Breaking Down the Wall

Meditations on Life

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  • Meditation 4

    I am going to take a brief break from my flow of things to dump some thoughts that I have been recently mulling over. Before I proceed, however, it seems like some apologies are in order. I reread my early meditations, and was aghast at the number of grammatical and spelling errors. The issues is that I write these as they come to me, and don’t really proof read them. The words as they appear are exactly as I wrote them. I will try harder to catch these typos, but you must forgive me when I inevitably make them.

    Let us return to this meditation. As I said, I write these to try to make sense of life. My worry, however, is that in spending so much time thinking things like these over, I am wasting the precious few years I have. It is indeed a pressing question. What is the best way to spend your life? Is it working? Is it gettig rich? Exploring? Spending time with family? I like to think that everyone has their own unique purpose, and therefore a meaningful life is time spent towards that purpose. And it is easy to say that, but how do we even find that purpose? Perhaps it is things that make us happy. I enjoy spending time with my family and I enjoy learning. Should my life, then, be spending time with people and reading? Is that a life well-spent? I think I am too attached to the idea of really making a name for myself. What does it matter if I have the most money or the highest honor? This seems to be an eternal issue with humans. Thousands of years ago, we see tales of people who wanted more. More power, more fame, more wealth. Perhaps it connects back to those unique faculties of ours I mentioned earlier. Whatever the reason is, I often feel as if I have fallen victim to those same desires.

    And it is difficult, I feel, to know whether that is wrong or not. The Bible might say that I am succumbing to sin by honoring these desires. After all, perhaps it’s a mix of pride, envy, and greed that is driving me. I feel as if I am so smart and intelligent that I deserve to be at the top. Or maybe it’s that I see people with prowess and fame and I am jealous. Or maybe it’s simple: I want wealth. The Bible would certainly say I am sinful. It seems hard, however, to fully accept that. After all, churches, particularly the Catholic church, was a moneymaking machine. Were they not greedy? Did they not lust for power? So why must I be bound by the very doctrines they preach when they themselves fall short?

    I will say, however, that writing all of this out does make me feel shallow. Is it not a sad life to be driven by power and money? But then what is the alternative? Love and kindness? That certainly seems like a more noble, enjoyable pursuit. I simply don’t know how to switch my goals. I find the idea of romance almost embarassing. And for some reason, a year of (what I would imagine is) depression and a nagging eating disorder have seemed to lessen my capacity for empathy. It is quite troubling indeed.

  • Meditation 3

    As I discussed in Meditation 2, it seems likely to me that humans are reverted to existence when they no longer have control of their actions — like in cases of political brainwashing. If we assume what I had talked about in Meditation 1, that humans have an innate set of faculties that makes them different from animals, then it is part of a human’s purpose to exercise those faculties as they see fit. Just as when a lame lamb is denied its ability to exist when it cannot procure food and protection, a human is denied their ability to live when they do not have the agency to exercise their faculties. That is why I said people being brainwashed are simply existing, not living. 

    On a side note, I do think there’s some comfort in thinking that drive and passion is merely an element of being human. Although I cannot even fathom the idea of answering my big question in just a few paragraphs, I almost find solace in the idea that the reason to live is not anything deeper than it just being a biological function like hunger. 

    In any case, I think there’s much to be said about why political institutions must be structured a certain way. Specifically, they must be structured so that individuals’ agency is not imposed upon. I don’t claim to have created this idea. Countless theorists have established the necessity for government to protect freedom, and why it’s we even establish government in the first place. 

    I think a more difficult question is how we reconcile equality with that freedom, which I will discuss later. 

    In any case, I seem to have lost some structure here. Let me quickly remind myself of what I have written thus far. 1) I want to know why we live. 2) I believe that humans have different faculties that give them a drive to live, not exist. 3) With these faculties comes a surprising sense of cruelty, and 4) the suppression of these faculties is almost akin to being deprived of food. I suppose the next logical step is to decide what humans should be doing with this agency, which I will take up later. I apologize for how messy this meditation was. 

