Tuesday, January 22, 2019

The Purpose of Life

To quote Albert the Alligator from the Pogo comic strip: "Don't take life so serious, son; it ain't nohow permanent". (Diane Henders).

A sure way to insanity is to ask yourself why am I here? To what purpose do I exist? This is different than finding meaning in your life.  That is a personal thing. Purpose is the big picture.

Diane Henders hit it on the head in a comment. "In my darker moments, I realize that, like all living organisms, we exist only to eat, shit, reproduce, and die. And I haven't even reproduced".

She is right, of course. All living organisms are driven to reproduce, to pass the species DNA on to one more generation. Everything else is just incidental to that. It doesn't matter if you are an E coli, a tree, grass, a wolf, a house cat, or a human. All behaviour is simply adaptation to ensure there is a next generation.

It doesn't always work. Species die out for whatever reason, mostly that they didn't or couldn't adapt to a changing environment. Dinosaurs, mastodons, Neanderthals, and passenger pigeons being prime examples. One adaptation is that the less likely the next generation will live to reproduce, is to produce far more offspring than are needed to ensure some survive. Millions of little fish, thousands of baby turtles, families of 12 to 20 kids. 

Humans invented religions to try to explain both purpose and meaning.  Religion became a source of power of the elite over the masses.  Then they kill each other because the religions don't align. Isn't it fun?

I wondered if other species created mythologies to explain life or if they just do their thing from day to day and were satisfied at that? Diane Henders figured the latter as other species are smarter than we are.  She is likely right.

For someone who writes sexy spy novels starring her alter ego, she does have a good grasp of reality. Someday I need to go to the Island and meet her.








9 comments:

  1. We're here for the amusement of the goddess..when we cease to do so she will shrug her shoulders and she's the earth of us and start all over again.

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  2. I'm in Diane's camp! Religion actively keeps people from accepting that, though.

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    1. I sure like her though we've never met. Always been partial to redheads, though

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  3. Wow, thanks for the mentions - you're very kind! In that "eat, shit, reproduce, and die" comment, I should have also noted that one of my life purposes is to give thanks for proper punctuation; although there have been times in my life when it's seemed as though my purpose in life was to eat shit.

    If you're ever on the Island, drop me a line. (If you like redheads, though, you might want to do it soon - my gray hairs will soon outnumber my red ones.) ;-)

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    1. The Oxford comma is a necessity. I try to use it but sometimes forget and have to go back and correct it.
      Hope to get there this summer. And you are close to the top of my list of people to see.

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  4. thank you for your useful post.
    greeting- evi erlinda

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