Shakespeare once wrote:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
Sometimes I think that we humans behave like actors in a self-directed play that seemed to have lost track of its script, and that we make it up as we go along since that seems to be the only option.
In doing so we appear to be driven to act and do as we want, but essentially without much of a clue to justify why we are going into the direction we appear to be heading.
For instance, being even a cursory student of human history will show that not acting in the best interest of our species appears to be the hallmark of human interaction over the centuries. The slaughter of millions of our own kinds features prominently in the matter settling disputes among ourselves that could have been resolved peacefully with a modicum of rationality and goodwill and to the benefit of everyone involved.
Moreover, it has become especially clear that we are most definitely not acting in our own best interest when much of what we do today has had a detrimental effect on the very environment that sustains us as we continue to rape and pillage the earth’s biosphere, including dumping our garbage in its oceans and poisoning its atmosphere. Indications are that if we continue the way we are acting now we might well be heading towards our own extinction.
I would like to think that we’re not headed in that direction, but it could be argued that being confronted with one’s own extinction is a necessary step in our development as a species that must know its limitations before it will be able to employ its full potential as a force of creative energy in the universe.
In the meantime this question remains: does the world – and all that it encompasses – have to be about something beyond the mere act of experiencing it? Couldn’t the world simply exist for its own sake – and that the very matter of experiencing it through our interactions with it is all that it is capable of delivering – suggesting that to search for a meaning beyond it would be an exercise in futility.
I find that difficult to accept, and not so much for the experience of positive events that make us happy and seem to provide the justification for it, but more because there appears to be so much more tragedy and despair in this world, through hunger, natural disasters and senseless wars and affecting mainly those who are least able to defend themselves from these misfortunes. Where is the justification for that? That doesn’t seem right to me – and where does that sense of right and wrong originate from, if not from the very reason why we are here in the first place? That suggest there is more to life beyond merely living it, i.e., that there is in fact a script in play and it is up to us to uncover it. This as opposed to merely accepting the status quo and the soul-destroying inevitability of it.