Leonidas DrosisC messier, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/4.0>
I recently realized that the purpose in life that I have always pursued may no longer have meaning. Whilst considering the problem, I came up with an interesting alternative.
I have always had a clear purpose in life: to make the world a better place. That goal has guided my efforts and I am satisfied with the effectiveness of those efforts. However, of late a question has arisen that raises doubts as to my purpose: will all my work be nullified by the collapse of civilization? I have grown increasingly convinced that humanity’s failure to make adequate efforts to cope with climate change proves its inability to cope with the ever more difficult problems posed by the advance of technology.
Artificial intelligence poses the next major technological challenge to human wisdom, and we have not even begun to consider how to cope with its dangers, much less do anything about them. Climate change was easy — all we had to do was reduce carbon emissions starting around 1990 (36 years ago!) and we’d now be on top of the problem. But our carbon emissions have increased prodigiously since then, and the puny efforts we have made so far are completely inadequate to the scale of the problem. If we can’t cope with an easy problem like climate change, we cannot possibly cope with the many problems that AI will present us with. Crushed between the huge economic costs of climate change and the digital costs of AI, we will surely fail as a civilization.
So civilization is doomed to destroy itself in the near future. My best estimate for the collapse is sometime in the 2050s, but I have always been overly optimistic. For example, I insisted that Mr. Trump could not possibly win the 2016 election; then I made the same insistence in 2024. I’m just a Pollyanna.
So if civilization will collapse soon, what is the point of contributing to humanity’s betterment? It’s all going to fall apart anyway, so my efforts to contribute to civilization will be of no avail. Is my purpose in life a waste of time?
An alternative occurred to me. We have a little dog named Roxy. She’s old; we took her in when she was 13 years old. She’s such a sweetie, and she’s full of fun. I think she’s the happiest dog we have ever known. The other day, whilst watching Kathy play “glove game” (tug-of-war with Roxy for a woolen glove), it struck me that we were creating happiness. Yes, Roxy will die in a year or two, but for the moment, our efforts make her happy.
Could this be a better purpose for my life? Should I abandon the long game of bettering humanity with my ideas, and instead focus on simply creating happiness in the moment? It greatly saddens me that I won’t be able to make my best contribution to the world, but I must be realistic. Better to contribute what I can than to aim for a meaningless goal.
My Brief Reflections
I agree that it is hard to see how our efforts matter if civilization or the cosmos itself eventually cease to be. As I’ve written,
… cosmic death seemingly eliminates both the meaning in and of life. The meaning we find in life might have had some small significance while we were living, but cosmic death largely, if not completely, undermines that meaning. As for the meaning of life, it’s impossible to see how there can be one if everything fades into nothingness.
Chris’ key question here is “will all my work be nullified by the collapse of civilization?” While I’ve written extensively about how life might be meaningful. I’ve also stated,
Here then is the essence of the problem. Despite our best efforts, we may collectively fail to bring about this meaningful reality we imagine … So it seems that we can’t erase all our doubts or allay all our fears. As long as we are committed to intellectual integrity, we must admit that life may be utterly absurd, futile, and meaningless. All of reality may be heading … nowhere; our lives, our cares, our dreams … all for naught.
In response to these doubts, I’ve offered my own version of hope as a possible solution. In short, hope that it is all worthwhile, meaningful, or purposeful keeps us going and ameliorates our despair. Whether that is enough to satisfy must be decided by each individual. But I fear that is all the intellectually honest have.
I wish I could be more reassuring, but I fear that Chris is right. In response, again, I appeal to hope,
So attitudinal hope entails caring, acting, and striving. To hope is to reject despair—to care although it might not matter; to act in the face of the unknown; and not to give up. I don’t know whether my actions will improve my life or help bring about a meaningful cosmos, but I can still choose to hope, care, act, and strive toward those goals. Again, this hope isn’t about future expectations; it’s an attitude that informs my present while rejecting despair or resignation. Such hope is the wellspring for the cares and concerns that manifest themselves in action.
Not much to hang your hat on, but that’s all we have.
