Stupidity About Purpose Of Life
It probably has to be accepted that we must not still remain lingering with the primary question of life and living, even when we are in 21st century. The question, Who Am I, or to say what is ‘self’, needs finality of answer as without this, there probably cannot be any movement towards personal sanity. The singular answer to this question cannot be ever arrived at and accepted, this we all know. We already know why there cannot be a singular Reality and that is why no possibility of any singular answer of questions that is at the core of our life-living. However, what we all need to accept that there probably is a possibility of an easy and singular acceptance of something, which is broadly tangible or tangibility-driven and therefore secularly and singularly objective for we all to accept.
There shall always be dualism about origins and purpose of universe and all lives around us, including humans. But we all can and should ideally accept that now in 21st century, there is little confusion or disagreement about the mechanism and processes of human body and mind. It does not matter whether God created humans or humans created God! It is also irrelevant whether evolution designed us or not. If there is a ‘designed’ purpose of universe and we humans in it; great but it really is impossible to have singular acceptance of it. What matters is that we have a certain and common design of body and mind and that does not anyway change irrespective of who created or designed us. The ‘design’ and ‘creation’ is well there. Let the debate as who created the design remain be endless. It does not matter. What actually matters is what we do next, after the design is there.
From the perspective of the human body-mind mechanism and the substantial knowledge humanity now has, it is truly of utmost utility and significance to accept that universe too has a ‘design’, mechanism and process, like our body and mind but, it does not have a ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’, which humans could accept and relate to in their normal lives. Lives on Earth or if elsewhere too have no purpose and meaning, which we humans usually assign to these words and terms. Reality itself is nothing and unworthy of any utility, which we understand. The interesting fact is that all meanings, all purposes, all Realities start and end with ‘I’ or self. The universe, the Earth, the lives have only those meanings, purposes, utility and worth what ‘I’ or self assigns and accepts. Therefore, if ‘I’ is in Sanity, System, Order, Righteousness, Goodness and Wellness, then only the universe, the Earth, the lives have. It is ‘I’, the self that matters and has any utility. This is the singular notion installed and elaborated 3000 years back in ancient Indian philosophical traditions of ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ (I Am God). The author has elaborated this theme in eBook titled, ‘I Am God’, available for unrestricted download.
This acceptance is the first primary requirement for installation of personal sanity. It can be said with all possible humility and sincerity of consciousness that contemporary humanity must see, understand, accept and internalize that in our civilizational and cultural march to modernity of institutional and organizational life-living, we have almost dumped the primary reality of human life-living. This primary reality, which thinking minds and philosophers of early humanity listed out with strong conviction, is that the individual, the person, an average man or woman is the everythingness of all somethingness that social and collective living can design and execute for sanity of system.
It is tragic and decisively the biggest and worst hypocrisy of humanity that now this individual or person is nowhere in picture in scheme of things of society, culture, economy, markets, politics and even scientific and technological advancements. Rather, personal sanity gets more degraded and emaciated as collective efforts for so-called ‘betterment’ of life-living of common men and women go up. The most glaring example of this worst hypocrisy is how globally, human education system is being majorly shaped, designed and devised to generate ‘Efficient Workers’ for economic activities, which in turn create handful of billionaires and reduce the majority of average men and women as ‘machines’ and slaves. Human education is no more designed for enhancing and improving personal sanity and system of individual because, it shall create men and women with a strong sense of liberty, purpose and direction. This shall be trouble for politics, governments and businesses! An individual must see and accept this ‘causality’ of chaos in his or her life and living.
Since thousands of years, humanity has had the critical question of who he or she is and what is his or her situation in the station of life as well as in the larger context of cosmos. This question has been the very basis of all spiritualism as spiritualism simply means deciphering the ‘Causality of Connect’ of individual with all entities in internal as well as in external milieus, extending to the universe itself. Somehow, the first part of the transcendental question as ‘Who Am I’ has been handled well by spiritualism, philosophy and now modern science. However, the second part as what is the causality or context of connect of an individual with all external milieus has not been duly and appropriately handled either by spiritualism, philosophy or science. A singular, holistic and objective answer to the second part of question is a must for sustenance of personal sanity, system, order, purpose and poise.
