The Meaning of it All

One definition of life might be – a very complex and interactive game that is often most meaningful and best enjoyed when we are most forgetful that it’s a game, when we most ‘suspend our disbelief ‘ in the experienced reality – but of course one really has to wholly focus on the playing of the game to the utmost in order to forget, and enjoy. ~ Octopus Heart

If someone came to me and said they knew the entire world, the entire universe, as I knew it was actually the manifestation of a ‘biological meaning matrix‘ for untold billions of consciousnesses to physically interact with each other by being incorporated into biologically built organisms in order to ‘experience‘ ‘meaning‘, I think my first response (somewhat ironically – because the proof is always explanatory power) would be to ask for (some) proof. This is partially because when someone hands out a grand theory like that the first thing anyone wants to know is ‘how true’ it is, what supporting evidence there is for it, but it’s also because I, like anyone, would want to capitalize on the information, use the knowledge of how life the universe and everything ‘works’ in order to ‘advance’ ourselves and our happiness as best we can.

Perhaps there’s a trick, a hack, a short circuit, some key, with which we might ‘beat the system’ and ‘win’ the ‘prize’ whatever the prize might be (cf. gnosticism), or perhaps we simply want to optimize (cf. ‘flow’ and ‘play‘, the maintenance of loyalty, and the numinous relationship experience) our life (happiness) experience (i.e. philosophy). Yet whether we think of this as cheating at meaning or not (whether we think cheating at meaning is even possible or not), I think a very solid valid and important point is that in all cases we’re looking to increase meaning in our lives – which interestingly only adds to the ‘biological meaning matrix’ theory.

And what if there’s no prize, nothing, to win from life? What if the secret of life gains the knower nothing? What if, for example, we are ‘here’ for meaning and there’s nothing more than this we can know. Indeed, like language and symbols, what if not knowing some key important things about life is (part of) the point in existing at all, what if a certain amount of existential ignorance, ambiguity, uncertainty, and imprecision are actually instrumental to obtaining meaning, important to the very reason we are ‘here’ in the first place?

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N.B. I wouldn’t suggest that the only way we can experience meaning is by being physically incorporated consciousnesses, but I would say (semi-tautologically) that it’s most likely the only way to have the kind sort and variety of meaning that we do have while incorporated here on earth.