I would also push back on the inevitability of societal collapse. While there’s a good chance of civilization collapse, we don’t know it will happen. This ignorance justifies our hope. Since we don’t know that life won’t improve or is meaningless, we shouldn’t be too hasty in drawing such conclusions.
I also don’t think “the long game of bettering humanity” and “creating happiness in the moment” are mutually exclusive. Perhaps the latter even contributes in some small way to the former. And it is a lot to ask someone to judge their life by whether they change the world—we are small, and the world is very big. We should contribute what we can, rather than aiming for an unachievable goal. Given our existential situation, that is all we can do. As James Fitzjames Stephens taught me over 50 years ago in a college philosophy class,
We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? ‘Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes … If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.
Or, as Julian Huxley wrote,
I turn the handle and the story starts:
Reel after reel is all astronomy,
Till life, enkindled in a niche of sky,
Leaps on the stage to play a million parts.
Life leaves the slime and through the oceans darts;
She conquers earth, and raises wings to fly;
Then spirit blooms, and learns how not to die,
Nesting beyond the grave in others’ hearts.
I turn the handle; other men like me
Have made the film; and now I sit and look
In quiet, privileged like Divinity
To read the roaring world as in a book.
If this thy past, where shall thy future climb,
O Spirit, built of Elements and Time!
This may all be just wishful thinking, but I find comfort in my ignorance about the future. Perhaps there is more in heaven and earth than we can dream of in our philosophy.
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You can read some of Chris’ other essays here.
As a medic in Vietnam I coiuld have thought to myself as I attended to an injured soldier or civilian: life is meaningless, so what is the point in trying to save this life? Of course, life might have meaning to that person, and my decision to deny help will end what is meaningful to them. I saved lives so they could kill or be killed on another day. Should I have refused to do this because life is meaningless? Within the meaningless, we create meaning. Life owes us nothing; we did not have to come into existence. If we are grateful for this miraculous gift we owe life something. I cannot think of something more meaningful than attending to real human suffering for our brief time together, meaningless be damned.
Thanks, Joseph, for sharing your thoughts. I think your last sentence is particularly powerful and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
My elder brother has little hope. He and I are following and adding thoughts to the AI/google project. It is one beginning.
can you explain this?
I’ve got many thoughts on this topic, largely based on the updated edition of my book,
“Wellsprings of Work: Surprising Sources of Meaning in Your Career and Retirement.”
First, I believe “meaning” and “motivation” differ, although they’re very intertwined. The former tends to take intellectual form; the latter is more a gut reaction. One operates rationally, the other more viscerally. Experiences that fuel feelings of fulfillment or gratification are “reason” enough to appreciate and pursue them.
A related point grows from the insights of Victor Frankl. He stressed that “meaning” does not exist on some Platonic level; it’s what we must create. And we can create it in various ways, including by our deeds, our actions. Broadly defined, whatever we work at, create or build may provide meaning and motivation.
My take on “hope” proceeds from the fact that we are hard-wired to find meaning and motivation in what we do today based on implicitly expecting a future, even if we do not expect to live sufficiently long to remain in that future. (Think Moses leading his people to the edge of the Promised Land, but never himself entering it.) Philosopher Samuel Scheffler made the point well. Imagine that you learn the world will end in 30 days. Whatever you do– designing a bridge as an engineer, a music writing a symphony, a medical research seeking a cure for cancer– presumes a future of people who will use or benefit from your work. Imagining all humanity is wiped out kicks the legs out from under whatever we work at today.
I was struck by a particular word in your own commentary, John M– “wellsprings.” Turning to concerns over the impact of artificial intelligence on meaning and motivation, my book includes a chapter called “Meaning and the Machine: Protecting ‘I’ from AI.” In short, my view is that over-reliance on AI threatens to suppress the wellsprings of meaning and motivation, for reasons the chapter explores.
Scheffler’s point is similar to the one being made by Crawford. Also, I’d direct all my readers to take a look at Samuel’s book. And thanks for the comments.
This covered a lot of ground. (I always enjoy Mr. Crawford’s commentary.)
To add a few comments, actually, more bullet-point additions.
