What's it all about? Julian Baggini Flashcards
Introduction
As we understand the great diversity of faiths in the world, the historical events and forces that shaped their doctrines and sacred texts, and the fallibility of many of their leaders, the idea that they provide direct access to absolute truth loses its credibility. Divinely inspired or not, the human hand is all too clearly present. Even if we do believe, we cannot accept religious teachings unquestioningly.
The question of life’s meaning is not one that can be solved by any discovery of new evidence.
The search for meaning is essentially personal.
Chapter 1 – Looking for the blueprint
We cannot assume that answering the question about something’s origins tells us about its future or present purpose.
There is now a standard naturalist story about the origins of human life. The story begins with the Big Bang fifteen billon years ago, continues with the formation of our sun ten billion years later, and comes up to date with the relatively recent emergence of primitive single-cell life forms, which through the process of evolution culminated in the emergence of Homo sapiens 600,000 years ago.
Evidence comes from a number of disparate sciences including cosmology, theoretical physics, astronomy, biology and biochemistry. It is therefore broadly overwhelming.
The worry many people have is that if the naturalist account is true, then life can only be a meaningless accident of nature.
From a biological point of view, the life of an individual human is not of prime importance. What matters is that the genes carried by the human are passed on and survive. At best, if we do serve a purpose, that purpose is to continue the existence of our genes.
It can be misleading to generalise too much about what ‘existentialists’ have to say about life’s meaning, since those thinkers labelled as existentialist differed enormously in their beliefs. Nonetheless, the atheist existentialists do have something in common which relates importantly to our discussion of naturalism. All would agree that the ‘discovery’ that there is no God has created a crisis of meaning for human life. The reason for this is that we assumed that purpose and morality had their source in something outside of ourselves. When this assumption was overturned, we lost the source of life’s meaning.
But surely, far from leaving life meaningless, this may simply lead us to conclude that the source of life’s meaning is not where we thought.
For Sartre, the crucial truth we have to recognise is that because purpose and meaning are not built in to human life, we ourselves are responsible for fashioning our own purposes. It is not that this life has no meaning, but it has no predetermined meaning.
Predetermined purposes could conceivably make life less meaningful. This is one reason why Sartre thought his existentialism was optimistic. Because human beings have the power to determine their own purposes, they have greater potential for leading meaningful lives than mere artefacts that are assigned an essence by their creators.
Why should our purposes have to be inherited from on high?
The idea that there must be some kind of cosmic designer is sometimes justified by sophisticated arguments but is perhaps more commonly supported by a kind of gut instinct, a strong compulsion many feel to believe that the universe can’t be just a brute fact.
I think that creation stories of religious texts are obviously false in that they conflict with each other and our best scientific understanding of how the universe began.
The view that we are created to serve God is not only objectionable on the grounds that it robs humanity of its dignity. What could seem more unlikely that the supreme being would feel the need to create human beings, with all their complexity, and with all the suffering and toil that human life entails, solely so that it can have creatures to serve it? This is an image of God as an egotistical tyrant, determined to use its power to surround itself with acolytes and have praise heaped upon it.
Most religious believers use their own judgement when interpreting their holy books. They follow the rules set out in their sacred texts only if they think these promote a better life for all. The sacred texts no longer have any particular authority.
This is a faith that a God we cannot know to exist has a purpose we cannot discern, for an afterlife we have no evidence is to come.
The mistake is to think that that understanding the origins of life automatically tells us its end goal or present purpose.
The naturalist belief that life was not created for a purpose does not mean that life can have no purpose.
Chapter 2 – Living Life Forwards
If the meaning of life is tied to goal-achievement, then achieving that goal can leave you with ‘emptiness’ – nothing left to provide meaning. The achievement of the goal is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time. This reflects the aesthetic nature of human life. When our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life.
Many of do look towards some idyllic future when we have ‘made it’ as providing purpose for what we do. This is a mistake. At its root is a failure to realise that if what is being worked towards is worthwhile in itself, then so are many other things that are within our grasp right now. After all, the difference between the luxury lifestyle and a moderately affluent one is only a matter of degree.
