An Essay on Meaning of Life - Part I

What is the meaning of Life? "The Question " is as timeless as the time itself. From the start of her conscious beginning humanity has been asking this question in numerous ways. Quest for meaning in our existence is the germination seed of world religions and philosophy. Although the desire to know the answer and seek the purpose of our existence has driven thousands of years of continuous quest, the answer remains as elusive today as it was at the beginning of civilization.
For some people even an attempt to answer this question is dangerously close to hubris. However I believe we all answer this question in one way or another in our own way that gives purpose to our life and a reason to live. My attempt in this essay is to give a framework for the answer to The Question that is general yet in line with biological, evolutionary, philosophical and or religious thoughts. This is how I have answered the question and although I believe what is described here is general and objective, some may find this to be in conflict with their view of the world. I am not proposing this as an objective reality and therefore do not expect unanimous peer agreement, however I will appreciate constructive feedback and input.

My primary effort is seeking the truth as genuinely as possible and not a new age effort of mixing science and religion, or justifying validity of one or the other based on insights presented here. First and foremost I will seek the patterns in nature and use those as axioms to build the case for my answer to the meaning of life. In some cases the answer and the quest will match some faiths and in others it may go against others. I will not take an extra effort to reconcile established faiths or in some cases may even offend some current trends in scientific thought. However I do believe that if we reach an agreement on general framework for the answer than every reader can take the reconciliation with their faith as a personal exercise, if that is important to their inner harmony. Having said the above you will notice few religious overtones in some arguments and the reason for it is both a personal preference and in some cases it provides a short cut to reach a long drawn argument – but in general I will not be invoking divine preference or intent as the basis for argument.

Before we begin this quest, let me address an obvious answer that many believe in – that there is no purpose of life. Life just is; it evolved out of random chemical processes and asking the meaning of life is meaningless and a vestige of a highly mystical tradition of our civilization. As a scientist at heart I respect this answer; however I would like to submit that regardless of the origin of life, it is important for us to seek the answer to this question. Why is it important? Because defining a purpose is a way for us to establish moral principles of right and wrong and create purpose for our lives. While the reason to seek answer is more fundamental than what I state here but for brevity sake I will reserve my full explanation of my belief that there is a definable purpose/meaning of life and it is profoundly important for humanity to seek it so that it can reach its potential.

Let me start the quest by asking The Question again – What is the meaning of life? To some the act of asking this question itself implies an implicit acceptance of divine being and its pre meditated purpose of life before creation. I believe this is a fallacy in common thinking and while it is a reasonable and satisfying explanation for some, this is not a valid argument. In general a "designer" is not necessary for the existence of a purpose of an object in the following sense: evolutionary explanation of emergence of certain traits in species, say evolution of eye in higher animals describes it as a useful yet random mutation that gave an advantage to the species for survival by giving them better ability to search for food and avoid danger by the means of detecting light as the source of information instead of smell, touch or other common sensors. As a result this feature was preserved and evolved by pure statistical reason. Statistical reason being that the possessor of this feature survived in larger number than those who did not posses it. Speaking in hindsight we can shorten the above explanation by saying that eye was "designed" to give its owner ability to seek for food and avoid danger. So I seek meaning of life in the above sense – what some may call an engineering perspective. In short it determines what function a given object is performing on its environment and what function it continues to optimize overtime and use that as a working definition of the purpose of that object. In this essay I define this as engineering perspective on meaning/purpose of objects.

Given above background I will now come to my answer of "the question". However as opposed to general method of building the case for the answer, I am going to give the answer upfront and then focus on the thought process used to reach the answer. So the answer to the big question is "meaning of life is to perform creative action."

How do we discuss this answer from engineering point of view? Well first we have to go to the basis of life and study its purpose. In order to keep our study objective and as simple as possible we will study amoeba, a single cell organisms which is one of the simplest form of life and then study upwards to more complex life forms.

What is Amoeba’s purpose in life? From birth Amoeba primarily performs three functions, exploration for food or better living conditions, consume food for sustenance and then procreate by dividing itself into two daughter amoebae.

Studying as an outside observer the purpose of each amoeba is to survive until it can transmit its genetic information into a next generation of daughter amoebae. Survival activities, including quest for food, consumption of food and search for better environment seems to be means to an end. From engineering point of view primary purpose of amoeba is continuation and betterment of its species. In other words reverse engineering amoeba leaves us with "biological creative action" that supports continuation of its species.

