Why why isn’t interesting

By Pixel at October 22, 2007 at 12:31 am. Filed in the philosophy of the everyday

I recently did a post on mysteries. It wasn’t very in depth, really it was just me asking everybody what their favorite mystery was. I worried when I wrote the post that somebody was going to ask ‘the big question’ of ‘why are we here?’ And sure enough, someone did:

why we exist, D-U-H…..

xoxo

The reason I worried about it was because it seemed like a waste of a question to me. Perhaps it doesn’t seem that way to you, but then that’s why you come here: to disagree at first, laugh once, then slowly come about to my way of thinking.

Let’s get the laugh out of the way first:

I ran out of underwear today, so I fashioned a loincloth out of socks instead.

The reason ‘why we exist’ doesn’t seem like an interesting question to me is because I don’t expect any answer. I mean, I expect an answer, I just don’t expect I’m going to like it. In fact, no matter what the answer is, I suspect not everyone will like it. For instance:

Answer 1: There is no purpose to us being here, we just are

Who it pleases: Biologists, naturalists, nihilists, some atheists.

Who it displeases: Everyone else who feels we’re too special and we could only exist if some being or force deemed us necessary.

Answer 2: We’re here to do X (where X is non-religious, as in ‘to create plastic’)

Who it pleases: Nobody, because rather than level the playing field as in answer 1, it deems us worth less than plastic. In philosophical terms, it treats us as means, as only instrumentally valuable, rather than intrinsically valuable.

Who it displeases: Everyone. If we’re purely instrumentally valuable, then why give us consciousness at all? Why not just have automatons (like politicians) do our part and be done with the whole thing?

Answer 3: We’re to do X (where X is explicitly religious, as in ‘to serve Allah’)

Who it pleases: The one sect that happens to be right (the Amish).

Who it displeases: Everyone, once they realize that they want an answer more profound than being cosmic fanbots. What’s worse, if there is an answer beyond being purely useful to worship someone, it threatens to collapse into answer 2 (i.e. if we were a hyper-dimensional science fair project).

Answer 4: We’re here because we’re worthwhile intrinsically (we’re just here to exist)

Who it pleases: Buddhists, pantheists, some others

Who it displeases: People that think existence isn’t a worthwhile goal or purpose for us. People that want ‘something more.’

In conclusion, no answer to the big why can satisfy most of us. I argue that this is the reason we’re still looking.

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