First Premeditation: what is the meaning of life?

      I have always considered myself as someone with a very private mind. When I say private, I do not mean that I do not talk a lot, because I do, but I mean, I do not make my views and my opinions public. I am not vocal about them, perhaps, because I feel that they are not well-informed (yet), or I am just not that keen on letting people know about what I think, unless they ask for it. So, this blog is actually a significant move for me. But it has to be done because the pros of making my ideas public outweigh the cons. For one, I believe that this is a great opportunity to reach out as many people as possible that could provide me feedback that is invaluable.

     So, on with the blog! First of all, I intend to write my posts freely, as in, relaxed and casual, because I find that formal language stifles my thinking - it's just not natural for me, so I'll leave the formal language to my philosophy essays at university. Now, you might be wondering, why I entitled this blog, Premeditations on Philosophy, which I know, rings a bell with premeditated murder. It's because my thoughts here are actually thoughts conceived while meditating - much like Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. The only difference though is, whilst Descartes probably wrote what he was meditating about straight away, I meditate, without being distracted by writing, most likely in bed, tossing and turning, go to sleep, leave the thoughts mature in the background overnight, and then write. So, these are actually meditations, but because they are premeditated, and for lack of a better title, and as I strive to be original, I entitled it Premeditations on Philosophy.

The quest for a guiding principle

     Now then, what was I meditating about last night in bed? What else would I be meditating about? Well, I was meditating, thinking, about how I would structure my life. I was trying to find a guiding principle on which to simplify everything: my reason for my every action and motivation, the meaning of it all. So, I thought about Plato and his idea of The Good. Is this the guiding principle I was looking for? Should I look towards The Good whenever I act? But, this guiding principle begets more questions than answer one. For what is The Good? So, I thought, no, there must be a guiding principle out there that is much simpler than this. So, I was back to square one. Then I thought of Aristotle and his idea that we all strive for eudaimonia which is pretty much Happiness. Now you're talking. Of course, we all want to be happy right? I mean c'mon who could ever dispute that? Even someone who likes to be sad finds happiness in being sad - don't mention the irony. But still, I asked, like a proper gadfly, why? Why do we want to be happy? At first I thought, ha! I found the answer, so now, I can just take the mick, until it hit me - there's something more about this free hit; it's not an empty plastic bag of a question.

     Yeah, why do I want to be happy? Who cares if I am unhappy? Do I even care if I am unhappy? Of course I do, because I know that could only go two ways: if I become unhappy, it's either I don't eat cause I lost my appetite; or I would eat a lot, like bucket meals. But, so what if I eat a lot or I don't eat at all? Well, if I do not eat I'll starve, I'll be weak, and don't even get me started about ulcers and stuff -  basically, I'll die. And what if I eat an awful lot? Well, if I do, then I would probably be having more calories than I require - calories which if not used, are stored as fat. If I become too fat, I would most likely, develop a life threatening condition such as diabetes or a heart disease, and probably, die (now that escalated quickly). So I avoid being unhappy, because being unhappy is hostile to life, i.e. it's against it. Therefore if unhappiness which is against life is the opposite of happiness, then happiness would be the opposite of what unhappiness is to life, i.e. happiness is for life. But then, it becomes obvious that happiness is actually not pursued for its own sake, because if it is, then I would want to be happy because I want to be happy, which is circular and does not give us any proper reason at all for being so. It seems to me, Happiness is just a means to an end itself. Therefore, since I said above that happiness is for life then, this end that I was looking for, I would say, is Life. That's it then, I thought. I found what I was looking for! Ladies and gentlemen, here it is! The meaning of it all, the meaning of life is, well, life! We need not search for the meaning after all, as if it's something separate and beyond life; living itself - it was there all along, and we certainly don't need to resort to nihilism. The meaning is the word. We ought to live because that is what living things do.

