What is the meaning of life?
This question, of course, is one that man has wrestled with ever since time began. I will thank a friend of mine for saying they would read this if I wrote it. Otherwise I might never have.
There are many that believe that there is no intelligence behind our existence, but is in fact a random series of events that gave us both life and consciousness. There are others still that believe that an individual created us out of whim or fancy or some kind of plan. I subscribe to neither of these ideas. When I was around the age of 8 or 9 I had an illness that resulted in a fever. By itself unremarkable, but it gave me this thought: Why are my eyes the only ones I can see out of? It set me thinking about the nature of existence and what might really be on the other side. Initially religion filled that gap, but many of the aspects of religion left me unsatisfied. Not because I would need faith for them to make sense, but rather that the knowledge of those other aspects were not in harmony with the rest of life. So I started to develop my idea about the meaning of life. My idea is not particularly unique, but I believe the application of it is. I will attempt to describe my own meaning of life and how it works and why it works that way. I believe that some version of what I will post is in fact the truth behind our existence here.
Step 1. Pretext
I want to start with a plausible pretext that will allow my explanation of our existence to have an easy, well fitting narrative, instead of the clunky explanations that usually end with some kind of magic.
Lets begin with an assumption that there is more than one civilization in the cosmos. In fact, there are many. Each of these civilizations has risen and fallen and progressed through it's own mistakes. Throughout time these civilizations have progressed in technology until they have developed a way to allow for a near infinite lifespan. The technology that exists to allow us to live forever also allows us to live with a more pure way of gaining energy than consuming food. It also eliminates a need for physical procreation. Wealth is no longer an issue because without mortality, money is pointless. If we have infinite time, we will eventually acquire everything. As a result, we end up collecting nothing because we have no infinite use for it. The life of an infinite being creates a paradox of it's own existence. The only thing of value to the infinite is the one thing that we can never have enough of and that is knowledge. Everything we learn or find out leaves us with larger and more intricate questions than we had before. In effect, the more we know, the more we don't know. With this thirst for knowledge comes a desire for exploration. True exploration that comes with no quest for dominance, no assumption of power over existence like the explorers of old. These traits are those of a mortal race. Once we put off mortality, we put off the trappings of mortality. We long, instead, to quench the unquenchable thirst for knowledge. As adults often can no longer understand children except through vague memory of our own childhood. Immortal beings can also no longer understand mortality. the state of mind that mortality brings to us is unique in the universe. Over time, immortals can not understand wars and famine, greed and lust, gluttony and addiction. These things are as comprehensible to the immortal as the idea of being entertained by watching only children's programming on an endless loop would be to us.
The first immortals to venture out into the vastness of their existence found that other civilizations were disorganized and self destructive. Certainly these savages didn't deserve to grow beyond their captivities on the planets where they sprang up out of the mud? This kind of violence would be a cancer in the universe and should be removed. There was no empathy for the growth of a civilization. Immortality brings with it it's own hubris that stretches to assume that because a thing is finite and corruptible, it therefore has no use at all. The ugliness that has to be experienced by a species in order to attain enlightenment is similar to the ugliness that our own species experiences in early teen age years that offer us a loss of innocence combined with a metamorphosis that will end up in a fully formed adult, but will be uncomfortable to experience at best. Thoughts that make sense at the moment will be looked back upon with despair and embarrassment. Early immortals lacked the ability to understand the creatures they come upon with little more compassion than a hunter has on it's prey. At best they are to be used and harvested. At worst they are to be eliminated as a pollution in the universe. Even though short millennia ago, the immortals were themselves mortal and suffered the same pangs of angst about mortality. Those days are easily forgotten. Through their elevated understanding of the physical world around them, they have lost sight of the philosophical world that subjectively changes with changing conditions. Introspection by the immortals leads to an understanding that they must have a method to remember the perspective of mortality. It should be refreshed on a regular basis as that mortal perspective adds the flavor to discovery that unlocks understandable motivation and not random chaos. True sympathy.
Step 2. Re-education for Immortals.
At first the immortals would try to revive archives of their own history including the ugly parts of their humanity in an effort to understand themselves. This will not work because they lack mortality's perspective. So they will try to make the history more full and copious. This will all result in nothing more than an understanding that they too were once incomprehensible. This would not be enough to help exploration and understanding of new species so there would be simulations of events in the past. These would show the result of mortality but not the motivation. So a technological system would be developed to re-introduce mortality to the immortal. A system so comprehensive that an immortal would be imprinted with a lasting memory of mortality. This would require an immersive mortal experience. A vast computational network would need to be developed and the most comprehensive simulation would be created to assist in the re-education of immortals.
