The Point

So often, people rush to get to “the point” – of a story, a conversation, a meeting. Little things with relatively immediate answers that will make sense. But many people don’t think about the big things, because they are busy, and it’s too much to consider, too difficult to imagine, and presents the very real threat of no rational answer. But I have been thinking a great deal lately about big things. Many questions have passed through my mind, but the main one is this…. What is “the point” or the reason for life, or for existence in general? Seriously. We think that there has to be a reason for our lives. But what if there isn’t?

We are taught that events have causes, reasons for why they happen. This makes sense, because many things have a cause. A tree falls because its roots are rotten and a strong wind blew, the roots snapped, and it fell over. A mosquito bites you because it’s hungry. What is the reason, then, the root cause, for human life? Or an individual’s life? Or events within said life? And how far does the reasoning extend? I mean, did a natural disaster happen just so that a particular group of disaster workers could gain certain experience to deal with the next thing that much better and save a certain person in that next disaster? Yeah, you could argue that, but how ridiculous are we going to get here? Eventually, the reasons for events will conflict as you examine more lives. What do you do then?

For the longest time, I believed that everything in life happens for a reason. I haven’t had faith in any type of deity for many years, but I still thought that there was some great orchestrator, even if it is only the universe itself trying to maintain homeostasis. And that was feasible to me, even logical. Our bodies do that. Ecological systems do that. Hell, you could even argue that the stock market does that. But that still doesn’t give a reason for every single event. That type of analysis has to be done on a macro level and for a long enough timeframe to make sense. When you try to answer things related to the micro level of individual lives, the entire system breaks down, and logic flies out the fuckin window.

I just realized though…. The same thing happens in physics. On the macro level, the laws of physics are what they are, and outcomes are predictable. You can fairly easily answer questions about a projectile’s motion given a few key pieces of information. Even the laws governing particles are fairly stable, setting the wave/particle thing aside for a moment. A scientist working with a particle accelerator has a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen when he or she smashes two protons together. But, when we get to crazy speeds, the even smaller sub-particles, smaller distances and such or start to consider wave/particle duality, again, the system breaks down. Traditional laws of physics no longer apply. This is why quantum mechanics came about. I am intrigued by this similarity, and will have to return to this….

Anyway. Back to the topic at hand – the root cause of and/or reason for human life.

The root cause of an individual human life is pretty simple. A sperm and egg merge, and develop from zygote to embryo and so on. But why? What is the reason? Why that sperm and that egg? There are millions of sperm at the time that are candidates, and maybe one or two of a couple hundred thousand eggs. Presumably, that sperm was stronger or had more energy stores and won the race. The egg in question just happened to be the closest to the edge of the ovary. But the particular combination that creates an individual human being is very specific. If the sperm that created you was different, you could be a very different person. I find it increasingly difficult to think that there is (or even could be) more to that occurrence than random chance.

This is gonna be a little weird, but bear with me. Let’s just say that the sperm in 2nd place to make Albert Einstein decided to cheat that day and chugged some high-powered sperm red bull right before the race started. It won the race by mere milliseconds. Albert the genius that we all know and love could have been born with average intelligence and a natural talent for physical labor. He decides work in a foundry or be a bricklayer, and doesn’t even think to concern himself with questions of the universe and their potential answers. How different would our world be?

And yes, I realize that in some ways, my line of questioning here is leaning toward the “everything happens for a reason” hypothesis, rather than the “life is a cluster fuck of statistically random events” hypothesis. But, consider this. The third sperm in line the day Einstein was conceived took the sperm equivalent of speed. We end up with a super genius, who contributes so much to science that by this time, we are traveling to Mars for summer vacations and have several space stations in orbit. Any perceived leaning is gone, we are now back to center and further from a logical conclusion than ever.

I will continue this rambling a different day. I think this is enough for now. My brain needs to process this evening’s meandering and reorganize to keep this from descending into utter chaos.

Good night.