The person who sacrifices too much enjoyment of life to serve the purpose of future wealth and security is making the mistake of overestimating the extent to which his future life will be better than the one he could have now.
The risk is not only that the future won’t be good enough to justify the past, but also that future will never come. One of the great risks of making life’s purpose some future goal is that, as mortal creatures, we can never be sure we will live to see that day.
Although it is true that financial strain has a negative impact on personal happiness, whether or not we feel under strain depends largely on how we perceive things. As the Roman Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said, albeit with a dash of understatement, ‘If you are distressed by an external thing, it is not this thing which disturbs you, but your own judgement about it. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.’
Another reason why we might prefer to think we will be happy only when all the external factors are in place is that we find it hard to accept the imperfections of life. Sartre describes the need to accept the facticity of existence: the way the world is whether we like it or not. Instead of accepting the facticity of the world, that such imperfections need to be dealt with, we imagine that we will have our ideal life sometime in the future.
If we think that a life without any difficulties and worries lies in the future we are mistaken. We need to recognise the fragility of good fortune and the impermanence of things. And we need to recognise that life is rarely an undiluted pleasure and that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being.
Chapter 3 – More things in heaven and earth
Sometimes what is intolerable is true.
Religious believers should agree that their faith does not reveal to them what the purpose of life is. In that sense they are no closer to understanding life’s meaning than anyone else. But they can still insist that in another sense their quest for purpose is complete, since they have handed over responsibility for it to the highest being of all.
I prefer to say that faith is ‘non-rational’ rather than ‘irrational’ because faith is not essentially going against the dictates of reason (although it often does) but about disregarding the usual standards of proof and evidence demanded by rationality. Faith is thus about ‘opting out’ of the need for rational justification rather than a deliberate attempt to act contrary to reason.
Once there are rational grounds for belief, faith is no longer required.
Atheism is not a faith position. Faith is not about bridging the gap between rational belief and certainty; it is about sidestepping rationality altogether. Abandoning reason means abandoning the most reliable method we have for determining what is true or fruitful in favour of trust in our own convictions or the testimony of others.
Faith may seem benign when it results in Sunday worship at the local church, but it can look rather more dangerous when it results in people sincerely believing that they know God’s will, and that this conflicts with the views of others.
The reliance on faith is not supported by reason, but by unreliable mechanisms for finding truth: mainly personal conviction and the testimony of others.
Everything we know about human beings suggests we are mortal animals who cease to exist when our bodies die. It makes surviving death a remote possibility. Human life is not suited to immortality.
An eternal life might turn out to be the most meaningless of all. As Albert Camus wrote in the Plague ‘The order of the world is shaped by death’. The very fact that one day life will end is what propels us to act at all.
Life must be finite to have meaning, and if finite life can have meaning, then this life can have meaning.
Many find the idea that there is nothing transcendental to redeem the lives of the wretched intolerable. But this is simply a sign of human weakness – an inability to confront unpleasant truths about the world and our desire to seek sanctuary in illusions.
Chapter 4 Here to help
For the vast majority of us, our lives become fuller if we are concerned with the fortunes of others as well as ourselves. As Bertrand Russell said in his Problems of Philosophy there is something claustrophobic in the life of a person wrapped up in his or her own little world.
We need to remember that the purpose of helping others is to bring them benefits, not to engage in charity for charity’s sake.
Chapter 5 The Greater Good
The problems with thinking that human fulfilment will come in a future utopia are almost identical to those associated with thinking it will come in heaven or in our own futures.
It takes some bravery to confront the possibility of a full and meaningful life here and now, with the risk of it all going wrong. For if it does go wrong, there are no second chances after death.
Chapter 6 As long as you’re happy
One of the most common lies in western civilisation comes from the lips of parents: “I don’t mind my what my children end up doing, just as long as they’re happy”.
