In Search of the Meaning of Life: From Scientific Facts to Practical Philosophy

In search of the meaning of life, people most often turn to religion or speculative esoteric philosophy. But this is very similar to trying to calm yourself down instead of being ready to accept the world as it is, not idealizing or embellishing it. I suggest you answer the question “What is the meaning of being?” By appealing only to scientific factology and logic. No mysticism, no esotericism. Only a practical philosophy, from which you can cook a stew right here and now.

DANCE ON THE DECK OF A SINKING SHIP

Imagine: when crossing a frozen river, you fall into a wormwood. Shout, call for help, try to get out on the ice, but the thin edge breaks off again and again under the weight of your body, and you feel that you are losing strength. The countdown goes on for minutes. But then, say, a fisherman or just a random passer-by notices you. He approaches you and suddenly asks: "Don't you want to talk about God?"

- I don’t want shit !!! - your heart-rending scream spreads for many kilometers around.

You know, sucking out speculative nonsense about the meaning of life for a person drowning in an ice hole is somehow not relevant. Humanity today is drowning in an ice hole. And the account goes, if not for decades, then for centuries - this is unambiguous.

Stephen Hawking, an English physicist-cosmologist who became a legend during his lifetime, said shortly before his death: “I believe that humanity will not survive the next millennium if it does not figure out how to leave its home planet.” The terrible thing is that this apocalyptic scenario is today shared by thousands of scientists around the world, no matter what field of science they work in. Unlike sectarian idiots, these people know how to firmly substantiate their position with figures and facts.

The National Center for Climate Restoration in Melbourne has published the results of research, which even marked the milestone: the year 2050, after which climatic changes triggered by human activities will lead to global economic and social upheavals, and put our civilization in extremely harsh conditions of existence.

Russian experts echo their foreign colleagues. For example, Viktor Dolnik in his book "The Naughty Child of the Biosphere" convincingly shows that any population experiencing a rapid growth in numbers (demographic explosion of mankind) necessarily comes to a state of crisis, followed by the same rapid decline. The whole question is how fast this decline will be and how long it will continue.

It is quite possible that we will again have to go through the "bottleneck", as it was already twice in our history (one just wants to blurt out "God loves the Trinity"). Moreover, to all appearances, we are already periodically balancing on the very edge.

In 1945, the United States was preparing to test the first nuclear bomb - "Gadget". Among other things, among the specialists who participated in this project, there were those who gave very pessimistic predictions, according to which a nuclear explosion could cause a reaction of uncontrolled oxygen burnout and, accordingly, the death of all living things. The forecast was not confirmed, as we understood. But then the Americans considered that those who do not take risks do not drink shampoos. Cowboys! What can you say here? ..

MONKEY WITH GRENADE

The situation with "Gadget" described above very clearly demonstrates the fact that our society is ruled not by the smartest, and not the most cautious. But the most aggressive and decisive ones. Just like millions of years ago, when our ancestors jumped like a cheerful tribe on the pristine African savannah.

It is quite obvious that human intelligence in its development has significantly outstripped his ability to self-control. We were able to make an ax, but we cannot resist not tossing our neighbor on the head with it. We are still driven by the promises of a primitive man who thirsts for pleasure here and now. Therefore, the voice of reason, appealing to the long-term prospects, always loses in the face of the opportunity to snatch something in the moment.

Why do politicians steal? Because the person is weak. Why do people kill each other? Because the person is weak. Why do we shit where we live? Because the person is weak. Why are we sawing the branch on which we are sitting? Because ... Well, you already understand why. The universal answer to everything is our low self-control. And this problem in the XXI century has become the problem number 1, the problem of the entire biosphere.

Humanity today is drowning in an ice-hole because it has driven itself there by its own thoughtlessness. The consumer society we have created is a sentence to our imperfect nature. But nature is wise. Nature does not persuade us: “Brothers and sisters! What are you doing ?! You are sisters and brothers! " It simply creates conditions under which any living species that comes into categorical contradiction with the external environment simply ceases to exist.

Having realized ourselves, we naively believed that the mind is the standard of perfection. But this is what should shake our anthropocentric positions: all kinds of people (we, recall, representatives of Homo Sapiens, were not the only intelligent creatures of the planet) have died out, and even great apes, which, like us, have a high rate of encephalization, are on the verge of extinction. Do large brains and developed consciousness provide advantages in the evolutionary race, or, on a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, they definitely lead to a dead end?

GREAT FILTER

The giants of thought noticed long ago: all the troubles of mankind (and for some time not only mankind) - from his "mind", that is, the intellect, which has become a hostage, an obedient servant of impulsive actions. And today it is quite obvious: if people fail to come to an agreement among themselves and do not develop a high-quality global environmental and social policy, then everyone will be very bad.

But what we have today is the result of a natural evolutionary process. Natural, sexual, and every other selection has hitherto supported those who had intellectual advantages over others. And it didn’t matter how this lucky man disposed of his intellect. The main thing is that he gave him a reproductive advantage. And self-control and altruism - but who needs them?

But now a new millennium has burst out - the era of high technologies and weapons of mass destruction. In these conditions, weak nerves and selfishness are a good claim for self-destruction. And if we do not change the natural course of events today, leaving the situation to develop spontaneously, we will cease to exist as a species, having cut off the ancestral branch of humanity.

