A very brief essay on the meaning of life

Bits and pieces of thought, in no particular order.

In lieu of Halloween I want to take some time to discuss some relevant topics of ghosts, death, and the like. I think it would be safe to say that we all carry a different concept of death.
Based on our life experiences and our encounters with it, an individual perspective of this inevitability has been formed. Some people believe that after death there is nothing- that death is merely the opposite of life, a state of pure nonexistence. Others believe in other ideologies- taught to them through religion, mythology, science, philosophy, et cetera. Many believe that death is not nonexistence, but the beginning of a new existence, or a continuation of the old existence. Some believe in reincarnation, that the energy or the soul of an individual will be manifested into a new living form, which the actions of their previous life will decide accordingly. Others believe in some notion of heaven or hell- and that our morality, and our 'goodness' will get us into the Utopian kingdom of heaven, while a life of evil doing and malice will lead us into a fiery eternal damnation. Of course, many believe in some mixture between all of these concepts- I myself, being one of them.

I believe death gives life meaning. Of course the role of death varies from culture to culture. Some cultures are more sensitive to the idea of death, while others are less. Some embrace it fully, while others isolate it from their lives. I've been studying the effects of death through research on suicide. I have my theories about death and the Western world in particular. Maybe it is our very 'civilization' that is making us become uncivilized. Here we experience a cleaner death, a more sanitary death. Less people are dying around us, people aren't being killed by the mass violence of war, people aren't slowly starving to death, people aren't dying on the streets from disease, people are not freezing to death due to lack of shelter. Now I realize that all of these things are happening in America, but the key word here is 'less'. Death here is more impersonal, we prepare, we purchase death insurance, we buy our burial plots- and then we quietly die- heads our nodded in due respect and everyone goes on their way. We don't want to inconvenience anyone here. If we are dying we are pushed into the shadows, so as to not discourage the living. Why? Why do we not take the time to really acknowledge death? Why do we not let it affect us? Is it because we don't have the time? Time. Maybe we're so busy delaying our deaths that we don't stop to really acknowledge life.

The existentialists say that, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." I agree with this, but sometimes I wonder if there is more than one level of anxiety. Then again, I realize I may be simply saying the same thing. Citizens of our 1st world nations seem to increasingly suffer from a particular form of anxiety- a temporal anxiety- a constant need for productivity, a constant craving for progression and advancement and accomplishment. We value time. We get anxious because we have this deep fear of wasting time. We stay busy, and would rather constantly impose preemptive action rather than 'wasting time' recollecting, considering, being.

I fear that we become so busy with physical progression to make our existence more comfortable- with building and infrastructure, economics, politics, and technology- that we begin
to lose sight of each other, of humanity. This is why I've been so interested in the topic of suicide lately. There is an inescapable demand of your attention when a person chooses to take their own life- its aggressive, its personal, its an 'inconvenience'. For example, if we are to see a person killed in a car wreck, it is troubling for sure. But in this case we can consider them a victim of circumstance. We comfort ourselves through simple passive philosophies like everything happens for a reason and that it just may have been their time to go. But what happens when someone commits suicide, especially someone close? These simple philosophies no longer apply, there is no escape from questioning why. Death in the case of suicide is passive by no means- it is aggressive, a choice, a conscious action based on the will and desire of the person. Being confronted with the question of why a person would choose to die rather than live, can have a profound impact on a person, forcing them to aggressively question the meaning of life.

Do you know how they say in a haunted environment you will experience hot and cold spots, drastic changes in temperature? It is because when the spirits present try to manifest into a physical form, they do so by extracting the energy around them. Like ghosts, I think of death as a black hole, and life as the distance in between. I suppose its pessimistic to say, but I view life as a sort of slow death- a long realization and acceptance, a draining of all meaning, hope, and faith. Really, we are battling death everyday, fighting to not become nothing- and just because we continue to live does not necessarily mean that we've won.

A relevant story.

I was never afraid of much. When I was younger I was afraid of the dark, and I was also afraid to be alone. I could be alone but I always had something on, a radio, a tv, anything. I needed a constant connection to the outside world, so that I never felt completely isolated. The closest I've ever come to nightmares are waking dreams, like day dreams, only a lot of them were hallucinations- of abstract things like inhuman like motion, very slow and fluid, or very quick and jerky. And my 'monsters' or ghosts were never really detailed, never had horribly distorted features or anything, in fact they had no features at all. I've always had visions of large dark masses of energy. I suppose when I was younger I thought of them as 'furry' but they weren't so much furry as they were vibrating. They were really like black holes- something I was scared of because I was afraid to be sucked in by its energy and destroyed.

