(Today’s article is by guest writer Dwayne Schultz. See below for a brief bio.)
From a naturalistic perspective, life is often thought to be meaningless because it ultimately results from essentially random cosmic processes. These processes include the Big Bang, the chance emergence of self-replicating molecules, and the role of random mutations in the evolution of Homo sapiens. In fact, there are thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss who explicitly advocate this. Let’s call the above view the “nihilist” perspective.
Some people resist the nihilist view of things and go to the opposite extreme. They believe that the universe is somehow ready for life, or that the universe itself is driven by an overarching purpose that culminates in humanistic qualities such as consciousness, love, and the worship of beauty. Therefore, they claim that life has meaning. As the philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Philip Gough put it in their recent book: why?purpose of the universe. I think they would happily classify themselves in the latter category. Let’s call this view the “teleological” interpretation.
I think both views are wrong. My main reason stems from the fact that the universe is neither purely random/non-deterministic nor completely legal/deterministic. Rather, nature exhibits a tendency towards both deterministic and non-deterministic outcomes. While nihilistic and teleological views overgeneralize either tendency, it is important to emphasize that both necessity and contingency are always mixed creatively, from physics to evolution. There’s a dialectic of back and forth that creates interesting patterns in everything. culture. At some points, necessity may be paramount, and at other times, freedom may prevail. Necessity and contingency may be seen as examples of a more fundamental interaction between order on the one hand and disorder on the other. After the ancient Greeks, these two meta-tendencies can be called logos and chaos.
The historical trajectory of a particular person or group consists of different stages. Some of these are severely limited by what came before, others represent intense novelties unexpected by precedent, and all interact in complex and unique ways. Masu. As a child, I had little control over my body or environment, but as an adult I exert greater physical power and choice. One day I will revert to a state where my aging body will severely limit the options open to me.
Similarly, in the first years after the Big Bang, there were probably few options for producing the first elements, hydrogen and helium. Their appearance may have been almost inevitable. On the other hand, the production of heavier elements through nuclear fusion within stars and the subsequent rise of complex chemistry may have been more accidental. That’s because it was uncertain whether gravity was strong enough to support star formation, but not strong enough to shatter stars. It turns matter into the monotonous existence of a black hole. And once life emerged, there was an explosion of new possibilities – our current biosphere is just one branch of millions of possibilities – and instead a radically different Regions, phyla, genera, and species may have arisen.
The cosmological example above is purely speculative, but the specific physics involved are irrelevant. What I want to say is that the universe, life, human culture, and even you as a human being are the result of a long and complex intertwining of necessity and chance, order and chance. As a result, it is a mistake to think that life, consciousness, and meaning are inconceivable unless the universe was somehow predisposed to create them from the beginning. Sure, there were abstract possibilities for these things to emerge, but billions or trillions of other possibilities could have occurred instead. Similarly, blocks of marble have the abstract potential to carve not only Michelangelo’s David but also the Venus de Milo. The original block of marble itself tells us little about what it will become.
It is about the special combination of necessity and contingency, repetition and randomness, and how they are related in all areas of life. The goal of many disciplines and practices, whether medical or political, is to harmonize these different principles in order to achieve optimal results, such as daily living, stability, safety, etc., in a particular area of life, as well as excitement, It seems to be a matter of how to balance creativity, spirituality, etc. danger. Ancient sages from Heraclitus to Confucius understood that the key to a good life was to reconcile these different tendencies in personal and social affairs. This means civic responsibility and personal freedom, work with play, and discipline and practice with creativity, even in the arts. Poetry, issues of nation and war, etc. As Heraclitus said, “The most beautiful harmony is born from disparity,” and that harmony arises from “the tension of opposites, like a bow and a harp” (Chenyang Li 90-91). Confucius would have agreed. In his Analects, he is famous for advocating “harmony with characteristics,” meaning harmony that harmonizes while respecting the differences between individuals, such as family, nation, and the natural world (Chengyang Yi, Confucius 432).
