Portraits of People

Absurd: wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.

Purpose: The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.

There is an interesting contradiction that arises in life when one approaches it from a rational perspective. Rationality was supposed to give us purpose; it was supposed to point us in the right direction and explain why we are here, but at last, we have been woefully betrayed. By trying to understand our place in this universe we have made a most chilling discovery. Our existence is seemingly meaningless; there is no purpose, no God, no afterlife, no beforelife. There is life, and there is the void of death. Total silence. All this because we sought the truth, we wanted to understand the absurdity of life, only to find that our lives are inherently absurd. This in itself is the reason why atheism is unfashionable. How can people live in the face of meaningless absurdity?

A planet is standing on the brink, trying exhaustingly and hopelessly to hold on to the pleasant idea that we are apart of something bigger, more important. Our importance, of course, can be understood by simply looking up at the night sky on a starry night. We are utterly and completely insignificant. We are a passing thought as you walk by a beggar in the street. In the face of this harrowing fact, people will believe any absurdity that suits them. People need purpose; they crave its loving embrace. Many will turn to God for an answer, while others mindlessly ignore the question and give their lives purpose by means of work, family or some other trivial reason. It is rare to find someone brave enough to step up and admit they are absurd. But once you do you are entirely free. You are condemned to the freedom to choose what makes you happy. You can live your life according to what you enjoy, insofar as it does not impede others from having a chance at enjoying their lives as well. We have learned to embrace the merits of liberalism because of this reason itself; it seeks to give us all a fair chance at pursuing our own purpose. So when you walk out the door today, think about what you enjoy, think about where you are walking, and maybe, if you feel so inclined, take the long way around and enjoy your brief time on this absurd world, because soon, maybe sooner than you think, it will end and there will be void, absolute and never ending.

Pale Blue Dot: Taken by Voyager I in 1990, at a distance of 6 billion kilometers away. Carl Sagan had this to say about it:

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”

I will leave it at that. My words would only blemish those that have been so eloquently put by Carl Sagan. We are a pale blue dot in a massive expanse full of planets, stars, and nothingness. Have a nice day…