If you have no destination, then your journey is meaningless
But to begin with you may want to question why would that person standing in the middle of the road be considered a fool?
Why can’t he decide to enjoy the moment and end it all once he has had enough of his enjoyment of life? Why should he avoid getting run over by a car? You may think there are obvious answers to these questions – that ending life defeats the point of life! However to some they would differ- that life is to do what you wish with it- it’s your life! So you even have the movement for legal euthanasia that campaigns for the right to end your life if you so wish; suicide clinics have even opened in countries where it is legal! These assumptions about life’s objectives and purpose have been questioned philosophically over the ages to form the most basic answers to the question of why we are alive. But why is it important to know why you are alive?
The most important question in life: Why am I alive?
The fact that you are reading this means that you are alive- the truth of reality is that people do not live forever- they may wish it to be true- they may invest in cryogenics to freeze their bodies in the hope that they may be able to come back to life - but that is all speculation- and as we will discuss below, speculation does not trump reality. The reality is at the moment, that you will die one day and will not come back to life to this world.
To deny this reality is to deny living correctly-as we will discuss later- because nobody can live in the reality around them and deny its rules. If you chose to ignore those rules of physical reality you would not last very long without suffering. If you chose to ignore the reality of leaving your room through the door and tried to go through the wall you would have a painful existence bleeding and bruising to death. If you feel hungry and chose to ignore the biological reality of your physical body’s nutritional requirements, and denied it the reality of sustenance then your body’s cells would not respire and they would die.
Once death is accepted as a reality then we cannot ignore it.
So the first reason for the importance of asking why am I alive is the reality of life and death existing- death is the end of life and it is related to the reality of life: It must be considered then in order to prepare for death. So the preparation for death will depend upon your understanding of what happens to you when you die. So for example, if someone believes that after death they will be judged by God for their admittance into a Paradise or Hell based upon the sins that they have committed and the good that they have done then they may be more observant of the sins in life and choose to live a life of serving and pleasing their God. On the other hand if a person did not think that there were to be any accountability and nothing happens after death- you just materially decompose into the soil, then that person may choose a purpose in life that he felt made him happy- not concerned with a purpose of pleasing God who will judge him.
The second reason like the parable at the beginning, is that car coming towards you while you stand in the middle of the road. Death is a reality - we can not ignore the reality if we want to live in it. You can not survive the reality if you do not live according to its rules. Like the one who tries to exit a room through a wall rather than the door. Just like we study the reality of a room to find out how to exit it safely- we must study the reality of death to understand how to navigate it. Even if you did not know yet what happens at the point of death- you should still be concerned with its existence as it is hurtling towards you like that car! What is it about and what happens after it? These are the realities around death that you should be asking.
The third reason for the importance of purpose is that it will define your actions- what is good and bad. Good and evil are not intrinsic within an action and are not labelled on any action and there are no universal moral codes that everyone is born with. Societies have their own penal codes different to one another as they have different views of morality. People have their different views on what is moral too- for example some people would think it is immoral to kill an animal in order to eat it and therefore become vegetarian. Some people would think it is immoral to also exploit animals and become vegan.
Some people may argue on the contrary that there are universal moral truths -for example that everyone can agree that it would be wrong to kill a child. However, these can be argued to be instinctual responses that goes against our instinct to continue our species. This is a natural response similar to how we universally would feel fearful if facing a threat- the physiological fight or flight response. However these instinctual responses linked to life are limited and do not comprehensively cover the more specific choices in everyday life. For instance, we see differences across people and cultures in the view of whether murderers should have their lives taken for the life they took even though the taking of life goes against our instinctual inclination to preserve our fellow human and continue our species.
Good and evil are linked to one's moral criteria which is linked to their objective in life. So for instance a person who believes that they are alive to obey God and earn His salvation may have a view of abortion as a sin due to the sacredness of a God-given life. This may be different to one who believes that they are alive to enjoy their freedoms that the past generations have given to this ever -evolving world and that they should be free to abort the life of a baby in their body if they so wish.