Or maybe it already happened? Not here, but on other planets? Well, let's just assume that life is constantly being born somewhere, evolving to intelligent forms, and then this "mind" destroys everything, being the universal cause of the death of living things in different parts of the Universe. This universal reason was called the Great Filter in the framework of the hypothesis of the same name put forward by the American doctor of economics, Robert Hanson. It was the answer to the Fermi paradox formulated half a century earlier.

THE SILENT SILENCE OF THE UNIVERSE

The Fermi paradox was formulated by the American Nobel laureate in physics Enrico Fermi in 1950. Which, by the way, participated in the development of that very first nuclear weapon. The paradox is a question, a riddle. Fermi made his riddle in the following way.

Considering the age of the Universe, taking into account the number of stars in the Universe, taking into account the number of planets orbiting these stars, taking into account the percentage of planets in the "Goldilocks zone", taking into account the likelihood of the origin of life on them, taking into account the rate of development of life from the simplest organisms to a technocratic civilization, our Universe should have already been covered with traces of the presence of living beings. We can't find anything (and we still haven't found anything). Why?

Understanding the existence of a universal cause limiting the development of any system gives, albeit a hypothetical, but the most mathematically justified answer to this question. For skeptics, I advise you to turn to disciplines that study the laws of systems development. Well, or just reflect on life situations. Wherever you cast your gaze, everywhere you will come across the actions of some universal cause, working on the principle of a filter. For example, 90% of small businesses close within the first year of operation. Or here's another: the first little poems are not written only by the lazy, but few reach poetry.

The silent silence of the Universe makes us seriously think that perhaps our civilization is an exceptional phenomenon. But common sense, backed by logic and life experience, makes us doubt this. Each of us considers ourselves to be an unrecognized genius, but, in fact, we are just separate individuals among billions like us. So is our "unique" planet: it is unique insofar as we do not know others. And since the Universe is silent, isn't this a good reason to seriously think about the problem of the Great Filter?

MAN FORMULATES AN EVOLUTIONARY TASK

Every biologist, like an astrophysicist, will say that nature has no purpose. Evolution has no goal (these are equivalent, identical statements). Why not? She has nothing to set this goal with. A man is another matter. A person has a brain, and in the brain there are areas responsible for goal setting. But another philosopher will object: “Excuse me, but isn't man a child of nature? Are we not part of it? And how can a part contain in itself what the whole lacks? " I will answer this argument in the same philosophical spirit: man is a self-conscious nature. Dot.

This raises an equally interesting question. If man is a self-conscious nature, then why should nature be self-conscious? The biologist and astrophysicist frowned again in displeasure. The question "why?" it is inappropriate if only because it puts the cart in front of the horse: it presupposes the presence of a goal in nature, which, as we found out, has no goal. There are trends in development, but there is no goal. As there is no purpose for the water in the river. It just flows. And this is its whole essence.

But I, as a philosopher, am ready to answer this somewhat speculative question. Nature needs to become aware of itself in order to overcome its Great Filter.

Think for yourself. The biosphere of our planet is doomed to destruction one hundred percent, if we are talking about periods of time in billions of years. Millions of random factors, called cosmic threats, condemn our planet for guaranteed in the long term. The only way for life to survive and continue in time is to go to live in other worlds (remember the late Hawking). But this can be done only thanks to the mind, capable of creating technologies and, thanks to them, ordering living space.

But it is not so easy to create a perfect mind. How many attempts does nature have to make in order to create a consciousness that is ready to solve the problem of the Great Filter? How many simultaneous throws of a thousand dice do you need to make to get a six?

The problem I am talking about has been called the "evolutionary problem" in the philosophy of practical natural science. Every living species has it. In fact, this is the need to comply with the requirements of the external environment. Today, man himself has changed the environment so much that he has already ceased to have time to adapt to it.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF YOUR LIFE?

Oh well. All this is very curious and devilishly interesting. But what have I got to do with it? It's time for me to weed the potatoes (drive the car to the service, pay the receipts, do repairs ...). And how can I connect all these global things with my gray routine? What is the practical use of this knowledge?

And there is a sense. But to see it, you need to be able to formulate your personal evolutionary task. For this we already need knowledge not from the field of biology, but from the field of psychology.

Nature endows each of us with inclinations. We are, first of all, genes, heredity. This heredity should be revealed by the environment that brings us up. And only from a certain mature age do we begin to educate ourselves. And if we are very lucky, then by our efforts we create what can be called the comprehension of our Path. The one who connects the mortal existence of a single individual (personality) with the life and fate of all mankind.

And in order to help a person in his search, at all times there were people who devoted themselves to reflections. This is also a form of division of labor. Anyone who sculpts pots and twists nuts simply has no time to sit and think. Therefore, there have been and continue to be people who are professionally engaged in meditation. They are called "philosophers." And I am one of them.

In 2010, I left the city and settled in the forest in search of answers to many questions of interest to me. Over the years, I created a philosophy of practical natural science that allows me to solve the problem of finding the meaning of life without falling outside the framework of the scientific paradigm. I continue to develop it today, while giving lectures and conducting seminars. I invite you to get acquainted with the introduction to this modern natural-philosophical worldview, and at the same time to cook a stew of solving the problem of goal-setting, if such is relevant for you.

To get acquainted with the basic postulates of practical natural science, I have prepared a video course of eight half-hour series, each of which tells about the actual problems of humanity drowning in a global crisis and a single person drowning in everyday life, and at the same time points to a simple solution to these problems. Including how each of us can take part in overcoming the global crisis. You can purchase this course for yourself.

Thank you for having the wit and patience to read this article to the end!