thread: 2005-06-06 : Happenings
On 2005-07-07, Porter wrote:
Last weekend I drove to Colorado to visit my wife's parents. On the drive we listened to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. At the end of TRATEOTU the characters manage to punch through an impropability field and meet the "guy who runs the galaxy." This character is a slave to his immediate sensory perceptions and is incapable of conceptualizing anything he can not presently see, touch, feel, etc. The kicker is, however, that he is the fellow those who run the galaxy come to for decisions that affect every form of life in their purview. So, our lives are ultimately controlled by a being who is not only unaware of us, but wouldn't believe we existed even if someone bothered to tell him about us. Life then is a series of random events dictated by random decisions from a disinterested recluse; absurdism. Zaphod is, of course, completely fine with this.Now, it just so happens that I was reading The Brothers Karamozov at the same time (no, not actually while I was driving, thank you very much). In TBK, Dostoyevsky tries to lay out the arguments for and against the existence of god. His artistry is such that he argues both positions as convincingly as possible and leaves the reader with an understanding of the debate (circa 19th century Russia), but no answer (as if he could provide one).
Well, these two works clashed in my mind like baking soda and vineger, causing intellectual and spiritual indigestion (to be fair, this effect could have been caused by 6 hours of driving across Wyoming). I concluded that there is only one question in life: Is there a god? Why? Well, consider our options. If there is a god there is the possibility of meaning. Note, there doesn't have to be meaning just because there is god, he/she/it could be as disinterested in us as we are the ants in our neighbors garden. If god exists then it's possible humans are supposed to be here. And, if humans are supposed to be here, then there's probably something we're supposed to be doing. God allows for meaning.
Alternatively, if there is no god then there is no meaning. Or, as Dostoyevsky puts it, "if there is no god, there is no sin." Without a supreme arbiter of right and wrong how can there be a wrong? But, to get back to meaning, consider environmentalism. If there's no god and we are indeed simply "crude matter," then where does the ethic to preserve our world originate from? Since when I die all that defined me passes away, what do I care if it rains too much in California now? My children are just flawed biological copies of myself, what do I care if they have a nice place to live or not? And, to adopt an Adams perspective, so what if the earth gets blown up (either by us or Vogons)? It doesn't effect Pluto, or any other celestial body for that matter. Nothing we can do has any meaning because it is completely transient and, in the vastness of existence, utterly ineffectual. "Life it a tale told by an idiot ... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." There are only two options: God or absurdism.
Ah ha! You exclaim. What about eastern philosophy? Doesn't the Buddhist notion of nirvana offer a third alternative? In short, no. Buddhism falls squarely in the absurdist realm. If the purpose of life is to escape pain, then the Buddhist theology is just a more sinister version of the absurdist one above. Instead of just dying and entering oblivion, you must claw your way up through a spiritual hierarchy only to have your efforts rewarded by self obliteration. No, much better to just stick with "there is no god" and cut right to the chase.
So there you have it. THE question, the ultimate question if you will, is "is there a god?" All else flows from it. Interestingly, this question would be completely consistent with Adams's absurdist view since the answer to "Is there a god" is, in his world, 42: a totally random, meaningless answer which affirms absurdism and is the same as answering "no." Of course, if this were indeed THE question, and Adams rightly describes the universe, then the answer and the question could not be known at the same time and I would ce