There is a dilemma in philosophy about morality coming from God known as Euthyphros dilemma in which Socrates asks if the good is good because God commands it or if the good was good regardless of the command of God? Now the two possible horns (as if you are trying to grab a bull by the horns) throw back more problems:
First horn: rightness is grounded in God's dictates.–If divine command theorists accept this horn, then they have abandoned the notion that morality is based on reasons. •Morality must issue purely from God's whims, and they have to be whimsical. (If God has reason(s) determining his dictates, then it's those reasons that actually ground morality.)–This wouldn't say much about God: what kind of God determines something as important as rightness on the basis of whims?–This also wouldn't say much about our moral code: we would only have the rules we do because of a kind of cosmic whims- which means you have to admit that killing babies was good if God commanded it!
Second horn: rightness is grounded in facts independent of God's commands. –This acknowledges that God's role is limited to assigning to us as our duties actions that are already independently right. (which means that there is an independent source of guidance, wisdom and rules to God- also implying that God is limited in His authority)
this dilemma has led some philosophers to even propose that the philosophers are able to uncover these universal truths and issues of what is good and that they are therefore not bound by religious commandments as they do not need God to reveal these truths to them. Religion is for the non-philosophically minded and it communicates the laws in the language of the common man which the philosophers do not need.
This is wrong for the following reasons and the dilemma can be resolved using the rational approach we will come to later but briefly explained here:
The rational approach is to base your thoughts and conclusions upon the reality that you can sense only and not upon the unsensed (including God’s reality and His reasons). From our human perspective we need to consider our end of life and what we can conclude about why we exist. If we conclude that there is a creator of the universe and man, then it becomes the source for our knowledge about the after-life as it will know more about our life (and its end) that it has created. So in terms of what our purpose is in this universe, what it mentions about how to fulfill this purpose; what rules we have to follow; whether we can uncover those rules ourselves or whether it is the only source of those rules; what it defines as good and bad- all of these are relevant and directly linked to our purpose from the creator if we conclude that it exists. if we don’t think that a creator exists then again your purpose in life will guide your moral code- so for example if you though that your purpose is to enjoy the pleasures of life then your morality could be driven through a sense of good being delivering maximum utility - similar to the idea known as utilitarianism. Thus if we accept the first horn of the Euthypro dilemma that good is what God commands then to argue what are God’s reasons and does He have reasons are actually beyond our reality and irrational to ponder over unless God actually reveals those answers to us. And as we will see later on- the irrational way of thinking leads to speculative and unproductive thoughts- no-one will base their serious actions like crossing a road upon irrational thinking as it would mean speculating whether a driver would stop for you if you were to step out in front of him (as that is the driver’s reality); but no- you base your action and thinking upon your reality of whether it is safe for you to cross the road. So if we judge crossing a road upin our reality rather than the driver’s then how about when the issue is far more serious like your purpose for your entire life? This should also be judged upon the reality that we exist in and not upon God’s reality!