“It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” – John Stuart Mill.
Mill’s choice is a simplified one, but it does reflect the fact that there are different types of happiness and some of these forms are more sophisticated, in that they are based on the exercise of human beings ‘higher’ capacities and not just the ‘lower’ capacities.
If it is a mistake to make too much of the intellectual side of our nature, it is also misguided to make too little of it. We use our intellects and languages to do more than theorise or read.
How much intellectual activity is required for us to be happy will depend on our own particular dispositions than on universal human nature.
Never before in history has the promise of happiness been so great and the reality so disappointing. Fuelled by consumerism and the power of advertising and the media, we are encouraged to think that happiness is within our grasp. Yet of course these images are aspirational. If they reflected reality they would have no appeal.
This disparity between reality and what we aspire to cannot help us feel happier, since it only serves to emphasise what is not perfect about our lives, what we don’t have as opposed to what we do. This is why the psychologist Oliver James has suggested in all seriousness that we need to severely curb the power and extent of advertising. These images are literally damaging our mental health.
If the pursuit of happiness is self-defeating that doesn’t mean we have to forget about it and just hope that whatever we do will make us happy. The problem only seems to arise when we pursue happiness directly. The key is to discover what leads to happiness and do that. We will then find that happiness follows.
The wisdom of the Ancient Greeks is hard to beat. In various ways many of the argued that if we cultivate the right outlook, we will be able to withstand the misfortunes that life throws at us. At his trial Socrates is reported to have said “A good man cannot be harmed in life or in death”. Epictetus argued, “It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about those things’.
It sounds old-fashioned, and perhaps it is, but we have forgotten how to be thankful for what we’ve got and instead only know how to be resentful about what we haven’t. Our desire for happiness is like a craving that we think can only be satisfied by feeding it more. Yet it is the craving that is the problem.
Chapter 7 Becoming a contender
Failure to be satisfied by any kind of relative success is a route to despair.
The desire for success cannot be fulfilled if we continually compare our own success with that of those who have had a little bit more. Only the most successful can be satisfied by that approach. As psychologists have observed, our own sense of self-esteem is largely generated by how we compare ourselves to our peers. Yet we tend to compare ourselves to those apparently doing better than we are, discounting those who are less fortunate. One way out of this dilemma is to accept that success can be relative as well as absolute.
The most plausible sense in which success can give meaning to life is the sense in which we can succeed in becoming who we want to be – we can achieve this only by doing. This kind of a success is more of a process than the achievement of an outcome. The key idea here is that we are the ‘authors of our own being’, that we forge our own identities.
Many of us do not feel that our achievements are real until they have been so validated. We would be wise to resist this feeling and learn to value what we are without the need for recognition from others.
Self-actualisation - the realisation or fulfilment of one’s talents and potential, especially considered as a drive or need present in everyone.
The great proliferation of self-help books is only possible because they tap into a genuine and near-universal human desire for self-actualisation. They may promise you success, but they may focus only on visible success, whereas real success is about inner development. They promise too much too easily, ignoring the fact that becoming is a kind of struggle. They may promise you can have it all, whereas it should really be an end in itself.
The biggest danger is the way a culture of self-help fosters both feelings of inadequacy and hopes or unattainable ideals. But life is not that easy and we cannot expect foolproof prescriptions for fulfilment and meaningful lives.
Problems are compounded by the illusion of control the self-help culture generates. The impression builds that there is nothing to stop you being all these wonderful things but yourself. We are surely fooling ourselves if we think we are in complete control of our lives. As the old joke goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
The genuine and potentially fruitful desire to develop ourselves and become the authors of our own being gets hijacked and distorted by the self-help culture, so it becomes a source of anxiety and self-doubt, the futile quest to become a complete all-round wonderful person, fully in control of our wealth, health and happiness. It is no longer good enough to strive to become what one desires; one has to become more, to achieve more. To raise a happy family, or live your life pursuing your passion, no matter what recognition you get, should be seen as a success.
