The Upside Of Meaninglessness

I think we are children of a meaningless universe. Sadly, we seem to crave meaning. But, there are awesome benefits of embracing the meaninglessness of it all. Allow me to make my case in this post.

So, the amazing thing about living a completely meaningless existence is…

Wait Khoj! My Life Is NOT Meaningless!

Ahh, yes. Before I talk about the “upside”, let me first address this. For some reason, I am in the minority. Most people believe that their life is meaningful. So, let me try to take a stab at justifying my position.

First, We Need To Understand The Problem

When I was a kid, my dad would tell me a story. It goes like this…

A boy was walking on a beach early one morning. The beach was empty. He could just see some old man in the distance. He seemed to be picking something from the ground and putting it in the ocean. The boy walked closer to see what was going on.

As he approached, he saw that 1000s of little starfish swept onto the beach during the last high tide. Now, they were stranded.

He finally reached the old man. He realized that the old man was carefully putting them, one by one, back into the ocean. To the boy, this seemed ridiculous. He asked the old man: “Why are you doing this? Even if you save a few, 1000s are going to die.”

The old man smiled back at the boy, looked down at the starfish in his hand, and said, “But, it will make a world of difference to this one.”

The point I am going to make in this post is related to this story. The boy thought that doing such an activity is “meaningless” because it will not change much in the grand scheme of things.

The old man thought that, it’s “meaningful” because it helped “this little starfish”.

And at the same time, there was a flock of seagulls flying above who looked down at the “evil old man” and wondered, “what the heck is he doing?”.

The seagulls thought, “This guy is ruining our breakfast. And why? He’s got nothing to do with starfish! He’s just trying to feel good about himself and think he’s a good person. Idiot! Why cannot he be a good person to us and leave those starfish where they are supposed to be!!”

The part about the seagulls is not part of my dad’s story. I added that to illustrate that “meaning” is complex. In some sense, that is what this post is about.

So, let’s start. Let me try to break down the most common sources of meaning.

Source Of Meaning 1: “I strive for giving myself & my family a comfortable life. If I was not there, what would happen to them?”

A large chunk of humanity falls into this category. Maybe they are struggling to make ends meet. Maybe they have to work very hard just to put food on the table.

Such a nice, simple and clear source of meaning. “I do what I do, so that my loved ones don’t suffer”.

Let’s go one layer deeper here. Imagine yourself in this situation. You need to get up and go to work. If you don’t, you will be fired. You don’t have any savings. If fired, you will not be able to put food on the table.

Tell me, what is the source of your motivation? What will happen if you cannot put food on the table? Your children might go hungry right? Then what happens?

You will feel a pit of despair in your stomach. You will feel horrible that you failed them. You will feel like a shitty failure of a person who cannot even provide for his/her children. Ahhh. Such a sick feeling. And you really want to avoid this horrible outcome and these horrible feelings. So, you remove that cozy bracket, shurk off your laziness and get dressed. It does not matter how much you dislike your boss/clients. You have to do this.

I would argue that all you are doing is making sure you don’t have to feel those horrible feelings.

This Is Not About Hungry Children

Let’s face it, this is NOT about hungry children. A child is dying of hunger every 10 seconds. Why does that not induce all these feelings inside you? Well, that’s simple. They are not your children.

What I want you to notice is that the horrible feelings that come up within you, are part of your “design”. At no point in your life did you fill a form that said, “Yes, I would like to sign up for horrible feelings when my loved ones are hurting”. It just is part of you. Whether God put it there or evolution put it there, it does not matter. You DID NOT put it there.

And because of that, the way I see it, you are a slave to your feelings. They threaten you with pain and despair. They allow you to feel some joy when you do what they want you to do. You are trying to run away from bad feelings and towards good ones. That is all.

You Are A Meat Puppet

Something else is pulling your strings. Notice this. It’s silly for a puppet to think it has free will. It is silly for a puppet to believe that the work it is doing is meaningful right? A puppet is not “doing” anything. It’s just executing the puppet master’s plan.

Maybe the puppet master can make claims about “meaning”. But surely the puppet would be naive to make these claims.

Source Of Meaning 2: “This life is just a shadow. There is a true world where my real life will begin. We call this true world heaven/jannat/valhalla/paradise. I must do _____ so that I enter that true world.”

I don’t really want to spend much time here. It’s an old and boring debate.

