The Notion of "Purpose"

"Finally, there’s the fear of nihilism: the fear that biology strips life of meaning and purpose. It says that love, beauty, morality, and all that we hold precious, are just figments of a brain pursuing selfish evolutionary strategies. For most people who ask the question “Why am I here,” the answer “To pass on your genes” is less than comforting." (Pinker, 7)

This passage completely summarizes not a fear that I have, but rather a contradiction in my system of values that I recognize but have never been able to comfortably accept. When we separated ourselves across the room on the first day of class, I was on the arts/humanities side but right in the middle of loving and hating science. I've never been particularly excellent in scientific academia but this doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge and respect science. In fact, I often find myself reverting back to this nihilism that Pinker writes about whenever I find myself becoming emotional or passionate about something to a detrimental extent. Sometimes I have to tell myself that I'm just another sack of chemicals reacting with one another and in a few short years I'll be dead and won't matter at all, save the fact that I'll be a good source of food for the maggots. At the same time, my first degree is in the arts - music, to be specific - and I have a profound love for the romance that is the human condition. I know that there is a science of sound that explains why certain pitches and timbres (literally) resonate well with the human ear but I also realize that there is something that can't be explained by science that has encouraged mankind to produce art, music and literature for thousands of years. I do recognize that the production of these things is fundamentally pointless in the eyes of science - well, biological science. One could obviously argue that the arts have a therapeutic/psychological affect on us that in turn affects how we relate with other humans and our environment.

That being said, I'm still just a bag of chemicals and I truly believe that I can never truly conceive of anything existing before my conscious memory, nor of anything existing after I die. But would it be a good thing for everyone to think like I do? Probably not. For people on the opposite side of nihilism, the belief in something omnipresent and everlasting can act as a moral compass. If this nihilism permeated all of society we might end up in complete anarchy. The notion of a "greater purpose" keeps people motivated to work hard and live a productive life. However, this "productive life," as Pinker says, can pretty much be whittled down to the passing on of genes - no matter how much you love your spouse or the smile of your first born child melts your heart. They, like you, are eventually going to end up feeding the worms and nourishing the plants.

I don't even know if this depresses me.