Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Is 42 the only thing that aliens and the answer to the question of the meaning of life have in common?


Some people tend to think that philosophers get together and with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in their hands try to find an answer to the question of the meaning of life. But if you ask most philosophers what they think about the meaning of life, an empty look would perhaps be the best reply you get. Then again, when we disengage ourselves for a minute from things like poking people on Facebook or favoring others’ tweets and instead start thinking ‘What the hell am I doing in my life?’ or ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’, most of us would conclude that what we really value is living a meaningful life. A meaningful life perhaps for us is even more valuable than a happy life. So we come to the conclusion that if living a meaningful life is such an important thing for us and presumably for other Homo sapiens, there should be someone, some group of people who have found the answer to the meaning of life question. So we try asking the question of philosophers again. And we get disappointed. Again! 

One of the reasons why, at least for some of us, looking for the answer to the meaning of life question becomes a hopeless pursuit is that we may not know what to look for. Consider these answers. A chair! Can the answer to the meaning of life question be a chair? Can it be an object? Imagine someone telling you that she has found the meaning of life and now she is keeping it in her closet. Can the meaning of life be in the form of a number? Like 42? Can it be a word? A song? Or a religious hymn? Can what makes life meaningful be a person? Imagine a person telling you that they have got the meaning of life with them, and thanks to their existence, your life is now meaningful. 

The meaning of life question is not the only one which not only do we not know its answer, but also we do not know how to look for the answer. Trying to look for aliens in the universe has a similar problem: if we want to look for aliens, what should we look for? Should we look for things/sentients that are more or less similar to us? Should they have eyes and ears? Can aliens not have similar biological organs as us? Can they not look like some animals, say, kangaroos? Can aliens not be living organisms? A rock! Can an alien look like a piece of rock? Without even moving!? How about a star? Can aliens be in the form of stars? Imagine something like our sun be an alien! 

What the task of finding the meaning of life and that of finding aliens in the universe have in common is that we may not have a clear idea of what we should look for. But another similarity between these questions is that we’ll get to know parts of the answer by asking yet another question: ‘What do we want to do with the answer?’ If we encounter an alien, what do we want to do with it? If we find the meaning of life, what do we want to do with it? 

In the case of looking for aliens, the answer would be something like this: we try to communicate with them. Perhaps they know things about the universe that we don’t know. Or together with the aliens, we can solve some of our planetary or even galactic problems. But if these are the answers we give to the question ‘what do we want to do with aliens?’, then we already have some ideas about the answer to the question ‘what should aliens look like?’ as well. If we expect them to be able to somehow communicate with us, then aliens cannot be just a piece of rock, or a star. They cannot be kangaroos either. They may not be alive in the precise biological sense that we earthlings are, but what they should have is a certain level of intelligence that enables us communicate with them, even if the communication is very basic. Here the point is that we get to know how to look for something by know what we expect to do with it when we find it. 

In the same way, the answer that we give to the question ‘what do we want to do with the meaning of life?’ can help us answer the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ or ‘what life is a meaningful one?’ So, the answer to the meaning of life question cannot be an object or a number because we do not want to hide the meaning of life in our closet or multiply it by two to double the amount of meaning in our lives. The reason why we are curious to know about the meaning of life is that we want to live a meaningful life: a meaningful life should be something livable. So the meaning of life should be in our everyday activities. Someone who sits at a corner for their entire life without learning or doing anything, without travelling or getting that much curious about anything, etc. does not have a very meaningful life simply because he or she does not engage in many activities. On the other hand, someone who consciously decides to explore different places, learn different skills, play games, interact with people at different levels, etc. would "probably" have a more meaningful life compared to the first person. There might be more into a meaningful life than the sheer engagement in various activities. But if there is an answer to the meaning of life question, it should be found in relation to our everyday life activities. The meaning of life cannot be in one sentence, one person, a place, an object, or a number. 

Other than 42, there are other things that aliens and the question of the meaning of life have in common. We can find out how to look for their answers by thinking about what we want to do with them. Sometimes in life, before starting to search for something, we can first ask ourselves ‘what do I want to do with it when I find it?’ The answer which we give to this second question can help us find the answer to the first question. This method of thinking, by the way, is called "pragmatism".
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