An Ecological Approach to the “Meaning of Life” Question

The question “What is the meaning of life?” has occupied philosophers throughout history, and continues to do so, tending generally towards a  conclusion that nobody knows.

This conclusion is worrying, because if there is an absence of meaning to life, there is an absence of purpose in our lives, and that will lead to a absence of happiness. Absence of meaning also tends to lead to an absence of value, so that if human life is meaningless, killing human beings might tend to become a trivial offence. Therefore the question ‘what is the meaning of life?” has serious practical relevance.

If we look at the question from a scientific, specifically a biological, angle it helps to resolve the philosophical question, and at the same time provide us with a strong ethic.

We can start by asking: what is the meaning of a biological object - a plant, fungus or animal? Biology finds that the central purpose of each living individual is to reproduce, to contribute to the next generation of its species. The qualities of any mature, healthy living individual will centre around transmission of the genes of that individual’s species. Some more complex life forms will also spend time in nurturing and protecting their offspring until it is mature, and when this task is complete, their individual form will decay and eventually die. 

Therefore, since we humans are animals, we share this universal biological purpose: our meaning, our purpose, at a biological level, is to bring about the existence of the next generation of humans. 

There is plenty of evidence in the arts and humanities to support this claim. A great deal of song celebrates romantic love. Much art and sculpture celebrates the attractive beauty of the human body. Much literature and theatre narrates the adventures involved in creating male-female relationships. 

 

Like other animals, we humans are conscious beings, but unlike other animals with cognition, we have advanced linguistic, cognitive, analytical, imaginative and creative capabilities that give our species capabilities and ecological impacts that go well beyond the impacts of other species.

Reproduction generally leads to an exponential increase in numbers of a successful species until negative feedbacks mean that a state of ecological balance is reached. As a species, negative feedbacks apply to us, not through predation by other species, since we are the apex predator, but by complex physical and biological feedbacks of our own creation.

Here is a summary of the problems we are creating for ourselves, the four horsemen of the modern apocalypse:

• Our burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up, which has implications in terms of extreme weather events, food shortages, and migration. 

• We are killing off our fellow creatures at a rate which, if continued, will mean that the only animals left on the planet will be humans, animals kept for human food and service, and pests that we cannot get rid of like rats and cockroaches.

• We face problems with sea level rise, soil loss that will eventually lead to food shortages.

• Most dangerous of all is the real possibility that our leaders will bring about  a global nuclear war that will certainly end our civilisation, and possibly end all advanced life on earth. 

These then are the negative feedbacks that will compromise the ability of our descendants to thrive.

These negative feedbacks affect the biological purpose of our existence. It is still the case that the meaning of our life is to ensure the survival of the next generation of humans, but this meaning has in the present age moved beyond  the simple matter of creating children and nurturing them until they can fend for themselves as the next generation of a stable society. 

Our purpose, the meaning of our lives,  is now a major challenge, that of changing the way our species manages the living planetary environment. We must radically transform the way we humans manage our personal, social and national and international lives and how we relate to the web of life within which we exist, and which supports our life. 

It is imperative that we change the way we use water, obtain our food, provide our shelter, obtain our energy and manage our waste products. We must make these usage processes sustainable, in other words, we must make them capable of being used in the indefinite future. The old linear production model consisting of: extract resources, manufacture, use, and dispose, must give way to a new, circular model consisting of: take from recycled materials, manufacture, use, repair, re-use, recycle. Instead of naively assuming that we can take what we feel we need when we need it, we must apply our reasoning, conscious minds to each and every one of our habits, analysing their ecological impact.

We do possess the intellectual technological and economic capacity necessary to bring this about, but there are two major human behavioural problems to be overcome. 

First, people do not like  change, and especially change to ingrained  habits that is demanded by complex scientific findings. 

The second problem that we face is that our ecological difficulties have been brought about by economic processes that have made the controllers of those processes extremely wealthy. If ecological science demands that we reduce and stop the production of carbon fuels, single use plastics, insecticides and so on, the billionaire manufacturers of those substances take strong action to defend their profits. They are using the media, owned by fellow-billionaires, to question, obfuscate, and deny the science, and delay the actions needed to rescue us from the consequences of their actions. Moreover, they are able to use their almost unlimited quantities of money to recruit to their service populist politicians who can appeal to emotions such as peoples’ sense of exploitation, anger and resentment and channel them towards electing authoritarian leaders who will carry out policies favoured by the oligarchs.

Therefore, no matter how compelling the case may be for understanding that the meaning of human life in the twenty first century has turned from a straightforward matter of sexual reproduction into a matter of global ecological concern, humanity faces a major struggle in fulfilling its true purpose because of mental inertia and the ruling oligarchy.

Richard Lawson MB BS, MRCPsych