Chris speaks of having always worked toward a better world, but questions if it is all rendered pointless with civilization collapse. I would say that he answered the question well by speaking of his play with his dog Roxy. Regardless of the future, for those moments he made Roxy happy, and I suspect himself as well.I would use the concept of less suffering. For just a few moments, the sentient part of the universe had a minuscule reduction in suffering. To my thinking, that matters.
The next area is: what is collapse? I, too, have become convinced that our current Industrial Civilization is unsustainable. We live in an epoch of polycrisis, any one of which threatens our industrial way of life. Global warming, non-renewable resource limits, clean fresh water, monetized societies requiring constant economic growth to pay the interest on the debt, AI, …the list goes on and on. All while policymakers and citizens alike grapple with the paradox that most attempts to address any one of these existential issues exacerbate one or more of the other mortal threats to humanity.
So I agree, there will be a reckoning. The question is when, how fast, and how bad. As lacking in sapience as we currently are, we still can be clever. We surprise ourselves in how often we manage to avoid complete disaster. (that’s the positive take) But the longer we avoid the “reckoning”, the deeper the hole we dig. The fall will be longer, and the number of people who will suffer unimaginably will grow larger. (that’s the negative take) We may find a way to collectively address these predicaments, but the current world politics makes that seem unlikely.
So, unless we figure out a way to change much of the world’s fundamental mindset from a world of abundance to one of scarcity, eventually we will have a pretty hard fall. We will have to look for love, happiness, and humanity in a more materially restricted world. Somehow, humans have survived plagues and famine and yet maintained their humanity.Even a coming Dark Age is still influenced by the ripples from the past. (a concept borrowed from a long comment by Chris about 2 years ago….we are shaped by our ancestors’ lives….as we each minutely shape the world of future lives).
I will close my points with Prof. Messerly’s thoughts regarding hope.It builds on his previous essays that pessimism and hope exist side by side and may even provide a realistic approach to adversity.
To a greater degree than other animals, humans have both volition and agency. That alone is cause for hope. It also increases the chance for future generations to emerge from the world we bequeath them with a civilization more aligned with Human Happiness than our current one. But
can we unwrite a fate that has already been written? Can we escape all the predicaments we find ourselves in? Don’t know. But happiness requires balancing my pessimism with hope.
So I will quote Václav Havel, who captures the romantic spirit that the oppressed and threatened need:”Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning, regardless of the outcome.”
I have FINALLY set aside an evening to go through all the material I’ve missed and ponder it. This page alone provides much more than an evening’s worth of contemplation. John’s point about the value of hope in dealing with vast problems incites a double reaction:
1. “Yes, no matter how bad things get, we’ll always have hope.”
2. “Is that all there is?”
Still, I rather like the idea of hope as the last floating object we can cling to as we struggle in the midst of the roaring flood.
Lyle’s point about the sustainability of civilization raises questions for me. Is our problem that we must reconfigure civilization to operate at a simpler, quieter level that is sustainable? And if so, are we even capable of pursuing that strategy? How can we tell people, “Sorry, you can’t have videogames — they’re too far into the zone of unsustainability.” How can we put a ceiling over the aspirations of people for physical comfort?
My response to these questions is to cite the scientifically established fact that we are not truly civilized creatures. Our ancestors spent hundreds of thousands of years learning how to survive as hunter-gatherers in eastern Africa. Everything about our genetic heritage is optimized for that life style. We don’t have any genes for living as civilized people. Some of us are smart enough to have developed the personal character traits required to function effectively in a civilized society, but we are a minority. The great bulk of humans are like the Neanderthals in the Frank Frazetta illustration.
So I’m not optimistic about the chances of recalibrating our civilization; a catastrophic collapse seems more likely. I don’t expect extinction; a reversion to the lifestyle we are built for seems more likely.
I have taken some action toward this. I own 40 acres of forest land in southern Oregon and I am building an infrastructure here that can permit a large family group to survive at a recognizable subset of our current standard of living. My starting point is a large collection of solar panels. It’s in place now, but STILL not operational, largely because of delays imposed upon me by — ironically enough — civilization.