I’ve been meditating a lot recently, it has really calmed my mind and allowed me to think about things in a different way. I have also been going to church more often, almost every week now. I am not a religious person, I never really believed in God. I always thought it was most important to look at things from a scientific objective perspective. I never really had a nihilistic perspective towards life, I did think however that we made up these stories to some extent to make us feel less lonely. To some extent I still do maintain this perspective that we are just intelligent monkeys who have invented religion, stories about life and death to make life meaningful. What is really rooted at the bottom of my perspective was in fact a feeling of superiority, that somehow I get more from life from looking at it this way. I realized that all meaning is really created internally, the external world only exists inside of our own head.
Thinking about life and its origins is very interesting, and it goes much deeper than the surface level. I believe that people have proved evolution to be true, at least to some extent - this point is able to be argued. If we say that growth has happened, then there must be growth towards something, there must be direction, right? Well there is direction, take the state of life a billion years ago to now, there was objective growth. For the next section of this blog, assume that there is no god; follow that logic. If there is no god, the object is not known or felt by any life, it is not obvious in which direction growth exists. It feels lonely to think that there is no real purpose from the perspective of life. What are animals most concerned about? Is it staying alive? Why are they most concerned about staying alive, why is life precious to them, why is death not a peaceful alternative? Darwin answers this question by saying life is precious because it must be to continue, I think this is because life exists separate from the individual. An organism is something that grows, changes, adapts over time and situation. Are the cells in our body organisms, is the heart in our chest an organism, are we organisms, is our tribe an organism, is society an organism, how about life in general? We think that we are special because our perspective exists at the level of ourselves; only seeing the world from behind our own eyes. Note: an objective function measures the difference between a current state and an object - the ‘goal’. We believe that the object must be on the level of perception of ourselves, our perspective of reality. Our level of perception might also be called our consciousness, because we are conscious of what we see and perceive.
While I was meditating, I came to the realization that we are not as special as we might think - in fact there’s no real reason for us to think we are besides self-gratification. We think that the purpose of life directly involves us as individuals, in other words - we believe the objective function exists on our level of consciousness. What is an ant’s purpose in its colony, it works for the prosperity of the whole colony. Let’s say that instead of the ant being the organism in question, we define the organism as the ant colony itself. Why not define it as that, it is certainly just as feasible. The ant colony grows, adapts, changes to its environment as if it is its own organism. Therefore, the objective function could very well exist at the level of the ant colony as opposed to the ant. Each scale of this ‘ant’ might have its own objective function. The cells inside the ant’s body strive for an objective to take in air and produce energy. The ant runs to go get food, that may be his objective, the colony wishes to survive, to keep living. The real question would be, what is the ultimate object? What object controls the rest, if it even is hierarchical?
Two necessary components of personal growth are humility and seeking to understand other people and their points of view. You cannot go into it thinking that you know better than them, that is where humility is necessary. Seeking to prove yourself right is pointless, because you will always get what you seek for. As humans we have the ability to make meaning out of life, to look at things how we choose to look at them, so of course if we simply look to prove ourselves right we will arrive at the conclusion that we are right. At the center of Christianity is the belief that we are special as humans, and even Christians think they are special because they are Christians. The reason I cannot get behind Christianity as a religion is because it lacks the component of humility. I can get behind that the bible is truth to some extent, but I cannot get behind that any individual’s interpretation of the text is truth. To believe that your personal interpretation of the bible is truth is to believe that everyone else's is not truth, and at the center of that belief is narcissism and pride. To a broader extent, to believe that the Bible is the sole and only form of truth is to believe that non-christian’s interpretations of life is not truth, and at the center of that belief is also narcissism. The thing that led me to even explore religion at all was a combination of seeking to understand other people and a sense of humility. The reason why I cannot see myself becoming a Christian is because it seems implicit in the religion to hold yourself in a higher regard than other humans, and I think that this is dangerous.