We need to set our own agenda, know for ourselves what success really means, and not be sucked into a rat race that only really succeeds in grinding all its competitors down.
Chapter 8 – Carpe Diem
The most intense aesthetic experiences actually have their power precisely because they remind us of our mortality. Being overwhelmed in a powerful experience of the here and now makes the transitory nature of existence evident and thus brings home to us the fact that the very possibility of experience itself will come to an end. It certainly descries how one may feel, especially when listening to music or watching a great play.
There is a certain art to the pursuit of pleasure.
Moments of pleasure are precious because they pass, because we cannot make them last any longer than they do.
We need to make the most of today because life is short and this day is one of the few we have, not because today is the only day we have or because we should ignore tomorrow. The urgency to make the most of today is thus not premised on the unlikelihood of tomorrow coming, but the possibility that it might not and the certainty that at least one tomorrow won’t.
The call to seize the day is the call to appreciate what we value in life, and not to put them off indefinitely. The true spirit of carpe diem is not to panic and try to experience everything now, but to make sure every day counts.
We need to counter the cult of pleasure, which now dominates advertisements and lifestyle magazines. They seem to offer the promise that, if we can fill our lives with enough restaurant meals and holidays we will get enough pleasure to have full and satisfied lives. They also promote a kind of hedonistic angst, the fear that there are great pleasures others are enjoying which we are not.
Chapter 9 – Lose your self
I think it is true that people find it hard to be happy and at ease with the world if they are too wrapped up with themselves and, in particular, their problems. The life of such a person is what Bertrand Russell called ‘feverish and confined’. Such people do need to learn to care a little less about themselves and take a wider perspective on the world. Doing so can free them from the mental trap of unproductive egocentrism.
Human beings show far too great a propensity to accept ideas that are in circulation where they happen to have grown up, and reject those that are foreign or alien. Indeed, this is one reason to be suspicious of religions, for although religions claim to reversal universal truths about the absolute nature of God, which religion a person believes seems to depend mainly on local contingencies.
While the virtues of keeping an open mind are widely appreciated, it is not often noted that a certain narrowing of the mind is also required if we are to get anywhere at all. Do your long and hard thinking at the most general level possible and don’t bother to examine every specific example of the kind of belief you have dismissed.
One of the most basic beliefs I have is that human beings are essentially physical animals, and that they cannot survive the death of their brains.
If I see prima facie compelling evidence that I am wrong to hold the strong thesis of human mortality, then the edifice of my beliefs is under threat and I have to look closely at it. But note I need strong prima facie evidence, not just an apparent counter-example or a mere counter-claim to merit a serious re-examination of my beliefs.
We are not arrogant to believe what we are sure we have good reasons have to believe and reject that which we don’t. We are only arrogant if we deny the possibility that we might nevertheless be wrong.
Chapter 10 – The threat of meaningless
A certain degree of angst or despair at the purposelessness of the universe is considered a sign that a person has truly grasped the full reality of the human condition.
When thinkers like Nietzsche first proclaimed the death of God, it was against a background of a widely shared presupposition that the existence of God was required in order for life to have meaning and for morality to have a basis. Confronted then with the alleged truth that the universe is without, purpose, sense or urgency, dislocation and existential panic could be expected. If one assumes the universe does not have a purpose, the shattering of that assumption is bound to generate anxiety.
We can accept that the universe is purposeless and that there is no source of meaning outside of this world without concluding that life is itself meaningless.
Life can be meaningful if we find it worth living for its own sake, without recourse to further aims, goals or purposes.
Conclusion
The mere fact that life’s meaning is available and potentially evident to all is a major challenge to those who see themselves as the guardians of life’s significance: the priests, gurus, and teachers who would have us think life’s meaning is beyond ordinary mortals. To challenge this view is to challenge the power others seek to exert over us by their claims to special knowledge.
We need to confront the fragility, unpredictability and contingency of life and do the best we can with it.