This however is another domain of impossibility. This impossibility stems out of the very contextual and relativist nature of Reality. As different people shall accept different contexts and relative positioning of ‘I’ or self vis-à-vis the milieus, there can never be a singular idea or idealism about human context of connect with external world. Moreover, as milieus always present powerful causalities to all humans living at a time and space, the ever evolving and changing milieus and their emergent trends shall keep changing individual’s context of connect with milieus and the universe. As average individual has ingrained propensity for aping or going with the mainstream, there shall always be a majority-trend that shall define, shape and design collective consciousness and cognition, which majority of individuals shall love to follow and accept.
Therefore, there is always a populist answer of what the purpose of life is and what individuals should accept as core principle of the ‘connect’ and interaction with external world. Any alternative answer or interpretation may exist and stay but shall always be a minority viewpoint and shall trade behind the populist perception. Globally, what we are seeing in contemporary world is this situation where majority of people are almost blindly in linearity and sync with populist majority worldview of accepting ‘Evolving and Empowerment’ as continuous growth of consumption and comfort. This core populist idea may have many shades and varieties, having a mix of consumption and even a rebel against it but actually, every shade shall essentially be a manifestation of the populism of consumption and comfort. There are alternative viewpoints and perspectives of human connect and context with external milieus but they are very much a minority viewpoint, only few individuals follow in their personal life-living.
The most critical question that humanity confronts today is, do we have a possibility of accepting that the contemporary populist viewpoint, which majority of over 7.5 billion people are accepting and following, may not be the right or appropriate one and secondly, can we have a singular alternative perspective that can be accepted as the holistic, objective and right realism for human connect with its milieus? We try to test the possibility of such a probability here.
Any model of personal sanity must take into account the basics of our body-brain mechanism and process as it is where Reality is created, plays out and ends, for all practical purposes. We now know a lot about how our brain works and that alone determines what possibly could be a model of personal sanity. We can say with reasonable amount of conviction that brain works on the basis of association. This process of association starts in the womb itself. Scientific researches tell us that even while still in mother’s womb, the baby begins to associate with the sound of the mother and other things in the ambient milieus. It is because brain is designed for optimizing survival and therefore, even before the child could begin his or her journey out of the mother’s womb, the brain begins to associate all information from the external milieus. The brain of the new born continues to do so up to the age of eight or ten.
This we have talked about as the auto-mode learning process of brain states, especially the subconscious mind, which constitutes major portion of our early learning. The subconscious brain state ensures suitability and optimization of a child in his or her milieus by this innate, wired and automatic process of association, thus creating a pattern and plexus of belief-system, perspectives and worldviews as the child grows and attains adulthood. These belief-systems, which association processes create as auto-mode learning, engender a plexus of identities for an adult to which a person adheres to as dearly as for his or her life. These identities and belief-systems become his or her personality. That is why it becomes a trap for him or her.
Most troubles begin from here. This identity and association dualism breeds loads of hypocrisies and in long run traps a person in deep abyss of stupidity and insanity that the world is so full of. We need to see and understand that human crisis and the resultant crisis of the human world emanate out of this ‘stupidity’ of the brain mechanism and process, which Mr. Brain thinks is the most ‘intelligent’ thing to do! Why? This dualism needs to be unraveled and understood to clearly understand how the solution of everything is in our brains itself as it is our brain mechanism and process, which are behind most of our troubles and that of the humanity.
Science clearly says that humans are not, by nature a logical, reasoned and receptive creature. Humans are instead totally reactive, instinctive and intuitive being. Human behavior is determined entirely by the interaction – competition, cooperation, coordination, between his various instincts, which are genetically determined neural mechanisms provided by evolution for behavioral guidance. Therefore, an adult men or woman is wired to grow as an instinctive being, if he or she is not trained for alternative intelligence, required for sanity in societal living.
It is so because evolution’s ‘intelligence’ is not aimed at making a man or a woman as a good, compassionate and righteous person. Evolution didn’t come up with these packages. Evolution was designed for singular intelligence of survival. That is why our brain is designed and genetically wired for this ‘intelligence’ of association-building and identity-generation. This identity generation ensures success of a human child in the milieus he or she has to live because human body-mind make up has evolved as gregarious creatures. That is why aping, association building with prevalent and dominant identities and belief-systems of the milieus and demography has been embedded in human brain mechanism and processes as ‘Primary Intelligence’.
However, this intelligence of our brain becomes the single largest causality of most of human troubles, be it at personal levels or at societal levels. This evolutionary intelligence was good for very early lives of our ancestors thousands of years back. Modern human dates back to 4 million years and science confirms that even the modern human has the original genetic design dating back to the suitability of that time period. However, as humanity evolved, history is testimony of the fact that this instinctive design of humanity brewed all troubles for human world.