If we were in a court of law, and a religious person were to make his case about God/ Heaven / the Soul, I would just be standing up and saying: “Objection, Hearsay”.

Hearsay is a legal term that means: information received from other people which cannot be substantiated

This little paragraph above would not convince a religious person. If I were to write a book on the subject, it would still not convince a religious person. That’s fine.

If you fall in this category and are okay with exploring other points of view, I suggest you spend a few minutes seeing these beautiful videos by Kuzkazart. If nothing else, the animation is AMAZING. (These videos are NOT about the soul / religion / heaven. They are secular science videos.)

If you did see the above videos, then let me share with you the feeling I have when I learn about such things. I am filled with awe. I feel like we humans sit on a moist speck of dust in an incredibly large universe. We are tortured by the fact that we are the conscious offspring of a universe that does not even care that we exist. If a billion of us get wiped out, at the scale of the universe, nothing will change.

We act like our little speck of dust is so important and meaningful. But, it’s more like we are a community of billions of bacteria living in somebody’s gut. We could get wiped out if they took the right antibiotic. Nothing would change.

But, then again, those are the conclusions I draw. And I MIGHT BE WRONG. You do you.

Source Of Meaning 3: “I am doing _____ for the betterment of Humanity.”

This is based on the philosophy called “Humanism”. It’s a strange idea that says that the betterment of Human life is the most important “good”.

In this view, the opinions of chickens, bacteria, and millions of other beautiful and diverse species are not considered.

For example: Imagine that you are a cancer researcher. How very critical and meaningful. You have to try out these interesting new therapies. But, you are not sure if they are safe for humans. So, you try them out on rats. Screw rats. They are not significant. Some of them get horrible symptoms and die painful deaths.

If you had a hunch that there is a certain chemical in the beaks of parrots that helps, you would be ripping beaks from parrots.

That’s fine. You are fighting a noble battle.

All these other lifeforms are stepping stones. We can crush their little heads without guilt as we move closer towards saving beloved “humans”.

If I put things this way, I make the researcher sound like an evil dictator of a failed country who exploits millions of people so that a few of his cronies can have better lives.

To me, this does not sound very “meaningful”. I’m not saying it’s “good” or “bad”. In fact, I am saying it’s perfectly natural. We look out for our own.

I am just highlighting the fact that it is a little bit of a stretch to be an evil dictator and also think you’re doing meaningful work. Do you look at Sadam Hussain and feel that he spent his life doing meaningful work, for example?

You’re just doing what you are naturally “designed” to do again. You are trying to make life good for yourself and “yours”. Most times at a huge expense to the rest of players in the ecosystem.

Oh, whatever Khoj! There are many ways of helping Humanity without killing rats. What about a person who works in an NGO for education of underprivileged children? What if that’s their source of meaning in life?

There is nothing at all wrong with that. That is amazing. You are a remarkable person if you do this or other forms of charity. I am not trying to take anything away from you.

All I am trying to highlight is that this is also “subjective meaning”. Your work is very beneficial for the children you are helping. Their lives are getting better. Awesome!

But at the same time, when you supply them books, you are not considering the opinions of the dead trees who gave their bodies to make the pages of those books. And I can go on and on about how the food, clothing, shelter you are providing these children is built on the dead bodies of the other players in the ecosystem whose opinions are not considered.

Note that I am not saying that the cancer researcher should stop research. I am not saying that you should stop devoting your time to this noble cause. I am just saying that if you think this is the “ultimate source of meaning”, then you need to confront that fact that, actually, you are looking out for you and yours at the cost of other less powerful creatures.

Oh, whatever Khoj! Humans are at the top of the food chain! Humans are smarter than all these other creatures. This is our right!

Yeah. That’s what an evil dictator who exploits his people would say to justify his actions.

Oh, whatever Khoj! I have found a way to synthesize meat in the lab from dead plant cells. I harm nobody!

Where is your lab located? Were trees cleared to make space for it? Did you do a survey of the opinions of those trees?

As I said at the start of this, Humanism is the strange idea that striving for the betterment of humans is good. Everything else is not important. I hope I was able to make my point convincingly as to why I don’t think this is the source of “ultimate meaning”. It is surely a source of “subjective meaning”. Just not “ultimate objective meaning”.

Welcome To Nihilism

There might be some other ideas that I have missed out, but the above are the top 3. And none of them do anything for me.

So, we are left with a meaningless universe. Now what? If you truly believe me, then nothing should seem like it’s worth doing. Why get up in the morning? Why not just kill yourself?

