Answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything"

Douglas Adams’ famous book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has a famous “answer to life, the universe and everything”, produced by a supercomputer (who else?). The answer (drumbeats):

“42”

What the hell?! Here is tech blogger Venkatesh Rao’s take on that answer:

“(Adams nails) the fact that it’s an extremely ill-posed question by giving this ludicrous answer (which) forces you to do a lot of philosophical soul-searching and understand what it is you’re actually trying to think about.”

 

In recent weeks, I stumbled upon 3 great articles on these related points: the “meaning” of life, and not knowing what one is passionate about.

 

The first one was a letter Hunter S Thompson wrote to his friend. He quoted Shakespeare’s famous “To be, or not to be: that is the question” line:

“Indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal.”

Even if you find your passion, your goal, Thompson calls it the “tragedy of life”:

“We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things… When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes.”

Which then raises a concern:

“So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day?”

 

The second one was Mark Manson’s article with a different assessment:

“You already found your passion, you’re just ignoring it. Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the f*** do you do with your time? You’re doing something, obviously. You’re talking about something. There’s some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free time, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without you consciously pursuing it or looking for it. It’s right there in front of you, you’re just avoiding it.”

But why would one avoid their passion? The answer becomes obvious once you hear an example:

“You’re telling yourself, “Oh well, yeah, I love comic books but that doesn’t count. You can’t make money with comic books.”

Or as Manson summarizes it:

“The problem is the, “Oh, well that’s just not a realistic option,” or “Mom and Dad would kill me if I tried to do that, they say I should be a doctor,” or “That’s crazy, you can’t buy a BMW with the money you make doing that.”

 

The problem isn’t passion. It’s never passion. It’s priorities.”

 

The last article was by Lawrence Yeo which points out that we live with two contradictory views:

“(1) The inevitable seriousness in which we view our lives, and

(2) The ability to view that seriousness as being silly and insignificant (in the grand scheme of things).”

But we can’t make our peace with that contradiction. Therefore:

“To avoid accepting this condition, we like to join organizations and enterprises to feel like we’re part of something greater than ourselves, often in the pursuit of truth. We subscribe to the advance of science, join the world’s religions, represent political parties, and march on the streets in the name of revolution.”

This may seem delusional at worst, but surely it is harmless? Not entirely, because we pick on something as the final answer:

“What seems to us to confer meaning, justification, significance, does so in virtue of the fact that we need no more reasons after a certain point… I think this does a good job explaining why our views of the world tend to drift toward dogma and certainty.”

 

At first, all the above views probably sound “depressing and nihilistic”. But:

“I actually view it as immensely liberating and empowering. I find that the source of so much unhappiness in the world is our relentless hunger and quest for meaning… In this futile pursuit of escaping the absurd, nothing will ever be good enough because we are always chasing an elusive grand narrative, our overarching meaning of life. We will forever be chasing our own tails, wondering when the hell the universe will answer our individual calls for purpose.

 

Ironically, knowing that life doesn’t come with a grander meaning allows us to access the things that really do make life meaningful. This truth helps us realize that the big existential questions of life are not where the answers are; instead, this very moment in our small corner of the world is all we really have.”