Step 3. Simulation.
The initial tries at creating the simulation were filled with problems that relate to the intensely analytical mind of the immortal. Flaws in the simulation were immediately understood and would invalidate any education the immortal received because behavior immediately changes when it's understood that the simulation is artificial. The answer was to temporarily remove the current experience access from the mind of the immortal. If they are not allowed to use their cultivated sense to pierce the artificial nature of the simulation they can then truly understand the nature of mortality again and then when they are re-integrated with their immortal sensibilities they can go forward with a fresh sympathy for mortality. The first immortals in the simulation were given forms that were fully capable of functioning in the simulation without any thought to history or existence. This was another flaw. Mortality by it's nature is nostalgic. Mortals are very concerned with where they came from and how they came about and the very nature of their limited existence. Showing up in the simulation as a fully formed adult created chaos beyond the inherent chaos of mortality. It was the addition of persisting history that created the perfect simulation. By being 'born' into the simulation and raised with limited ability and taught to exist within the constraints of mortality. The immortal could finally learn what mortality was really about. Framework historical constructs derived from the immortals own history was used to fabricate an artificial history that would shape and form the actions of everyone within the simulation. The system would save off individual completed simulations as specific experiences. The backdrop for education was complete.
The only problem was how do you program interactions with mortals when you've forgotten mortality. As complex as this simulation was becoming it was apparent that it was not possible to account for all the variations for all individuals in a given simulation. So the simulation is always limited to one individual. Everything else in the simulation is derived. The historical elements of the simulation are put together out of the histories of the immortals as well as the derived experience of the immortals that have already run the simulation. Every simulation starts with birth. From there it is up to the simulation to respond to the actions of the immortal in the simulation to create a new experience that re-enforces the understanding of mortality. This is done by extracting elements of prior simulations. If we think of you as the main character of your simulation. Then your mother is extracted elements of someone else's simulation. The friends you meet and have meaningful relationships with are also derived elements from prior simulations. This organic progression creates the natural feel and consequence that will allow the mother you interact with to be every bit as mortal as the rest of the world around you. There isn't a mother routine the system sends you, but someone that is derived from their experience and put into your mother's role. People you only have tangential contact with will only gain attributes needed to fulfill the interaction and will be augmented in the event of a more meaningful interaction decided by the individual. When you are done with your simulation you return to your immortal state with fresh understanding of the difficulties of mortality and your experience is stored so that your experience can be used to seed another character in another simulation.
Step 4. Sympathy
Now that the immortals have a mortality engine that will help them understand other races and cultures in their development, Immortals find themselves going into the simulation often to refresh their perspective. Since each simulation is a completely new experience, each try in the mortality engine gives you another piece of understanding that you naturally lack. This temporary sympathy with developing species allows you to explore with the restraint and perspective necessary to be honest to information but sensitive to the development of other species.
There you have it. My theory for the meaning of life. It unfortunately doesn't include a God. God is more of a construct from mortality. Since we die we feel much better about it assuming there is something afterward and someone that is steering the ship. When we die here the simulation is over and saved and you remember it along with the struggles of life and it allows you to look at the universe with a more clear picture. There are several questions that come to mind. If this is the real explanation of our existence, then why bother being good or virtuous? I think that is the most important lesson of mortality. Virtue and good are only available if you are trying to change the default state of mortality. That state appears to be need and misery. If a baby is left alone after birth, it will only see it's need and it will suffer before it ultimately starves to death. It takes effort to make a life better. It takes no effort at all to leave a life in misery. It has been stated before but I believe it to be true. Virtue is it's own reward.
If I believe in this theory, then why write this at all? Isn't this a waste of your time when you know anyone else reading this is going to be a construct of the simulation and not a 'real' person? Perhaps. However, the real reason I write this is to get clean in my head how this simulation must work. In this fashion, the simulation has an explanation and a consistent and coherent beginning and end. What happens after? We keep the knowledge we apply it to furthering knowledge we seek. I only know that this experience is valuable. Everything that it means to be mortal is something that should be experienced in all its horror. In order to allow us to further our study of everything else.
Couldn't there be more than one person? Of course there could. My thought that it's a single individual in the simulation comes from my background as a programmer. Dealing with a single point for variability is MUCH easier than multiple points. It could be that the immortals have no problem with this and have many other people in the simulation. My wife told me she was insulted by my thought that she might be derivative from the real version of her. I thought about this for a while. The truth is. if this is a simulation. I'm simulated as well. I'm just seeing it all myself alone. Still thinking about this one.