So the movie that has done the best tapping into my fears is the Japanese film Kairo or "Pulse". I watched it again tonight to see if it was as good as I remember it being the first time. At first after watching it I didn't feel that it was, but as the night has gone on I've been thinking about it more and more.

I can really relate to it. The movie is about a ghost invasion. I still don't think I've completely grasped the entire plot- but the characters begin to see video of ghosts on their computers. They reach us through the internet. The ghost invasion is sort of symbolic, it seems almost like a kind of philosophical sickness, and its contagious. People begin to disappear. Upon encountering a ghost, the people all fall into an all most trance like state of serious depression. They lose hope, and eventually either kill themselves, or just fade away into nothingness becoming ghosts themselves.
People are infected with hopelessness, because the ghost invasion overwhelms them with a feeling of isolation and loneliness. The movie does a really good job at generating that feeling within you too, you can feel the isolation.

The characters really interested me. The main characters who either killed themselves or faded away were the ones who at the beginning asked more questions and acknowledged right away what was going on. The characters who survived the longest appeared somewhat naive. Not only naive, but seemed to be often in denial.

I think this movie is very relevant to us. I've been studying suicide lately because I think it is the only method of death that really demands our attention and forces us to ask questions. But this act of 'giving up' I think can be contagious. And I started to think about the basic nature of any animal, and that is to keep surviving, to live and to multiply. To continue to manifest themselves and their species even if it seems pointless. But we are a more evolved species. We are a more intelligent species. But now I wonder that the more we evolve, the more intelligent we become, the more we stop depending on ideology such as our religions to validate the meaning of life- could this be our future? And then I realized, ironically, is that the only reason any of us keep going is because of this notion of hope. And its these seemingly 'naive' characters, the ones who refuse to acknowledge futility, that are able to survive.

So if we begin to really question the meaning of life, really obsess over it, what conclusions would we come to? It seems that the people of the 'civilized' world I mentioned earlier, who overlook death to get on with their business, who remain unaffected, they survive. They are not overtaken by the sadness, the absurdity, the chaos- they still struggle to impose order, to progress, to accomplish. Is this naivety and indifference to the most important philosophical question of all time what it takes to truly survive it? And if this is the case, are every single one of us living completely in bad faith? Is living in collectively living in bad faith, better than not living at all? Like I said, just because you stay alive doesn't mean you don't fail- an individual death can occur even while that individual is technically alive- "annihilation of the spirit", I believe they call it.

Will there ever come a day, when our intelligence has evolved to the point of which we begin to realize that existence is futile, and that we came from nothing, and will all inevitably become nothing again? This hopelessness is a sort of disease. I feel it. I feel it strongly, and often, especially as I get older. I go through these oscillations, and I've developed sort of bi-polar tendencies. Sometimes I'm more aware of my isolation, I don't feel anything because that feeling can never be validated, I can never be validated- I feel very sad. Other times I fight it so violently, and become crippled by emotion from trying to find that validation in other people, by striving to feel an element of 'togetherness'. I always end up back to that feeling of isolation, and I want to collapse within it and isolate myself completely but I feel this responsibility to continue to interact. If we all gave in to our isolation, if we all stop interacting with each other, if we all excuse existence as unimportant, we all all become unimportant, and we all turn to ghosts, we cease to exist.


Something else I thought was interesting, was the relevance of a computer program at the beginning of the movie. The program was suppose to be a model of our world, a representation of its chaotic nature. All it was really was a black screen with these tiny white dots floating around. The description was that when the dots are further apart, they want to be closer to each other, but when they come together, they die.

The randomization of the dots on the computer program I think I understand very well, as simple as it is. The dots are all alone but they are also collectively together in their individual solitude. They are alone, but they are the same. They want to become one, but they can't, or else their individual self dies- and so they just bounce off of each other- causing an eternal pattern of friction, of interaction, that is really that same hope that keeps us going.
















Nonetheless, entropy prevails.