In terms of the consequence of what accepting this leads to, which is that this type of morality based on God’s desires means that morality is arbitrary and not based on any principles and that God has no reasons to will what he does. This means that there is no rational structure to morality. The view also entails that it would be right to murder babies if God willed it which doesn’t seem right. The correct rational way to understand this is not to put yourself in Gods place and judge from His unsensed reality. It may seem arbitrary to us however within our limited reality of understanding there may be limits to how far we can think of morality and the effect of our actions upon the complex relationships that exist in society. The expanse of our knowledge will never match the unlimited knowledge of the creator and the creator may have put a limit to to our thinking in this way. This is apparent in the obvious reality that our minds can not know about the future or about the unsensed realities. For example take a simple rule like drinking alcohol. What is so immoral about an individual drinking alcohol if they want to? You may think that this is an individual action however it has wider impacts upon society. The public health burden of alcohol is wide ranging, relating to health, social or economic harms. These can be tangible, direct costs (including costs to the health, criminal justice and welfare systems), or indirect costs (including the costs of lost productivity due to absenteeism, unemployment, decreased output or lost working years due to premature pension or death). Harms can also be intangible, and difficult to cost, including those assigned to pain and suffering, poor quality of life or the emotional distress caused by living with a heavy drinker. The spectrum of harm ranges from those that are relatively mild, such as drinkers loitering near residential streets, through to those that are severe, including death or lifelong disability. Many of these harms impact upon other people, including relationship partners, children, relatives, friends, co-workers and strangers. (UK government report: The Public Health Burden of Alcohol and the Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Alcohol Control Policies: An evidence review)
You can now take anything which might be a bit more complex- say an action involving more than an individual (such as marriage) and then imagine the consequences and problems that could unfold if they were to be incorrect. Again you could extrapolate the consequences to society over ‘morally acceptable’ affairs and the broken homes that may result.
When it comes to the second part of the consequence of accepting the horn of this dilemma that it would mean if God had willed for murdering babies to be good then that would be detestable. The reason why we find it detestable is because it goes against our instincts to preserve our life and that of our species. This is how we are created in our nature. We do not find it universally detestable to kill and consume baby cows (veal) for instance or baby sheep (lamb). The reason why we find it detestable to kill human babies is because God has programmed us to do so ( assuming we have proved that God created us). So God could have programmed us not to find it detestable and then it would not seem to be immoral. So for instance in the animal kingdom it does not seem detestable to kill their own babies. Mother bears, felines, canids, primates, and many species of rodents have all been seen killing and eating their young. Insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds also have been implicated in killing, and sometimes devouring, the young of their own kind. This type of infanticide is also found in almost every primate species, including chimpanzees and gorillas.
[footnote: This type of morality is different to the ethics that philosophers aso debate which is hypothetical. For example, would everyone agree that it is wrong to kill an innocent child? If yes, then what if you knew that this child was going to grow up to become an evil dictator that would wage war and kill many innocent lives? This is similar to the “runaway trolley/train problem”. Philosophers have debated over ethical dilemmas such as these throughout the ages. However these are hypothetical and not a good starting point for this type of question as you could argue that they have no grounding in reality and that there are always other options available. For instance- no one knows the future about whether children will grow up to do evil. So it would be unfair to conclude the non-universality of morality based on the differences that people will have on this issue. However we can still conclude that morality is not universal because of the differences we see between people and cultures on their views of what is good and bad- such as the eating of certain meats like pig or views on relationships outside of marriage etc.
Finally, it will define what to expend your life force upon- it will drive you in your darkest hour- it will push you to keep on – to do what you are supposed to do- it will give you purpose – it will let you know if you are wasting your life or fulfilling it. It can cause you to find happiness or anxiety when facing obstacles in your path of life. As an example if you think that your purpose is to enjoy yourself, then anything which disrupts that like the death of a loved one whom you used to enjoy life with, or imprisonment where your liberties are taken away can be the source and cause of misery and depression preventing you from engaging with the world. These unfortunate events may be viewed differently by someone whose purpose is not to live for enjoying this life but sees it as serving God in order to enjoy the afterlife. This person may see the unexpected death of a loved one as part of God’s plan and his imprisonment as an opportunity to spread God’s message inside prison- remaining happy knowing that he is fulfilling his purpose!
In short if your purpose of life is wrong then your life would have been wasted and worthless.
This is similar to the one who buys the latest most expensive smartphone but does not use its functions correctly because he hasn’t figured out how to use it. In fact the owner uses it as a paperweight to stop the papers on his desk from flying off! or he uses it as a door stop to prop a door open! Its purpose hasn’t been realised. This was not the purpose of the phone- to be used as a paperweight or a doorstop. It was a waste of his phone.
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