WHY ARE WE EVEN HERE?: THE STORY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

                                          Michelangelo painting in the Sistine Chapel

EXISTENCE

If your reading this its either you still exist or you’re dead but you are stupid enough to waste your afterlife reading my blog. When I mean someone exists, I am trying to explain about life. Human life and existence is a question pondered by scientists, philosophers and religious scholars since the beginning of mankind itself.

So yeah do not expect me a teenage boy to go and explain all of human existence in less than 7 pages. I am going to mainly to write about two main areas:

• ·       WHY DO WE EVEN EXIST?
• ·       WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EXISTENCE?

WHY DO WE EVEN EXIST?

So have you ever been taken to a place with your friend thinking it is fun but it is not and you’re already there and you can do nothing about it. Yeah human existence is kinda like that. Humans are born without their consent and most end up living in lives they didn’t want so then WHY DO WE EVEN EXIST?

So after a long time spent in google trying to answer this question. I ended up with 2 theories trying to explain why do we exist

THEORY A: GOD’S PLAN

If you’re a strict theist and you take your religion very seriously, the question why do we exist is easily answered in your scriptures and religion.

In most religions human existence cannot be understood by humans themselves since it is part of a “GRAND PLAN” set up by God or a group of gods. So we exist because deities chose for us to exist.

This theory usually emphasizes God or the gods created the whole universe just for human beings. Like the Christian Bible which is mostly a narration about God and human beings. This theory is pretty beloved by many people even the people in my sample agree with this theory

But although being most people’s chose this theory (for me) is very egotistic. Like I explained in the previous post if people have the chance to say good things about themselves they will. Most religions only concentrate on humans as a major spectacle in God’s creation and all the creations are just for man and his needs

This can bring a real problem for example someone can ask if all creations are for man and his needs? So how about the Andromeda galaxy found 2.357 million light years away and plenty of other things that God created but Humans cannot use. So this is where the second theory comes in.

THEORY B: THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES (SCIENTIFIC APPROACH)

So religion is very egotistic but the scientific approach especially via philosophical frontiers that use science like OPTIMISTIC NIHILISM try and explain that humans are the ones that are part of a much bigger universe and that mankind is just a dot in the grander scheme of the universe

This explains that we exist as a product of evolution that took place for millions and even billions of years from even simpler organisms and that those simple organisms are just are result of the earth having the right conditions for harboring life and the earth itself exists because of random cosmic phenomena that occur in space which occurred in the needed proportions for some reason. So we are just random accidents caused by the right circumstances

So according to this, humans are nothing special in the grander scheme of the universe. if you killed the first humans and no humans existed then the universe could still be fine. Kind of hurts compared to the religious story all about you.

But remember these are both not proven so it is not a must to choose any of these stories.

We are just part of a bigger universe

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE OF EXISTENCE?

If you are reading this right now whether you like it or not, you were born and you already exist so what should we do now since we now exist? What is the purpose of all of this?

So after another long while in google and two crash course videos, human arguments about the purpose of existence can be summarized into 3 arguments

A.  ESSENTIALISM

From what I got essentialism we exist to fulfill a purpose given to us by God. Most people from where Iam from agree with this and even people in research sample agreed with this. One even said” we exist to complete a God given purpose so we can have a good afterlife”.

Essentialists say we are created to fulfill this purposes and if we do not we are most likely to get punished by God in the afterlife

B.   EXISTENTIALISM

In some point of view, Existentialism is like the polar opposite of essentialism. Existentialists say we humans either created or evolved or whatever, have been brought to the earth with no purpose and we create our own purpose write here on earth.

Popular existentialists include Jean-Paul Satr and his wife Simone Beauvoir and the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus who wrote multiple books in the 20^th Century about existentialism. Although existentialism tells us we create our own purpose. WHAT IS THAT PURPOSE?

Since everyone creates their own purpose, purpose becomes personal. Some people can say to acquire wealth others can say to help others and even one of the people in my sample said” to make the world a better place”

But this still doesn’t answer our question, some people relate existentialism and happiness and say the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness.

But then (once more) happiness is just a biochemical reaction in our brains and can be stimulated in various ways like sexual intercourse, being with people or acquiring wealth.

According to Dr. Yuval Harari in his book SAPIENS, anyone can achieve happiness no matter what they do as long they release the chemicals found in our brain that relate with happiness so doing all that shit like acquiring wealth doesn’t matter and does not increase happiness overall. A good example is me and my great grandfather’s father I might have good Wi-Fi, a good education and a game console but as long me and my ancestor share the same genetics and biochemical reactions we are still happy even though the latter did not have electricity or even proper schooling

So if happiness can be acquired in various ways what’s the point of life. The third theory tries to explain.

C.   NIHILISM

So nihilism might be the most popular among the three I’ll talk about. So since happiness can be acquired in various ways, nihilists find happiness which to most is the purpose of life like a dead end. Happiness is hedonistic in nature meaning it comes and goes and so is the purpose of human existence.

Nihilists say nothing really matters. Hard philosophy to shallow right? Even the biggest human feats like landing on the moon, exploring space and curing disease don’t matter since whether we did those things or not human happiness did not increase because of them

Nothing really matters

CONCLUSION

So yeah we exist and whether we like it or not, we do exist and for some reason we do not know for sure why we exist and we should do with our existence.

But whether you are a nihilist or essentialist or an existentialist or neither, one thing is for sure being alive is something remarkable and we should spend our lives trying to appreciate our lives. The chances of you coming out as you are 1 IN 400 TRILLION! So enjoy your life

If you read this far thank you for reading my blog. I hope it made you think more about the human condition.

For suggestions and more content, you want to read in this blog please comment or write a personal message to the author it is appreciated.

STAY TUNED and next week’s topic is WE ARE NOT ALONE(PEOPLE)