This is a hard problem to get over.

(This concern is the reason humans invented the ideas of God and religion and heaven. At least that’s the view Friedrich Nietzsche had. And I tend to agree with him.)

Many people struggle with this idea. I have struggled with it too. But, there is a beautiful light at the end of the tunnel.

The Hierarchy Of Meaning

The problem with thinking that there is “meaning” in what you do is that you also get along with it a “hierarchy of meaning”.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say there is a researcher who thinks that their life is very meaningful because their research will save the lives of millions. Now, on an average day, they have a certain list of tasks they need to get through.

Let’s try to write out what activities they might do on an average day below:

1. Eat Food
2. Do important research
3. Drive
4. Talk to friends, family, and other folks

If this person believes very strongly in the meaning of the work they do, everything other than “Do important research”, will get a second level importance. It’s not as meaningful as the research, after all.

Yes, he needs to eat breakfast. But it is such a waste of time. Scrolling research news on his phone while he mindlessly gobbles his eggs will do.

Yes, he needs to talk to friends and family from time to time. But everybody wants to talk about such mundane things. Who has time for that? Each time he calls his mom, she talks about how it’s time he should be getting married. Rather not call his mom. He’s doing important things.

Yes, he likes to eat tasty food. But, who has time to cook? He will eat whatever is convenient.

Yes, he needs to take care of his health. It’s fine. He will just order every meal. No time to waste. After this life-saving research is complete, then he will bother with healthy food and all.

I might be painting an extreme picture. But, the point I am trying to make is that, because one perceives “meaning”, you also get a “hierarchy of meaning”. Some things are more “meaningful” than other things.

Once you get that, you don’t give your attention to all things. You give all your attention to the meaningful things. And you ignore and give the minimum possible attention to everything else.

I did this for years. I was doing “meaningful and important work”. Furthermore, I was not really in the moment when having meals with my wife/family. I was neither paying attention to the meal nor to my wife. It’s sad. There were so many meals I ate without tasting. There were so many conversations I went through without listening.

This Is The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

This is the great benefit that pops out of embracing the meaninglessness of the universe. Curing cancer is meaningless. Saving the environment is meaningless. Betterment of humanity is meaningless. Eating food and chasing good feelings is meaningless. Eating a raisin and really tasting it is meaningless.

And because it’s all meaningless, there is nothing more or less important. There is nothing more or less meaningful. And because of that, when you are doing something as mundane as eating a meal, you can do it “mindfully”.

The amazing thing is that if you start to do that, you start to enjoy everything a lot more. This is hard to explain unless you experience it.

How All This Has Changed My Life

Nowadays, the range of activities I do and enjoy has exploded. Let me try to share how I used to think and how I think now:

Subject: Cooking Food.

Old Khoj: Let’s just order. Or ask the maid to make it. Oh god! I have to help in the kitchen? This is donkey work! I have better things to do. Fine. I’ll just wrap my part up and go do other things.

New Khoj: Okay, let’s try to replicate the chicken Kathi roll from Olympia. I’ll go watch him and try to re-create all the steps. Should be fun.

Subject: Coding up hobby projects (programming for fun)

Old Khoj: Ahh, nobodies paying me for that. I rather watch YouTube videos.

New Khoj: Would it not be fun to try to use Genetic Algorithms to evolve little bots who automatically trade for me? Can’t wait to get started! Maybe the whole thing won’t work. But making it will be fun.

Subject: Getting groceries.

Old Khoj: This is not important. Can we order it online? I have better things to do.

New Khoj: I am going to walk around and pick the best veggies and fruits. After all, I eat this stuff. Should be interesting.

Subject: Painting.

Old Khoj: I’m not a painter. I’m never going to be a professional. Why am I wasting my time with this?

New Khoj: I saw this YT video. I want to try it out. If it’s crap, it’s crap. I don’t care. I am going to make a massive canvas and enjoy this.

I hope I was able to convey how life is much, much richer when you don’t worry about the “hierarchy of meaning” and start doing all things “mindfully”.

Mindfulness

This is a big part of Buddhist and other practices. And in this post I have tried to bring you to the point where why one must be mindful becomes clear. I hope I have done that.

A lot of people talk about “mindfulness”. A lot of people know that it’s a good thing. In this post, I have talked about the “Why”.

Why do I practice it? It’s not because Buddha said so. It’s because if I practice it, my life is much richer.