{"id":4468,"date":"2018-03-05T21:48:26","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T04:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=4468"},"modified":"2018-03-05T21:48:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T04:48:26","slug":"the-meaning-of-life-the-universe-and-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2018\/03\/the-meaning-of-life-the-universe-and-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"The Meaning of life, the Universe and Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,<\/em>\u00a0the people come up with a big question, \u201cWhat\u2019s the answer to life the universe and everything?\u201d<\/p>\n

You may not know the book, but you\u2019ve probably heard the answer:<\/p>\n

42<\/p>\n

There is a dark irony and utter absurdity in this book. Written in 1979, there was a apocalyptic luxury in the western world. Yes, we had plenty of everything we needed.<\/p>\n

Except a sense of safety. Have you heard of nuclear proliferation?<\/p>\n

By the 1980\u2019s we had been eating well and accumulating stuff with reliable regularity. And yet we didn’t have a sense of safety.<\/p>\n

To dial the lens back for a broader view, prior to\u00a0the dark nerd humor of the hitchhiker\u2019s guide, history had provided the darkest\u00a0events\u00a0ever.<\/p>\n

So much\u00a0\u00a0had been learned from the factories and efficiencies of the industrial revolution.\u00a0Nazis\u00a0turned these tools\u00a0for their social engineering plans. This moment brought human slaughter and suffering of nearly unimaginable proportion.<\/p>\n

I have recently read Viktor Frankl\u2019s\u00a0Man\u2019s Search for Meaning<\/em>. Viktor Frankl is a famous psychologist, and equally famously, a Holocaust survivor.<\/p>\n

He describes the experience of living in the camp, and working in horrendous conditions. They were underfed to the point where their bodies began to visibly consume their muscle mass to sustain life. They were sadistically beaten and abused.<\/p>\n

All this is ugly, and hard to look at.<\/p>\n

When I read Frankl\u2019s book, he brought something new. His fascination with psychology had begun before he entered the camps, and\u00a0in the camps\u00a0a wide scope for exploration.<\/p>\n

Did he really find the meaning of life in the concentration camps?<\/p>\n

He declares: \u201cLife is unconditionally meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Take that,\u00a0Hitchhikers Guide.<\/em><\/p>\n

We do have meaning, every single one of us. Without having to prove it by anything.<\/p>\n

Unconditionally meaningful<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that we have to prove ourselves worthy of the air we breathe. He says that life does not owe us, we owe life. Our best efforts, our best selves.<\/p>\n

Do we suffer? Let\u2019s not suffer if we can possibly avoid it,\u00a0and yet\u00a0there is a lot of unavoidable suffering in this life.<\/p>\n

He ought to know. His experience gives him the right to say this.<\/p>\n

So if we are experiencing unavoidable suffering, we can bring our life and ourselves to that suffering\u00a0ennobles us\u00a0and we ennoble it.<\/p>\n

Damn.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t aware that was an option.<\/p>\n

There is an enormous truth to the idea that life is unconditionally meaningful. If we know that the meaning is there, no matter what, that changes the search.<\/p>\n

If I I know that I will find a thing, I will not give up searching. And like Douglas Adams said I might need to check my assumptions:<\/p>\n

“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.” (28.2-6)<\/p>\n

I’ll keep looking. I know I’ll find it.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,\u00a0the people come up with a big question, \u201cWhat\u2019s the answer to life the universe and everything?\u201d You may not know the book, but you\u2019ve probably heard the answer: 42 There is a dark irony … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4471,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions\/4471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}