On the purpose of life

What if the purpose of life isn't to be kind and experience happiness and all that stuff? What if the whole purpose is to try to live as long as possible, be gratified at all costs, and try to outlive others so that either us or our offspring (mine, and not that of others) have a chance of becoming God? Because if you outlive every other human being, then by default you are supreme, right? And I say human being because I imagine that other creatures don’t worry themselves with questions like “what is the purpose of life?”

I am, of course, not the first to think of this evolutionary/survivalist theory of life. There’s a theory that even altruism, that warm, fuzzy, “nice” stuff we seemingly do without self-interest, does actually pose a survival advantage. As an example, let’s say I become a humanitarian and go out of my way to help other people in whatever disadvantageous situation they find themselves with (ill health, poverty, etc.). You may think that it’s selfless, right? I mean, how does helping others help me, when if anything I am giving up of my time, efforts, money, etc to help another human being? Well, indirectly it does boost my potential to survive and still come out on top because it buys me allies. Other people see my “selfless” acts and get a positive impression of me – and that makes them want to help me! People more powerful than me may want to protect me, associate with me, give me opportunities I would never had had access to on my own. Numbers of people want to protect you, embrace you as an ally, and defend you from bigger enemies than you could handle on my own. Selflessness pays off! And it pays off probably more than pure instinct-based, survival strategies ever could.

I used to preoccupy myself with the question of what is the purpose of life, and more specifically, my life. Is it to love? Contribute positively to another’s life? To prove myself in this biophysical form on this planet until the biological matter I’m made off becomes unsustainable and I start decomposing into my component atoms, subparticles, and energy – so then after this, some “essence” of me (the thing I and many other “believers” call the spirit) can carry on to another alternate life? Then the question becomes, yes, but what is this “proof” we need to make of our lives? Again, is it to show that I am the best at this survival game, to boost my happiness to the maximum level imaginable, to boost the happiness of others, to feel connected to another human being in the way love connects people? What is love? Is it more than the stimulation of the right combination of neurochemicals in my brain that make me “feel” the emotion of pleasure and calmness we call love? If it’s more than the chemicals, the reactions, the synapses, does that again place it in that inexplicable spirit world? Is anything real? What is real? … and you see now where my preoccupation led me to: suddenly I’m wondering not only why do I exist, but do I exist?

At times I wonder if all this thinking isn't just all part of some secret system, that the human ability for introspection is just some sort of distraction technique. Let me explain it like this: imagine that you have an eye looking out. Now, behind it there’s a brain attached to it like a movie screen set up to capture the image in front of the eye. So whatever is in front of the eye is what is transmitted to the brain; that is the movie being watched. But now put a mirror in front of the eye, so then suddenly the only thing the eye sees is the eye itself. So then then brain becomes preoccupied with the eye (as that’s the only thing visible in the universe). But you will never know what is beyond the mirror, and pretty soon you’ll stop even wondering about what there is beyond the mirror. Hell, you may even become convinced that that eye is what it is all about. You’ll start asking yourself questions like what is the purpose of eye? Is it to keep it healthy and free from pain, to experience happiness and all that stuff…