These days I've been thinking about my purpose. Not the purpose assigned to me by something external, but the purpose I assign for myself. I wanted to answer the question: What should I do (in general)? or What's worth doing? or even more abstractly, What's the point (in the immediate)?
A few things came to mind immediately: "give glory to God", "pursue happiness", "love others", "sustain self" (not in any order). In order to get that answer, I had to ask myself, "why is it valuable to give God the glory?", or "what's the point in pursuing happiness?", or "why love others?", and "why sustain self?". The greater question here is "What makes something worth doing?"
Alright, well, in order: "Because he's God."; "Because being happy is desirable. [Why?] Because the chemicals in my body told me so."; "Because making others happy leads indirectly to my greater well being. Also, God told me to. [God again.]"; "Because if I don't, then I'll die. [Why not die?] Because the chemicals in my body tell me not to. [the chemicals again]".
So, what makes something worth doing anyway? Well, from our very short list, and some very summarized 'prime factorization' of the points (I don't want to take forever writing this blog. It's just an overview), we've found that the primary motivators in question are God and Body Fluids.
I narrowed down the question to "what makes something valuable?" and then, "Does anything have intrinsic value?".
I decided to assume that God doesn't exist, or that if He does exist then there's no way to verify His intrinsic value (only to see where it took me). The issue where I got stuck was "why will I do anything that's 'valuable?" and "What is the relevance of 'value' to me, if it even exists?"
Skipping some stuff, I realized that I had essentially swept over my entire life and determined that nothing matters unless I decide it matters. I am not saying that value is relative to the person; I'm saying that in the lowest stage of abstraction, I became completely alone. For all intents and purposes, nobody else exists unless I acknowledge them (not just to me, it's absolute [admittedly from my perspective alone]). If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and I don't hear it, I couldn't care less if it exists or not -- even if somehow it "affects" my body indirectly. My body is not a part of me; it's just a medium by which I am able to think clearly until I get brain damage. After that, I might not even be me. Since I have no intrinsic value (all perceived value is only perceived by an assigner), I determine that humanity also has no intrinsic value. If another species wipes out humanity, it's because we were simply inferior sacks of chemicals.
So, the conclusion: in order to avoid an impending death by apathetic starvation, I needed to just "decide" to give value to something. Just one thing, though! Giving value to something is dangerous. If I pick something like "Flies" for example, to be the foundation for value, then everything else which is not productive to the production of flies needs to change or disappear. Flies are now the determining factor and ultimate authority on what has value. Rotting stuff has assigned value, metal doesn't. If a certain area doesn't have enough flies, we'd better get to killing somebody to make more fly food. But lets be more realistic. Lets say the environment has intrinsic significance... actually, that's just utterly depressing. I'm not gonna justify that with any more explanation. Another one I'm not gonna justify is "I alone am intrinsically significant". That's pathetic, lazy, and ultimately it doesn't work anyway.
Lets say that "People" have intrinsic significance. Now we're getting somewhere, but it's not quite good enough. People are self-destructive; what if person A wants to kill person B, but person B wants to live. Whose desires are more significant? Suppose we narrow it down to "human life", and this will get us very close to the right answer, but then we're able to take away a human's freedom in order to preserve their life. If we're to give intrinsic value to "all life" and "freedom", then we run into issues with "conflicting wills" and "what is really free?". Is the minority free if the majority votes against them? Are people still free if they unanimously elect a ruthless dictator who takes away all their other freedoms? The election was free.
The "God Given Rights" recognized in the U.S. are a pretty good attempt at giving intrinsic value to something other than God, and I'm not gonna get into the issue with those.
Long story short, the answer was God. I have to choose to give God value, and then everything else falls into place. I'm sure you're all well capable of extrapolating from here.
"How ya doin?"
Sunday, May 18, 2014
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