we have clothes that are “one size fits all”…
which means a piece of clothing can fit anyone…
it doesn’t matter what size we might be, we can find some
clothes that will fit us…or we can even narrow that down a
bit by clothes that are more limited… for example, a pair of pants
for men that might be 36 32… which means a 36 waist and a 32 inch
long inseam…but even that doesn’t really get to what a person might
look like…a person might be only 5ft tall and thus rather heavy or perhaps
the person is really tall in the body which means they have short legs…
the sizing, 36 by 32, doesn’t really take into account what a person might look like…
we have the “one size fits all” in morality… “thou shall not kill”
but we might have a situation where “killing” is not only appropriate but warranted…
but we also have one size fits all in the meaning of life…
we see in the meaning of life, god, heaven, hell, angels and the like
being a “one size fits all” meaning of life…and we can see other
“meanings” to be one size fits all… how do we understand the meaning of life
given we might have many, diverse understandings of what it the goal/meaning o
of life?
to say the “meaning of life” is… is to marginalize anyone whose vision or understanding
of the meaning of life is different then yours…
but to suggest that the meaning of life is individual, is to miss that the meaning of
life must also be collective… it must include everyone and I don’t see how one
or two suggestions of the “meaning of life” can include everyone… or even the vast
majority of people…
for example, the questions of existence, the Kantian questions, “what am I to do”
“what are we to do” or the question of “what am I to believe in?” to be
“what are we to believe in?” can be only one or two possibilities…
just the diversity of life suggest that the answer to the question of the
“meaning of life” has many diverse, different answers…one size cannot fit
all in regards this question of “what is the meaning/goal of life?”
think about Darwin’s answer to the question, “what is the meaning of life?”…
that there doesn’t seem to be a biological answer to the question, “what is the
meaning of life?”
if Darwin is correct, and we have no reason to suspect that he is wrong,
then we have no biological possibility to answer the question,
“what is the meaning/goal of life?”
if life is the result of random evolutionary effects, then how can we even think
that life has some possibility of having meaning/or a goal?
one could say that the history of human beings after the French revolution,
is one of trying to find the “meaning of life” both individually and collectively…
let us think about the ism’s and ideologies of the 20th century…
let us think about two of them, Fascism in the guise of Nazism,
and communism…
both ism’s were attempts to answer the question, “what is the meaning of life?”
we can say the exact same thing about capitalism and the quest for meaning in
the guise of democracy and dictatorships…
each ism is an attempt to answer the question, “what is the meaning of life?”
or one size fits all… in capitalism or in communism or in democracy or in
dictatorships…
we have given the answer to the question “what is the meaning in life?” in terms
of capitalism or democracy or communism… in the last century and each answer has
failed because it has been so limited and narrow…it does not and cannot
answer either the individual or the collective answer as to “what is the meaning of
life?”
one size does not and cannot fit all… either in clothing nor in finding our
answers to the questions of existence…
what does this tell me?
that we have not searched in the right direction…
quite often the answer to difficult questions are found in
a different direction then we think it might be…
so, let us discard the normal answers to the question of
“what is the meaning of life?”…
let us discard god or heaven and hell as part of the normal answers to
the questions of existence…
let us discard answers like political answers like dictatorships and monarchies
and democracies… let us discard economic answers like capitalism
and communism…and let us discard religious answers like Buddhism
and Catholicism…
and what is left?
that is the problem… we have so limited our answers to just the political
and economic and religious that we have narrowed our search into
very limited possibilities…
and why? why would we want to limit our answers to such narrow and
limited possibilities…
because it allows us to escape a real search for what it means to be human…
if we limit what is possible to a few possibilities, then we don’t have any
real responsibility to find what is truly “our” possibility in life…
we can simply escape a real search for what is possible by making our
answers fit into a limited scope of the possibilities…
democracy, communism, religion, the political… economic,
each of these limited answers are ways we use to escape real
accountability to our understanding of “what is the meaning of life?”…
we use the old, time tested answers to what is “the meaning of life?” instead
of a real, honest investigation into “what is the meaning of life?”
we use old answers that did work before the various revolutions,
the political revolution like the the “French revolution” and the
“Industrial revolution” and even the much older, “scientific revolution”…
we answer our questions of existence as if these revolutions never
occurred…
we have failed to understand where exactly we stand in this midst of
our history… we act as if the “political revolutions” never occurred…
and we try to spot our place in the universe based on this…
and it cannot be so because the various revolutions have occurred
and we must come to grips with them…and we haven’t…
we haven’t come to grips with what Darwin and evolution has
told us about our nature and our place in the universe…
if Darwin is right, then we have no readily available answer
to the question, “what is the meaning of life?”
if we can find our “meaning of life” before we destroy ourselves,
then we have a shot, a possibility of real answers and real possibilities
to the question “what is the meaning of life?”…
perhaps the sole question in our “modern” world is simply this,
“what is the meaning/goal of life?”
and the answer will dictate where we go from here…
Kropotkin