Why we want to live

     Now, I thought, like a buffoon, so proud of myself: how could they not have thought of that!? I'm a genius. But of course, the idea that the point of it all is life has been thought of since time immemorial. The Stoics, for one, thought that the only purpose of life is self-preservation. But this is not just simply 'as long as you live, it's fine', but, self-preservation that is preserving one's self as it is; what one's being is, and that is: a rational human being. Meaning, it's not enough to live an eat.sleep.rave.repeat life, or live as a human being that has lost his capacity to reason. Sadly, it would not also count as living, if one is in a vegetative state. That would still be losing one's being, if one ceases to be rational, then one ceases to be a rational human being, and hence lose his being and cannot be said to be at all in the very strict sense of the word. Okay, so I am thinking along Stoic lines then. Fair enough. Let me get this straight then: the meaning of life, is life that is self-preservation, which is, preserving one's being as it is, and that is what it means to live. Anything else, is just a means to that, and that includes happiness of course. So, I asked, why am I studying for a degree? To get a job. Why do I have to get a job? To earn money. Why do I have to earn money? To be able to buy the things I need: the basic ones, and the things that would make me happy. But what are the basic ones for? Well, they are necessary for living. Therefore it's for the sake of life. And the things that would make me happy? Well, for happiness, which is also for the sake of life. But hang on, what is it about life that makes us go towards it? Why do we want to be alive so much? Or rather, why does life want itself?

     I thought about this really hard. Then I remembered that video I watched on Youtube asking What is Life? Is Death real? It started with a quote from Erwin Schrödinger saying, 'living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium'. So what does this mean? It means a living thing is just a way of ordering matter in a chaotic universe. Matter can either be a living thing or a non-living thing. But wait, what? That means we're only a lump of matter? Well, yes, apparently so. In what way do we differ from non-living things then? They are also a lump of matter. Well, obviously, we are a lump of matter that can do something. And that's what separates us from the dead, the non-living, that cannot do anything. A living thing wants to keep on living because by being alive it has the capacity to do something, to help itself, and keep itself from disintegrating. This is why I think life wants to live so much: for the sake of keeping itself as a lump of matter. You what? Am I actually telling myself, not only that life is not an end in itself, but also the point of it is just to be a lump of matter? Crazy! But can I say something crazier? Yes, I have another question! Why have the will to be a lump of matter?

     Yeah, why? Why become a living lump of matter, instead of being just matter, or even just what matter is when it gets destroyed: energy? What is it about being matter that makes a living lump of matter prefer being such a lump of matter? My suggestion is because matter is affected more by gravity compared to energy. But, why is there a will to be affected more by gravity? From here, it gets even crazier, the craziest perhaps. I have a theory.

My theory of everything

     Stephen Hawking believes that the Universe came out of nothing. Basically, something came out of nothing, which is kind of like making a coin appear out of nowhere, magic. But of course, Hawking is a scientist, not a magician, so he didn't actually believe that before the Big Bang, there was absolutely nothing, but, before the Big Bang, there was only a constant flux of energy that has always been - no matter, space, and time. So, this Energy is in chaos, it's fluctuating, a lot of probabilities, and one of those probabilities played: the Big Bang happened, matter was created, and the universe began. But still! What caused the Big Bang? I know, scientists have been getting closer and closer to the very moment of singularity but they are still not there yet, and until they do, we would never know for sure what caused the Big Bang. Enter, intuition.

     My theory is that this constant flux of energy is actually God. Them scientists just don't want to call God, God, but prefer the name Energy. I find many clues that this Energy is actually God. For instance, this Energy has no beginning, it was just there, like God. This Energy, is unchanging, because it's in a constant state of flux, again, constant like God. And of course, this Energy is the first cause, as God is.