A counter argument can be raised that Amoeba may fit into a larger role of the eco system of earth’s biosphere and therefore deducing its role based on impact to its own species may not be valid. I agree with this argument and we will pick this argument when we have covered longer list of life forms so that we can discuss a "systems" approach of symbiotic meaning of life.
We can apply similar arguments to slightly more sophisticated animals – fish, lizards, chicken and frogs. However as we leap to our higher animals who have some level of consciousness thinking in place – dog, cat, dolphin and monkey, or nest building birds, a more detailed investigation is warranted.

We will start our mammalian meaning of life question with a dog. Dog is an intelligent animal that has a high level of social interactivity. Also in wild dogs tend to form groups for hunting and live in loosely formed packs.

Although basic processes of quest for food, better living environment and search for sex for reproduction remains similar in canine mammals, more sophisticated behaviors are also exhibited that need to be taken into account when defining the purpose of a dog’s life. Dogs perform some functions that are not in direct benefit of procreation – for example alerting the pack with barking when a predator is detected nearby. By barking dogs attract attention of the predator to himself; a more selfish step would be to quietly run away and let the predator attack the other unsuspecting members of the pack. In this selfless act of good we notice the workings of Dawkins’ "Selfish Gene". As studied and proposed via mathematical studies that dogs or even squirrels alert their packs or families by putting itself in danger when the chances of survival of animals own gene is higher if pack survives even at the cost of the life of the animal. For example in his book, Moral Animal, writer describes an experiment where if a squirrel scream and attract attention of a potential predator if it has three or more siblings in vicinity, since each sibling shares 50% of its gene with the squirrel, so if three siblings survive then 150% of squirrel’s genes will survive and therefore squirrel will put itself in danger to save 3 siblings. However if there is only one sibling then squirrel will not squeal and will try to evade the predator quitely. This kind of study has been done in squirrels (Moral Animal) and it would be interesting to see if someone will perform similar study for other animals (open request to behavioral zoologists).
So in addition to procreation canine animals also work on creating better living conditions for new offspring, via group dynamics, marking territory and creating a safe community guarded by canine brotherhood. In the end canine animals perform creative actions of procreating offspring, creating stable life environment and social structure for procreation and continued development of the pack.

Note our engineering point of view that will see the end result and deduce the purpose of the object in the larger course of action. Studying dogs and squirrels it becomes obvious that the meaning of life is continuation of species while creating better environment to improve the likelihood of species evolution and survival.

So far we have seen that animal’s primary purpose is some kind of creative action – either direct procreation of species as in amoebae or additionally creation of environment where young ones can develop safely for further continuation of the species.

I believe few people will debate the previous conclusions about the purpose of life from single celled to more sophisticated animals. Now we will try to examine human from similar framework.

Obviously at a very high level all humans perform basic acts of ‘biological creation" by having offspring. While we can end our quest here and say that is the meaning of life for humans. However taking the engineering point of view we notice that humans are exceptionally driven towards higher purpose activities in addition to procreation. Based on the evidence of human civilization and its continued march towards higher ordered philosophical, political and technological growth I believe human life has more depth than creation of offspring. And this is what we will focus on next.

In addition to what we discussed with canine and single celled animals humans have a capacity to create complex social structures, philosophical frameworks and scientific and literary milestones that may not seem obvious as biological creative actions. My proposition is that higher forms of "order " as a derivative of building complex structures is the basis of meaning of human existence.

Let me start with some examples of higher order creative actions. Political pursuit to create a stable, prosperous state that can continue to improve the quality of life of its citizens is a political creative action. When Greeks were practicing and defining democracy or when Marx was establishing the tenants of socialism, they were fulfilling the purpose of their life by creating political systems that they believed will create better states. Similarly when Shakespeare, Homer or Ovid were creating timeless masterpieces they were serving their higher purpose of life – a body of literature that will provide guidance and learning and will serve as a source of education about human emotion and relationships. Similar purpose was served by religious leaders, scientific leaders and inventors.

Regardless of the type of pursuit, when human action starts to create structure from chaos, she has engaged in a higher order creative action and is fulfilling her meaning of life more richly then a mere mammal.

Creative action in this essay is defined as an activity that creates order from chaos. Note that biologically life itself is an order creating process. All the chaotic soup of different chemicals that are in our body can exist in a jar but it will not be alive. In order for that material to be alive, intricate order has to be in place for cells to form and DNA to replicate to provide the substrate of life. So this basic form of creative action is encoded in our DNA that drives us to perform at least the basic creative action. Same is true for all other living beings – flora or fauna.
In order to rise above the biological creative action, humans have to rise to the next level of contribution in creation of order. In this sense our leaders in different fields (science, philosophy, politics, technology, literature etc.) live a more meaningful life than those of us who do not pursue those endeavors.

What does this mean for us in our daily lives? Why order is preferable over chaos? What are the implications of different faiths? I will be addressing these questions in my next essay.