This design for associations installed in human behavior and action, a subconscious rigidity and dogmatism for ‘Identities’. This resulted into creation of tribes and reactionary tribal loyalty for the identity. Therefore, human history has been a sordid and bloody saga of wars between different tribes and identities. Modern scientists warn that this tribal instinct is still very much alive and kicking in modern human and human world. In fact, the new millennium of 21st century has witnessed the revival of identity instincts and contemporary global crisis has this very powerful degenerative and regressive reversal to ‘ethnicity’ conflict and cooperation, pushing the world into another crisis. The two calamitous world wars of humanity also had their seeds in this tribal instinct of identity.
This identity instinct and ethnicity-loyalty is singular major insanity-point for average man and woman at individual and personal level too. As we have talked earlier, humanity has come a long way since 4 million years back, when our tribal instincts ruled us and made life-living succeed. This age-old instinct is now regressive and degenerative. This primary ‘intelligence’ of 4 million years back is singular calamitous ‘stupidity’ in 21st century world. Our regressive and degenerative tribal instinct of rigidity and dogmatism of ‘Identity’ is surely leading us to extinction. This is evident and overly manifested everywhere – society, culture, politics, economy, markets and even family relationships. This is the biggest ‘unlearning’ challenge for humanity.
Humanity at collective levels have always been blind to these realities and remain so. Earlier humanity could probably be forgiven for pushing fellow humans into miseries of war and distress as they were not aware of the scientific facts about human nature and functioning of human mind consciousness. However, contemporary humanity cannot be pardoned for continuing to ape and even augment the same age-old regressive and degenerative stupidities and insanities. But the fact remains that given the attitude of contemporary societal, cultural and political leadership and the complex state of international economics, it seems impossible that sanity can ever have any possibility in modern world. Therefore, sanity is possible only at personal levels and individualistic domain.
It is human design and also innate need to connect with all elements outside in the milieus. The very innate process of association building is for the crucial need to express one’s connect with all elements within and outside, as a child grows into adulthood. In broad terms an individual’s journey to maturity requires this essential liberty to establish association and connect with all elements in the milieus to express his personality, feelings, beliefs and perspectives. Liberty means this freedom of every person to express himself or herself.
However, we know that this liberty is a contextual reality. It is because, an individual’s growth and evolving into adulthood happens in society, culture and a political-economic system. Liberty of an individual therefore is contextual to society and other collectivities and it means, an individual’s liberty is always conditional to some reasonable restrictions and authoritative collective norms and rules. Naturally, liberty of a person, the rights of an individual to grow in expression of his or her associations and connects with elements in milieus are always competitive and restrictive. This creates a struggle, which in turn encourages reactionary and instinctive energies, leading to augmented probabilities of hypocrisies and insanity.
It is a precarious dualism, which needs to be resolved for personal sanity. An individual’s expression of his or her ‘I’ or self is meaningful and of a utility and worth only when it is associated and connected with collective spaces like society, culture, markets, nations, etc where billions of other individuals are out vying for the same. It has no meaning if a person opts to leave human world and live in a jungle alone. He or she has 100 percent liberty and zero percent competition but also no association and connect. This happens only in human world of society and cultures. An individual has meaning, utility and worth only in collective spaces and all his or her troubles and conflicts also come from this same realism.
A person needs collective spaces for growth, evolving and validation of ‘I’ or self and this itself stands out as most powerful causality of most of his or her 3Cs – Conflicts, Chaos and Confusion. An individual shall keep struggling for his or her liberty and freedom to have his or her own way of shaping reality for his or her life-living and as there shall always be many times more people already, vying fiercely to have their own respective liberties to prevail, struggling to install their own or even antagonistic realities. This causality of struggle and battle for liberties instigate the animalistic tribal instincts in humans and in turn unleash huge loads of stress and conflicts. This is perfect causality for impossibility of sanity.
It is only natural and amply clear that personal sanity can be attained only when an individual comes out of this causality – this dualistic contextuality and relativism between individual and society. Does this mean that a person shall have to abandon all his liberties in favor of society? No, certainly not. All he or she has to do is to accept the holism, understand and accept this dualism and suitably condition his consciousness towards this contextual reality. As a person sees and understands this causality between him or her and the collective spaces, he or she shall not fall in the trap of reactionary and instinctive anger and frustration. Rather, he or she shall grow more receptive, skillful and objectively accustomed to the inbuilt conflict. He or she shall become more compassionate towards ‘others’ and that alone has the potential to install lasting sanity.