According to Plato, it is the task of scholars and philosophers to investigate the correct proportions of things in each particular case so that they can imitate nature’s own tendency toward harmony and flow. This reflects the ancient Greek obsession with divine proportion in everything from geometry to sculpture to ethics. According to Plato, learning about the harmony of the universe had an inner spiritual dimension. In Timaeus he writes:
Thoroughly study the harmony and revolution of the universe, [we] …returns our understanding…to the same thing as the object of understanding. When that is done, we will have achieved the goal set by God: a life that is optimal for this moment and all times to come. ”(90cd).
According to this view, the periodic harmony sought by the skies above is akin to the ethical and spiritual harmony sought by humanity below. In more modern terms, just as the planets tend to find orbits that harmonize their inertial motion away from the sun with their gravitational pull toward the sun, so too do certain legal codes, constitutions, harmonize opposing social trends. One could say that there are norms and such. For example, the desire for individual freedom with the need for collective security, or the pursuit of profit with demands for justice. In this way, nature and society are one, each seeking patterns of behavior that resolve their internal conflicting tensions. Contrary to what CP Snow once famously argued, there is no fundamental distinction between science and art.
Traditional religions tend to adopt a teleological perspective that places humans and their interests at the center of a grand cosmic drama. Scientists, on the other hand, often lean toward a nihilist position. Spiritual naturalists seek a middle path that sees human effort as part of nature but not required of it, the product of chance, but without losing its meaning. I think you should. Its meaning lies in the struggle between Logos and Chaos on a human scale, for example as part of the constant struggle to maintain health, friendship, and decency in the face of disease, prejudice, war, violence, etc. finds its place.
The pursuit of a meaningful life becomes a spiritual quest as we seek to feel, think, and act in accordance with higher principles that emphasize the overarching harmony of mind, body, and soul with nature and the larger universe. This sense of cosmic harmony is often better expressed in things like poetry and music, as it is more of a feeling or tone than an idea. It can also be cultivated through practices such as meditation, yoga, prayer, and ritual. Such practices will not eliminate suffering or trauma, but they can develop a deeper awareness of existence that will help you weather life’s storms. As I have already said, the logos, the tendency of the universe towards harmony, is but one which is always in conflict with its opposite, chaos; We value and focus on the former. ” (67).
Summarize. The fact that we are the products of random evolutionary mutations does not in any way detract from the pursuit of a meaningful or spiritual life. The universe may not dictate the rise of life, the emergence of humanity, or the rise of things like art and mathematics, but such things are still products of nature, even if they evolved in a different way. 100% compatible with nature, even if it was among the millions of possible choices. Human pursuits, including the spiritual pursuit of inner and outer harmony, are an extension of our biology. They are no more alien to cosmic processes than planets pursuing harmonious orbits around the sun or electrons pursuing stable ground states inside atoms.
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Learn about the membership of the Society of Spiritual Naturalists
The Society of Spiritual Naturalists works to spread awareness of Spiritual Naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and unite like-minded practitioners.
SNS strives to include diverse voices within the realm of naturalistic spirituality. Authors’ opinions, terminology, and outlooks vary. Therefore, the views of a single author do not necessarily reflect the views of all spiritual her naturalists or her social media.
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References:
Lee Chenyang “The ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy” Path 7, 2008.
Chenyang Li, “Philosophy of Harmony in Classical Confucianism,” Philosophy Compass 3/3 (2008): 423–435.
Plato. Timaeus, Lee, D (trans); Timaeus and CritiasPenguin, 1977.
Spinoza, B. – ethics. Penguin Classics 1996.
Brief bio: Dwayne Schultz lives in Queensland, Australia and works as a lawyer in the field of Aboriginal land rights. He completed a thesis on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead for his Master of Philosophy degree at Monash University in 2016. His interests include philosophy of life, civilization, indigeneity, and environmentalism.