     So in the beginning, there was only this Energy, which is God, and it was in a constant state of flux: there was nothing else; not a thing that exists only in the universe, because there was no universe for it to exist in. But something happened, something that caused the Big Bang... I would tell you what I think. I think, God, because He has Gravity which is the interaction of Energy with itself; of God with Himself, had created matter, or in scientists' terms, Energy due to its chaotic state, chanced to create matter. I think what happened was, Energy had spots where there are more concentration of energy. The 'saturated spot' of Energy, saturated with energy which was going by a speed probably faster than the speed of light, got converted into matter - in accordance with E = mc² by Einstein. So, if any of you have seen the film, Lucy, there was a clip there after Lucy got to 100% brain capacity which looks like a gas of Energy from another dimension entering our Universe as the Big Bang. That's the picture I have in my mind. Something like this:

That clip made me think, so Energy had an 'energy saturated spot', and that spot got so energised that it exploded into a different dimension, or rather it created a dimension: ours. Perhaps the reason why matter wants to 'order' itself so much is to prevent energy from being 'lost' to the vastness of space; it is being spread out by entropy - and ordering matter is energy's way of getting back to being one constant flux of energy again, by converging into one spot, there, it can collect everything that is in the universe. That spot would have a colossal amount of gravitational pull and will be compressed into a point: it would be a black-hole. This black-hole would then either suck everything back to the dimension it came from, or convert all matter along with space-time to energy. Then Energy would be just energy again, just itself, existing outside space-time because space-time doesn't exist anymore. But how does this connect to life wanting to be a lump of matter? Well, I think a clue lies on how a lump of matter and another lump of matter interacts. Matter has a domino effect, namely, that a body of matter would be drawn towards a body of matter with a larger mass because of gravity, and then to a larger mass, and then to another much larger, and this would carry on, and on, until it's one massive lump of matter that cannot attract any more matter because there is none left that is yet to be attracted: it has become the black-hole. So, there it is. Life wants to be a lump of matter, but not only that, it wants to be as big as it could possibly get so that it can attract all matter present in the universe, so that it can be a black-hole that converts matter and the fabric of space-time to energy, so that all will be energy again.

"...that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity."

 John 17:22-23

     Now, this Energy; God has been creating ways to achieve the goal of converging matter into one singularity, and He just keeps on creating new ways until the moment of singularity. Since non-living things are prior to living things, as before the advent of life there were only the naturally occurring elements, it must be the case that energy assumed the form of a non-living matter first. But while assuming the form of a non-living matter, it cannot prevent itself from disintegrating - matter cannot stop any process of decay and cannot get away from things that would cause itself as a non-living thing to disintegrate; it cannot avoid 'maximum entropy': being a non-living thing is not the most efficient way. So, energy assumes the form of a living matter as well: have Life. Life that sacrifices a bit of energy just to avoid decay and disintegration. And the same thing goes with it, a living matter just keeps on creating new ways to be more efficient in being alive. That's why we have Evolution right? But Life, is itself, just a way, but in so being, Life is the will of God. God is achieving His goal to be one Energy again in a constant state of flux: for everything to be just with the constant flux of energy; Energy; God. He is doing this through both living and non-living things at the same time. But God desiring to be one again, after creating the universe, does not mean He got split into three: matter, space-time, and energy. No - energy is matter, matter is energy, and matter-energy exists in space-time while the universe exists. But with the existence of matter, space-time, and energy (with gravity being the interaction of energy), He has aspects of Himself, instead of being just Himself as constant flux of energy.

     Having said that, it means that every living thing has the will of God. I think about it as a node, as in, every living thing is a node of the will of God. So a plant, an animal, or a human being's will to live, is a will of God towards His goal of singularity. The life of every living thing is a life of God that He is living; an avenue that He is exploring as a way to singularity. So, Life's will to live is not just to be a lump of matter with no intrinsic meaning, no greater cause, but far from it. Each and every one of us, all living things - our will to live is actually a cause of cosmic proportions. God is willing in us to live so that we may be as one Energy; with Him again: all that is in this universe, to be this one constant flux of energy. So we ought to live, and fight for it. Because by us fighting, God is fighting. And to recognise that fight, is to recognise this cosmic will that strives to be one again, and anyone who is against Life's cause, is against God's cause: we have one will, one cause, because, we are one; made up of one material: cosmic dust, made from one cosmic Energy; the one God, the source of existence. Therefore, nothing is more important, more meaningful a cause, than, to live. The meaning of Life is to live, and that would be my guiding principle.