This is what we have to do for personal sanity. We have two ways out of this trap of duality –
It has to be admitted here that this all may seem easy at theoretical level but hugely tough to practice. It is primarily because an adult has had this populist and prolonged mind-training to be ‘passionate’ about his identities, liberties, belief-systems, life goals, etc. and be ‘intuitively crafty’ in facing competition head on and maneuver his or her way out of the crowd to shine alone as a pole star. This is basic and bare hypocrisy that humans relish and then expect sanity, system and order in the society! How?
It is because an individual needs the collective spaces for his or her very growth and journey to adulthood. It is in society and culture that he or she finds meaning and validity of his or her liberty. A child cannot reach to happy and poised adulthood if society as a whole is not compassionate about his or her individual liberties. However, when an individual grows to adulthood, he or she passionately manipulates this very society and culture to seek individualistic and personal attainments and expression of his or her ‘I’ or self. If the adult is not paying back to society in the same compassion-coin, it is biggest stupidity-hypocrisy and definitive road to insanity.
In passion driven milieus, the situation has gone worse. It is this passionate individualism that has created this contemporary calamitous reality of ‘5 Percent’ having income and wealth more than that of the rest of ‘95 Percent’. The compassion-deficit society and cultures have become so competitive and individualistically so rigid and dogmatic about passionate individual goals and attainments of life that a growing up child is not getting the desirable compassion from the collective space at the first instance. This itself infuses conflict and competitiveness in an adult. It is only natural that this compassion-deficit adult shall not be innately inclined to pay any amount of compassion back into the system of collective spaces. This shall augment and embolden the cyclicality of causality of more brutal and passion-driven competitiveness and conflict in human world as well as in individuals. This is perfect recipe for hypocrisies and insanity. This we have to come out of, if we wish to extend any reasonable chance to personal sanity in contemporary world.
The first step of course is to understand this causality of conflict between individual and society and other collective spaces and design small but compassionate steps to stay away from this passion-driven reactionary and hypocritical causality. Secondly, an individual has to look for a probable pattern of interaction with collective spaces, which allows less competitive field of operation to personal liberty. Thirdly, an individual also has to make suitable enterprise to seek utility and value in such self-expressions which are more internal and personal, not requiring validation from collective spaces. It may seem tough but only because we see and accept things from our current and contemporary mind training and cognition. There are enough such spaces and many young people are already into it. All it may take is compassionate acceptance of alternative cognition of utilities, value and worth of other non-conventional and non-conformist parts of Reality, which constitute the holism of worldview.
For example, we all know how in the last 60-70 years, there has been a mad rush of people towards urban spaces from rural landscapes. In popular perception, good life has come to be solely associated with urban and metropolis living. There is a decisive movement of people towards cities and it has created such complexities and competitiveness in urban life-living, which is becoming seed content of most chaos and conflicts in average life-living. It is such a tragedy that average person does not understand that even while in popular perception it may seem that the world lives in town and cities, the reality is that the entire urban landscape is only less than one percent of the total global land. The trouble is that this less than one percent urban land accommodates over 54 percent of global population.
On the other hand, rural lands with different farming and non-farming potentials occupy around 40 percent of global land but homes only less than 50 percent of global population. Then, there are forest lands that occupy 30 percent of global land but even small tribal population in forested regions are being fast removed. The scary detail, which is so apparent yet neglected by most of us is that things were not in such a mess only a century back. Humanity was primarily a rural living reality with urbanized living less than 10 percent. In the second half of 20th century, humanity created its own trouble by clustering most economic activities and facilities in handful of urban centers. That was probably not enough of a stupidity so, humanity ensured that rural areas got gradually neglected and dilapidated so that urban life-living could get cheap labor force.
The contemporary human life-living is in such disaster that globally, especially in developing world of China and India, thousands of villages have been completely deserted and even developed countries like most European nations have villages where little sustainable activities are taking place. In only last 50 years, humanity has destroyed completely the cradle of its own civilization by making rural landscape unviable and unsustainable. This in turn is impacting the sanity and system of urban spaces, which have emerged as the only spaces where life-living could be sustained. It is easily imaginable as what is the state of life-living in most urban spaces when the reality remains that over 50 percent of global population live in less than one percent of global land. And, the remaining half of the global population not in urban space is trapped in a landscape, which has become unsustainable.
