Last blog I took a poke at extrinsic meaning (or purpose) for our lives. Today I’ll chat a bit about the intrinsic aspect of life’s meaning.
(By the way; forgive me that this stuff is a bit superficial. Smarter folks than I have spent lifetimes plumbing the depths of this question, as should we, if we want to live Renaissance lives. I’m simply sharing an approach that has been helpful to me in my exploration.)
Meaning & Purpose are What I Make Them
Simply stated, intrinsic meaning or purpose means we cook up our own meaning for our lives. We don’t rely on anything outside of our own thinking; not God, or other people, or tradition, or whatever. We check out the landscape, figure what is meaningful to us and get about the business of living in ways that are consistent with our definition of meaning and purpose.
This approach, without a few constraints or guidelines, makes it hard to judge whether our purpose or our view of meaning is of real value. Indeed, there are no judgments to be made, since whatever I decide is meaningful for me is my meaning. It matters not what you think. And it matters not what I think of your definition.
In a purely intrinsic world it’s all up to each of us; purpose, morality, our definition of right and wrong, our allegiance to integrity, the whole ball of wax. The limit on our personal purpose is legal; if I decide my purpose is to steal as much money as possible because I am clever and it makes me feel good to outsmart the schmucks of the world whom I can fool, eventually I will come up against a few laws that derail my purpose, if I get caught. But who wrote the law that derails my purpose? Other human beings who decided my view was untenable. So morality and meaning are a kind of subjective democracy; most people feel that it’s wrong to murder; hence, it’s wrong to murder.
Should the moral consensus swing (as apparently it has in certain quarters of late) and if murder became widely acceptable, a die-hard intrinsicist could only accept it. Maybe, (he or she would be forced to think), the overpopulation of the planet is pushing our evolution toward the view that ”murder is fine” so we as a species can be instrumental in relieving the burden of too many humanoids messing about with our dwindling resources.
Religious people label this approach subjective and not much more than a precursor to anarchy. They invoke God as the original law-maker and morality-definer and the foundation upon which we build meaning and purpose. But atheism is not a necessary tenet of intrinsic purpose. Everyone I know who believes in God adds a hefty dose of intrinsic interpretation to God’s ideas. (One wonders if God recognizes some of His ideas after the religious zealots get finished with them.)
Thoughtful “intrinsicists” recognize a consistency in mankind’s definition of meaning and purpose. But rather than ascribing it to God, they assume that through eons of evolution, during which self-preservation and the passing on of genes to the next generation were the driving forces of human life, and during which our brains became capable of self-consciousness and complex thought, we came to realize that certain ways of behaving increased our chances of survival. One supposes what happened next was the biological internalization of a sense that “purpose” and “meaning” are real aspects of human life, along with the development of what we call a conscience and a categorization of “right” and “wrong”.
They Eat Lions, Don’t they?
If the somewhat universal development of purpose, meaning and morality are intrinsic, the remarkable consistency of humankind’s notion of what is meaningful is peculiar and not all together logical. I have spent a lot of time wondering how the amoral biochemical-mechanical-physical system that is I, could come up with even the concept of morality, purpose or meaning. We know, for example, that when a younger, stronger lion takes over a pride from an aging male, almost immediately he kills any young cubs that are in the pride. Biologists attribute this to some instinct that tells him the females will come into heat if they are no longer nursing young. Or maybe the young male just wants to get rid of his rival’s kids so the pride becomes his, with his genes being passed down to the next generation. Whatever: It works.
Now, we may anthropomorphize and wish that the new male was not so “mean” or “cruel”. But most people don’t ascribe a moral component to the young lion’s action; he’s behaving as evolution has led him to behave and there is no moral issue involved. Neither is there a moral problem when the pride goes hunting and takes down the youngest or the oldest nearby wildebeest for dinner. We don’t say, “Those lions should go after a strong wildebeest; give them a fair chance; be a bit more sporting”. Both of these behaviors work for the lion and we accept them.
But if I, in the years of my peak virility, had married a young woman and immediately killed her infant son to ensure that my offspring would get her attention, headlines around the world (seriously, it would be that good a story) would excoriate me as a moral reprobate of the vilest sort. And they would be “right”, I suppose, in doing so.
Morality or Evolutionary Expedience?
So clearly something happened in the last few million years as we progressed from lions (or monkeys, or whatever) to people. Something that imbued us with this sense of morality and purpose and meaning we hold so dear today. Somehow we live as though we believe certain purposes are noble, certain actions are laudable, while others are not, whether we believe in God or not. The question with the not-so-obvious answer is: Does it really seem likely that our amoral forebears evolved into beings with an apparently built-in moral compass?
Logically, intrinsicists should not react with horror to murder or rape. They should simply observe that the perpetrator, for one reason or another, is not acting consistently with behaviors that ensure the continuation of the species. No outrage; just curiosity about why.
Interesting stuff, this! On one hand Believers, on the other Unbelievers. On one hand extrinsic purpose, on the other, intrinsic. Both are riddled with mystery.
If there is a God, why all the rigmarole associated with getting to know Him? Why all the differing opinions about His true character and his plan for humankind? Why all the hocus-pocus and ritual and funny hats and silly robes of the religious élite?
And if there is no God, what’s with the moral, purpose-driven illusions we have conjured up around our lives? How can we biochemical beings sit in judgment on anything? Anything?
And, finally, how does the Renaissance life deal with this stuff?
Next time I’ll give you my read on a Renaissance approach to the mystery.