There are many that believe that there is no intelligence behind our existence, but is in fact a random series of events that gave us both life and consciousness. There are others still that believe that an individual created us out of whim or fancy or some kind of plan. I subscribe to neither of these ideas. When I was around the age of 8 or 9 I had an illness that resulted in a fever. By itself unremarkable, but it gave me this thought: Why are my eyes the only ones I can see out of? It set me thinking about the nature of existence and what might really be on the other side. Initially religion filled that gap, but many of the aspects of religion left me unsatisfied. Not because I would need faith for them to make sense, but rather that the knowledge of those other aspects were not in harmony with the rest of life. So I started to develop my idea about the meaning of life. My idea is not particularly unique, but I believe the application of it is. I will attempt to describe my own meaning of life and how it works and why it works that way. I believe that some version of what I will post is in fact the truth behind our existence here.
Step 1. Pretext
I want to start with a plausible pretext that will allow my explanation of our existence to have an easy, well fitting narrative, instead of the clunky explanations that usually end with some kind of magic.
Lets begin with an assumption that there is more than one civilization in the cosmos. In fact, there are many. Each of these civilizations has risen and fallen and progressed through it's own mistakes. Throughout time these civilizations have progressed in technology until they have developed a way to allow for a near infinite lifespan. The technology that exists to allow us to live forever also allows us to live with a more pure way of gaining energy than consuming food. It also eliminates a need for physical procreation. Wealth is no longer an issue because without mortality, money is pointless. If we have infinite time, we will eventually acquire everything. As a result, we end up collecting nothing because we have no infinite use for it. The life of an infinite being creates a paradox of it's own existence. The only thing of value to the infinite is the one thing that we can never have enough of and that is knowledge. Everything we learn or find out leaves us with larger and more intricate questions than we had before. In effect, the more we know, the more we don't know. With this thirst for knowledge comes a desire for exploration. True exploration that comes with no quest for dominance, no assumption of power over existence like the explorers of old. These traits are those of a mortal race. Once we put off mortality, we put off the trappings of mortality. We long, instead, to quench the unquenchable thirst for knowledge. As adults often can no longer understand children except through vague memory of our own childhood. Immortal beings can also no longer understand mortality. the state of mind that mortality brings to us is unique in the universe. Over time, immortals can not understand wars and famine, greed and lust, gluttony and addiction. These things are as comprehensible to the immortal as the idea of being entertained by watching only children's programming on an endless loop would be to us.
The first immortals to venture out into the vastness of their existence found that other civilizations were disorganized and self destructive. Certainly these savages didn't deserve to grow beyond their captivities on the planets where they sprang up out of the mud? This kind of violence would be a cancer in the universe and should be removed. There was no empathy for the growth of a civilization. Immortality brings with it it's own hubris that stretches to assume that because a thing is finite and corruptible, it therefore has no use at all. The ugliness that has to be experienced by a species in order to attain enlightenment is similar to the ugliness that our own species experiences in early teen age years that offer us a loss of innocence combined with a metamorphosis that will end up in a fully formed adult, but will be uncomfortable to experience at best. Thoughts that make sense at the moment will be looked back upon with despair and embarrassment. Early immortals lacked the ability to understand the creatures they come upon with little more compassion than a hunter has on it's prey. At best they are to be used and harvested. At worst they are to be eliminated as a pollution in the universe. Even though short millennia ago, the immortals were themselves mortal and suffered the same pangs of angst about mortality. Those days are easily forgotten. Through their elevated understanding of the physical world around them, they have lost sight of the philosophical world that subjectively changes with changing conditions. Introspection by the immortals leads to an understanding that they must have a method to remember the perspective of mortality. It should be refreshed on a regular basis as that mortal perspective adds the flavor to discovery that unlocks understandable motivation and not random chaos. True sympathy.
Step 2. Re-education for Immortals.
At first the immortals would try to revive archives of their own history including the ugly parts of their humanity in an effort to understand themselves. This will not work because they lack mortality's perspective. So they will try to make the history more full and copious. This will all result in nothing more than an understanding that they too were once incomprehensible. This would not be enough to help exploration and understanding of new species so there would be simulations of events in the past. These would show the result of mortality but not the motivation. So a technological system would be developed to re-introduce mortality to the immortal. A system so comprehensive that an immortal would be imprinted with a lasting memory of mortality. This would require an immersive mortal experience. A vast computational network would need to be developed and the most comprehensive simulation would be created to assist in the re-education of immortals.