It is not that global think tanks and intellectuals are not pointing out to these huge anomalies in contemporary civilized life-living but the fact remains that majority of people do not see and accept this insanity as they have this populist mindsets and cognition to blindly and madly follow what looks like the ‘smart’ thing, everyone is doing! There is some thinking at political levels in some developed countries to correct this huge anomaly but it is doubtful whether any meaningful step shall ever be taken. However, good news is that some aware and conscious young men and women have understood this modern trap and working their way out to sustainable life-living in rural landscapes. This is a pointer to the fact that only personal sanity and individualistic enterprise is the possibility in contemporary state of insanity.
Another big trap situation and huge anomaly, which is major causality of contemporary human insanity and hypocrisy is in global economic and financial systems. Like the urban-rural hypocrisy, the economic and financial ecosystems are living wildly and madly with stark stupidities, despite warning emanating from the ecosystems itself as well as from experts, who see the root of trouble.
Post Second World War, the shaken up humanity desperately sought a global order, which worked out a political and economic model for the world to avoid any such calamitous probability like the two world wars. The human and other costs of the two world wars were so colossal that humanity, especially the intellectuals and leaderships of the world sat together to work out global system of sanity in the years to come. Liberalism, open trade, free market economy, anti-imperialism, disarmament and international dialogues were accepted as the singular and common creed for all nations of the world to follow. In next few years, things were also started in the right note. However, it is common knowledge how everything lost its fizz and national identity, national interest and supremacy politics once again led humanity to the same old and oft-trodden road to major conflicts, wars and armament.
Not only politics failed, the global economic sanity was also shattered with politics deciding to disrespect all sanity principles of peace and order. The post world wars resolve of free trade, cooperation and sharing of resource and expertise were thrown to the winds. The powerful and disastrous element of nationalism, identities and narrow-wallism of domestic growth superseded the compassionate and idealistic imagery of global wellness and altruistic sustainable growth for all humanity, across nation-state boundaries.
So, manufacturing boom and technological upsurge in countries created trade war conflicts. Global trade redesigned the old fashioned imperialism and global finances worked overtime like national armies to churn the world into domination triggered international relationship. Strategic interests and geopolitics were redesigned to remodel and de-contextualize human slavery and human deprivation into novel terminologies of international monetary mechanism and finances. Disarmament was gradually and conveniently forgotten and rather, diplomatic artistries were honed up to ensure perpetual strife-zones across globe to keep afloat the lucrative money-minting arms bazaar.
And where humanity has reached! Latest world inequality report tells it all as how humanity has failed big time in ensuring wellness for all. The model of polity and economy has miserably failed in ensuring equitable growth and distribution of incomes and wealth. Contemporary reality of a handful of billionaires pocketing massive majority of wealth and incomes, leaving over 90 percent of human population struggling for a descent life-living is the perfect picture of human insanity in the post world war era. It is definitively hugely contrary to the dream and aspiration of humanity in middle of 20th century of a world order, which could have ensured reasonable parity in life-living essentials.
There is almost a common hypocrisy globally and there is little initiative to do away with it. From the available knowledge of human body-mind mechanism and processes, it is evident to all that the worst enemy of human wellness and excellence is STRESS – Physical as well as Mental. The pollution in milieus, cluttered unnatural living, precarious work cultures, unhealthy and suicidal lifestyle choices, tainted and imbalanced food, complex life-living, stressed relationships, insecurities, conflicts, confusion, anxieties, etc. They are mostly the outcome of the personal, societal, political and economic choices the humanity has made and continues to plunge deeper into the malady every day. This central issue is not being addressed by the contemporary intellect of humanity.
If scientific studies confirm that global wellness levels has not enhanced post second world war in nearly 75 years, as wellness is a function of many tangible and intangible elements, then what is the good news behind all that obsession with economic growth and technological advancement? In fact, it may well be accepted that probably this very contemporary model of economic growth and technological advancement have unleashed such entropic energies in human life-living that it has nullified and zeroed whatever gains growth-story could muster up in the last century. This may be debatable as there is no definitive global data or deep study that could prove it. Still, this much we all can see and say that the very innocuous and simple question, ‘Are You Happy’, has come to stay as so much complex and complicated one that the ‘Conflict and Confusion’ over this question itself and its answer has soared sky high!
This conflict and confusion has evolved so fast and deep – laterally and vertically that it has come to stay as defining emotion or state of mind of average human in contemporary world. It is definitely contrary to the very core notion of ‘growth’ and development. With time, as a natural progression, human knowledge and wisdom increases and wi