Our quest for understanding

"If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded--or even suspects--that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe."--Irving Kristol


A man without a purpose is something broken, betrayed by the cosmos. He is leaderless, pointless, a mere causality in the great universe, and at the end of all things holds no more meaning then a speck of dust. Without a meaningful purpose, be it redemption, knowledge, love, illumination, happiness, man is lost in the simple insignificance he may represent in the scheme of things, lost in the fact that everything he does in his life is without any kind of value. How could a man bring himself to rise in the morning if he knew how his every little task made not a speck of difference? To sum it up in the words of Yamamoto Tsunemoto:

“Everyone says that no masters of the arts will appear as the world comes to an end. People become imbued with the idea that the world has come to an end and no longer put forth any effort.”

Mankind is incapable of any kind of action that does not further himself, and when he is convinced of having no meaning, no reason therefore to better himself, he gives up. That is why in the end all trivial matters fall, and why we look to the heavens in fear and wonder, and attempt to explain that which we cannot, because as humans in some way we all feel useless, and to know that this is true would cause the end of any being.

Bertrand Russell’s work tells us that philosophy is the study of the impossible, the unknown and its many possibilities, in order to find a truth that transcends time and explains to us why we are truly here. In the meantime we are caught in the loop of the very questions we ask, and so our work is never truly done, our end never truly reached. This is one of the values of philosophy, the search for truth, which gives meaning to the life of every human being.

In his “Apology” Plato tells us, through the words of Socrates, that we must also reconcile ourselves with our own ignorance, and liberate ourselves from convictions’ in order to become wise, and to then pass down our wisdom onto those who wish to learn. This too can give us purpose, and perhaps that very wisdom is simply understanding how meaningless we are and being at peace with the fact that we are not the center of the universe, that we are no different from the smallest insect, that we are merely a small part of one gigantic universe, and nothing we could ever do would surpass its grandeur.