I'm not sure i even have the power to fully articulate how i feel about this, so please ignore me if i make no sense. :)
Do you ever get the feeling, that as human beings, we've just really stuffed everything up?
Our lives as a whole are full of war, hate and fear. We can't even coexist anymore. We actually kill each other. Our countries invest millions of dollars trying to figure out better ways to kill our enemies, who are humans just like us. It breeds hatred for other people, when the only difference is their skin colour, or the country they come from, or their religious beliefs.
Millions of people starve. Those who lose money end up on the streets. People murder, and abuse, and steal. Our economy has collapsed on itself. There are homeless and jobless. And we're polluting our own Earth.
Why are we here? What are we aiming for in our lives?
Is it to be the boss? As humans, we seek to control everything. We use animals like machines for our own benefit. Then we created our own machines that do what we want. We tame animals as pets and we
own them. We seek promotions, to climb the job ladder, to have people below us, to have people working for us.
We've tamed the skies and the seas. What is left? The moon? Planets and stars? We don't have control of them yet, so we dream of the day when we do. Past empires had the sole aim of expanding. They wanted to own more land. They wanted to crush other cities and people, so that they could be the number 1.
Our lives are about trying to be the number 1. We want to be in control, and when we meet another human, we want to be better than them.
But why? What is the point? Do we aim for higher and higher because it betters our lives?
And when our lives are better, we're happier. That is success.
But we as humans created success itself. We created money, and jobs, and the ideal family and group of friends. We created fame and fortune. It was all created by us.
We aim for it, but we have no real reason, because our definition of success is one we created.
We have religion. Why is there religion? Is it to control the masses? Is it to give us a set of rules to follow, to maintain peace and order?
Religion has been fuel for war. It has been fuel for hate. It has been fuel for murder. If religion exists to create peace, then it has failed. People construe words of holy books and use them as excuses to further their own agendas.
Civilisations have started war, because their religious beliefs are different to their enemies. Gays like me have been killed because people take the words of a 'God' and twist them into a reason to kill, even up to this day. People in past have been banished from society, and had their lives ruined or put to an end, if they break rules set by their fellow peoples' religion.
(I believe) our lives are 100% contrived.
If a baby born today was to be put into a world with prehistoric man, they would grow up like the people around them. Sure, they might stand a bit taller and have less hair, but we are no different inside to people from those days. The only difference we have is the world we grew up in.
And we grow up in families and go to schools. We are taught to respect people in power, and use our manners. We learn what is funny and not funny, and what is bad and good. We are supposed to get jobs and contribute to society and get married and play happy families and reproduce, so that the cycle repeats itself.
The lives we live today can not really be the 'real' (perhaps 'intended') 'human way'. We live in a world that we created slowly, with each layer coming about by chance. Think of the famous inventors throughout history, and of the explorers, and leaders. What if one had been trampled by an elephant? What if one had been stabbed or shot, or never been created in one moment of sex? Our lives would be drastically, unimaginably different than they are now.
Success might have a different meaning. We would be aiming for different things. Good and bad would have different actions associated with them.
Am i making sense? lol. I was thinking about this while i was walking home from school because my iPod wasn't charged. :P
I'm sorry if things that make sense in my head don't translate.
So everything we know today was created by past events. Every event, major to minor, has shaped how we live our lives. If things had taken a slightly different turn, thousands, or even hundreds of years ago, we would have an incredibly different life today.
Humans only live like we do because we grew up in the world around us. It's too bad that things have kind of imploded, with war, and racism, and homophobia, and crime, and money and everything like that.
So why do we live, and what is the meaning for our existence? Honestly, i don't think the meaning of life for humans is any different from the meaning of life for a cat, or a snail, or an ant, as the only difference i see is our brain complexity.
What the meaning is, though, i have no clue.
Maybe it is something we can't even articulate, with the words we created. ;)