for 15 trillion years our little cells evolved from molecules into the overweight, obnoxious, annoying specimens known as humans. But no worries, because the universe has all the time in the world, since the great cosmos never began and will never end.

Context

So, as you pull the tab on your Grape Fanta and look me square in the eyes, you say, "So, Todd, then, what's it all about?" I immediately think of the other civilizations out there that are allowing us to live. But why? They want to preserve our species because we struggled for trillions of years just so that we can watch a reality show on color TV.

We deserve to exist because we worked hard for it.

And as for the advanced creatures that are keeping Earth a giant, living, bio-zoo, what's the point? Because as advanced members of the universe they have a moral obligation to protect lower organisms. Why? It's a moral imperative. And what does that mean? There's really no one to write the rulebook because the universe is mostly rocks and burning hydrogen and there's no one to really care. But the aliens care because caring makes them feel good.

Meaning of Life

So, the only meaning to life that there can be is that they let us live, and we should let other lifeforms on our planet live. As supposedly intelligent beings we have a duty to be caretakers for nature and animals. Unfortunately, we are doing the exact opposite and as long as we continue this path we are a failed species. We are following Malthusian principles and simply breeding to the limit of our food supply, and leaving widespread destruction in our wake. The first agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago was really great — or so we thought — because it allowed us to have cities. Once we could farm and store grain we stopped being nomads and we could focus on the arts, architecture, theatre, and making our religions more sophisticated. The second agricultural revolution of the 1950s then gave us another quantum leap. We were able to grow our population from 3 to 6 billion in just 40 years. And now we get to double population again from 6 to 12 billion, or at least we'll keep trying until our whole civilization comes tumbling down.

Of course, improvements in agriculture is not the only technology that allows humans to proliferate. Our medical technology allows us to save lives and extend lives. Now we get to live longer in a crowded overheated world. How fun! The whole purpose of technology is to make us more comfortable, and in so doing that we are releasing thousands of chemicals in our air, land, and sea. We are burning coal to run air conditions to keep us cool, and the emissions from power plants accumulate in the atmosphere, create a greenhouse effect, and then make us hotter. It's a vicious, untenable cycle. We have achieved a great level of comfort and as a result we now have a generation of soft, snowflakes. Evolution is all about struggling to make us hard, and technology is all about overriding evolution to make us soft. But I digress ... the main point here is that humans are breeding like wildfire and are in no danger of extinction right now, but our love for nativity and techno gadgets is driving millions of other species to extinction. Now, I ask you, IS THAT FAIR?

Stories vs. Reality

Now, as soon as we could talk, as soon as we could THINK, and as soon as we started sitting around campfires at night, we started inventing stories. Before the science we had to use stories to explain everything, and when the science came the stories stayed. At this point we humans are buried in stories, which I call mythological packages. The stories become realism for most people. My favorite author, Daniel Quinn, said that if we want to save the world we must give people a better story. On this point, I disagree. What I believe is that we must strip away the stories, or mythology, and make people look at cold hard reality, as sorry as it it.

The reality is that we are simply a cluster of cells who long ago decided they could meet their needs better as a group than as individuals. We had to because our prey was getting too big. We had to be bigger. That, my friend, is all there is to our existence. End of story.

There are hundreds of things we can do to protect our planet both on the individual level and by working for good public policy. Right now, in this dim period of our human history, the bad stories are outnumbering the good ones. But that can change, and the change begins with you and me.