  • Meditation 2

    From Meditation 1, let us assume that we have a drive to live. What confuses me is what that desire brings with it — specifically the value of cruelty. Let me explain myself. I don’t deny that scarcity exists, so there will likely always be some conflict. I am not religious, but having grown up with a religious grandfather, I am reminded of the biblical quote “The poor will always be with you.” I don’t know the exact context, but I remember interpreting it as the fact that there will always be inequality; the question is how we respond to it. In any case, there will always be the weak and there will always be the strong. We see a similar thing in the animal world. Most group-oriented animals have well-established pecking orders and strict hierarchies, just like humans did. 

    I remember taking a political philosophy class in my freshman year of college where we discussed the origins of Christianity and its potentially unfaithful start. We read Nietzsche, who essentially suggested that the weak created Christianity to escape their unequivocal domination. In a world where the strong ruled, the only way to fight back was to restructure society such that the weak were protected. And what better way to do that than create mass frenzy about a religion that centered around caring for the weak?

    Indeed, what is interesting to me is that I agree with great philosophers like Rawls who have asserted that we all have an equal moral worth, and that all of our natural advantages are essentially undeserved. I think what is almost less clear to me is how we accommodate those disadvantages. Many great thinkers have attempted to solve this problem, and I agree it is of the utmost importance. One strain of thought that I do find fascinating is whether in doing so, we are upending a sort of natural order of things. Clearly, all across the animal kingdom we see no such efforts towards equality. Does the difference boil down to our faculties, as I discussed just one meditation earlier? What is it that gives humans an equal moral worth, and not animals? These are all questions that I do not know the answer to.

    Let me go back to my assertion about cruelty and scarcity. Now, I don’t deny that animals will bully each other. As I said, they have strict hierarchies and pecking orders. Male animals frequently force female animals to reproduce. What I still hold, however, is that there is something different about human cruelty. I think the difference here is that humans are, as I briefly touched on, moral creatures. The animal picks on the weak to keep their place so that they can eat, and the animal coerces females to ensure the survival of their species — they mate with the intent of having offspring. I cannot say the same about human sexual assault, which seems to be about power, and other cruel acts which have no real survival justification. And, even if these acts were for the good of survival, I still would call them cruel by virtue of our moral capacities. It seems, then, that for whatever reason, our unique desire to live brings with it a stroke of malice. 

    I have long wondered where this malice comes from. Is it rooted in jealousy? Or arrogance? Throughout history we have seen cases of anguish brought on by despicable goals. Countess literatures have written about humanity’s susceptibility to power. What’s interesting, though, is that we also seem to be particularly susceptible to manipulation. You think of huge movements that have left people quite simply brainwashed. It seems to me like in cases like this, we have been reverted back to existence rather than life. 

    I will pick up on this matter more, but I have run out of time here. 

  • Meditation 1

    I would like to circle back to my opening question: why do we live? By live, I don’t mean exist. There is a difference between living and existing. To exist, I think, is to simply fulfill basic needs. You exist when you eat, sleep, reproduce, and die. Animals exist. Do they live? I suppose we’ll have to take that up in another meditation. Living, however, is something more. It is having goals beyond simple survival and reproduction. Living is having passions and hobbies and desires and choices. We could all simply exist, but most of us choose to live. Perhaps this is a virtue of having an incredibly powerful brain. It might be simply impossible for a human to simply exist. Let us then, for the sake of argument, assume that humans have different capacities than animals which enables them to live rather than exist. 

    Why, then, do we do it? Well, I would imagine that it’s something innate. There is something restless in the human soul, brain, or body that propels us to act on these abilities that we have. Perhaps it is something like John Stuart Mill envisioned — a unique set of faculties that must be developed just as animals must eat. It certainly seems impossible to imagine any human being content with just eating and sleeping. Even though millions of people are forced into that life, it is not what they want. It then seems, certainly, like there is some intrinsic drive within humans to want more than just existence. To deprive ourselves of those desires is to deprive ourselves of something as basic as food. To resign yourself to existence, then, goes against our very biological nature. That, I suppose, is part of why we live. 

    Before we go too far, I’d like to take a step back and establish a couple of things. I refrain from calling these anything but meditations. There is no clear order, nor is there a clear argument. As I said, they are simply topics that come into my head. I may make normative claims, but they are not asserted with the intent to prove. This is not meant to be a philosophical argument about the nature of life and meaning: it is instead my journey to find that. So if these thoughts aren’t perfectly defended or perfectly fleshed out, that is entirely acceptable with me, and hopefully with you.