Step 3. Simulation.
The initial tries at creating the simulation were filled with problems that relate to the intensely analytical mind of the immortal. Flaws in the simulation were immediately understood and would invalidate any education the immortal received because behavior immediately changes when it's understood that the simulation is artificial. The answer was to temporarily remove the current experience access from the mind of the immortal. If they are not allowed to use their cultivated sense to pierce the artificial nature of the simulation they can then truly understand the nature of mortality again and then when they are re-integrated with their immortal sensibilities they can go forward with a fresh sympathy for mortality. The first immortals in the simulation were given forms that were fully capable of functioning in the simulation without any thought to history or existence. This was another flaw. Mortality by it's nature is nostalgic. Mortals are very concerned with where they came from and how they came about and the very nature of their limited existence. Showing up in the simulation as a fully formed adult created chaos beyond the inherent chaos of mortality. It was the addition of persisting history that created the perfect simulation. By being 'born' into the simulation and raised with limited ability and taught to exist within the constraints of mortality. The immortal could finally learn what mortality was really about. Framework historical constructs derived from the immortals own history was used to fabricate an artificial history that would shape and form the actions of everyone within the simulation. The system would save off individual completed simulations as specific experiences. The backdrop for education was complete.
The only problem was how do you program interactions with mortals when you've forgotten mortality. As complex as this simulation was becoming it was apparent that it was not possible to account for all the variations for all individuals in a given simulation. So the simulation is always limited to one individual. Everything else in the simulation is derived. The historical elements of the simulation are put together out of the histories of the immortals as well as the derived experience of the immortals that have already run the simulation. Every simulation starts with birth. From there it is up to the simulation to respond to the actions of the immortal in the simulation to create a new experience that re-enforces the understanding of mortality. This is done by extracting elements of prior simulations. If we think of you as the main character of your simulation. Then your mother is extracted elements of someone else's simulation. The friends you meet and have meaningful relationships with are also derived elements from prior simulations. This organic progression creates the natural feel and consequence that will allow the mother you interact with to be every bit as mortal as the rest of the world around you. There isn't a mother routine the system sends you, but someone that is derived from their experience and put into your mother's role. People you only have tangential contact with will only gain attributes needed to fulfill the interaction and will be augmented in the event of a more meaningful interaction decided by the individual. When you are done with your simulation you return to your immortal state with fresh understanding of the difficulties of mortality and your experience is stored so that your experience can be used to seed another character in another simulation.
Step 4. Sympathy
Now that the immortals have a mortality engine that will help them understand other races and cultures in their development, Immortals find themselves going into the simulation often to refresh their perspective. Since each simulation is a completely new experience, each try in the mortality engine gives you another piece of understanding that you naturally lack. This temporary sympathy with developing species allows you to explore with the restraint and perspective necessary to be honest to information but sensitive to the development of other species.
There you have it. My theory for the meaning of life. It unfortunately doesn't include a God. God is more of a construct from mortality. Since we die we feel much better about it assuming there is something afterward and someone that is steering the ship. When we die here the simulation is over and saved and you remember it along with the struggles of life and it allows you to look at the universe with a more clear picture. There are several questions that come to mind. If this is the real explanation of our existence, then why bother being good or virtuous? I think that is the most important lesson of mortality. Virtue and good are only available if you are trying to change the default state of mortality. That state appears to be need and misery. If a baby is left alone after birth, it will only see it's need and it will suffer before it ultimately starves to death. It takes effort to make a life better. It takes no effort at all to leave a life in misery. It has been stated before but I believe it to be true. Virtue is it's own reward.
If I believe in this theory, then why write this at all? Isn't this a waste of your time when you know anyone else reading this is going to be a construct of the simulation and not a 'real' person? Perhaps. However, the real reason I write this is to get clean in my head how this simulation must work. In this fashion, the simulation has an explanation and a consistent and coherent beginning and end. What happens after? We keep the knowledge we apply it to furthering knowledge we seek. I only know that this experience is valuable. Everything that it means to be mortal is something that should be experienced in all its horror. In order to allow us to further our study of everything else.
Couldn't there be more than one person? Of course there could. My thought that it's a single individual in the simulation comes from my background as a programmer. Dealing with a single point for variability is MUCH easier than multiple points. It could be that the immortals have no problem with this and have many other people in the simulation. My wife told me she was insulted by my thought that she might be derivative from the real version of her. I thought about this for a while. The truth is. if this is a simulation. I'm simulated as well. I'm just seeing it all myself alone. Still thinking about this one.
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