“What’s the Point?” How Not Caring Became The Norm
The eternal question of life’s meaning is faced with man’s belief in its pointlessness
“What’s the point?” A question that has long puzzled mankind and plagued its existence. Perhaps the meaning of life for a prehistoric man is quite simply life itself — that is, survival. Indeed, survival could be defined as the primary human purpose; the primordial motivation that drives us forward. Even today, there is a current in philosophical thought that insists on life existing for the sake of life. Thus, we must be motivated by our own existence in the universe. That life, by virtue of its very existence is worth living for.
Here, I must interject with a bit of psychology. In 1954, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed his five-stage hierarchy of needs to explain human motivation. Here is a diagram of the model.
Being born into the right parts of the world with average genetic composition ought to secure a human being’s basic needs. Still, nothing is simply “given” to an adult; rather, they can earn their living wage (and thereby secure their physiological and safety needs) through selling their labor.
Next, having a caring family and friendly environment permits the acquisition of psychological needs. This, however, is a much more delicate procedure, prone to the variation of a multiplicity of social factors that inevitably play the largest part in the individual’s assimilation — or not — into society. Here, there is a note worth considering. In modern society, much of our social and political arrangements are governed by economic relationships. This, quite evidently, impedes proper unhindered socialization from taking place, and complicates the attainment of a person’s psychological needs.
Finally, there is the need for self-fulfillment, a near-impossibility for all humankind save for a privileged few. Self-actualization has become cruelly out-of-reach for most people who spend their lives slaving away for someone else’s profit. Furthermore, it is even more distant from the children in the Ivory Coast, the Congo, Vietnam, or Somalia who have never had a shot at achieving their true potential.
Here’s the diagram:
I have said this before, and I will say it again. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his book The Panda’s Thumb:
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
It is hardly shocking then, that humankind is in a state of grievance over itself, and happiness is ever more scarce in this world of amoral profitism. Beyond the monthly paycheck, man hopelessly wonders… what is the point? And yet, despite all this, man himself is the reason for his own despair.
To understand why humankind has lost hope in its own existence, we must examine two of its greatest fears: the fear of losing control, and the fear of the unknown.
To be Great
Man, by nature, is an ambitious creature, driven by needs that range all the way from physical to spiritual, and in the final phase, man desires to reach his full potential. Then, he is disappointed by a social structure that prevents his transition across social classes.
First, It is my belief that the very presence of classes is not in itself harmful, for it is unthinkable to equate the doctor to the janitor and the persistent to the sloth. In this light, social classes must be based on merit and merit alone, and they must never be given the power to oppress one another or exploit one another.
In contrast, the social divide between the elite and the working class is scarcely based on merit and hard work, but on the continuous exploitation of the working class by the elite like a bull being exploited by a farmer. The animals on the farm have no chance at becoming the owners, and similarly, the working people of the world have no chance at becoming the elites.
Effectively, the world has grouped us all into different bubbles of wealth that each enjoy a different level of education, healthcare, housing, and others. These bubbles effectively trap those inside and prevent them from moving to other wealth levels as any movement from one wealth group into another is an existential threat to both bubbles.
This hardline social stratification (division of society according to wealth into social classes) enabled by capitalism cripples an individual’s ability to grow and develop, and strands him very much near where his parents left him off in society.
We are not incapable of greatness; rather, our greatness is unfit for the capitalist model. This very lack of personal agency in directing personal development is what renders us all so hopeless.
Man realizes that the people he meets, the education he receives, the neighborhoods he inhabits, and almost all other social conditions are predetermined by the wealth of his parents, which, in turn, affects his own ability to accumulate wealth. A child with less wealthy parents will receive a lower quality of education than his wealthier peers and thereby have lower chances at success in the accumulation of wealth himself.
A great deal of man’s success in life lies in the capital he inherits (social and economic). With this very realization, the modern individual feels stranded in his wealth bubble, incapable of any meaningful change or progress. His social condition is predefined and he has no control over it. This very lack of control is what man fears most. He is deceived into thinking he holds the reins over his own life when in fact that is not the case. Taking responsibility is easy, for it implies that change is possible, and there is always a solution and “a way out.” Acknowledging the immutable truth, that our social condition is predefined and our success is proportional to inherited wealth, is much more difficult.
Indeed, “what is the point?”
Myself, I will always try and take responsibility, for it takes a great weight off my shoulders, and it gives me a sliver of hope that I have something under my control. But to the modern man that has lost even that, what do I say when he asks me, “what is the point?”
To be Enlightened
The Dialectic of Enlightenment, a twentieth century treatise in social philosophy authored by German philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, opens with a very grim assessment:
“Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant”
How can this be, they ask. How can modern science promise to liberate man from ignorance, violence, and mind-numbing repetitive work, yet also succeed in creating a world full of blind hatred, where people willingly endorse fascistic ideologies and passionately develop weapons of mass destruction? Reason itself, they conclude, has become irrational.
Man asks What is the Point? and modernity answers: Enlightenment.
According to Adorno, the disaster that is the modern world is the result of a triple form of domination: the domination of nature by humans, the domination of nature within humans, and the domination of humans by other humans. What motivates such triple domination is an irrational fear of the unknown; thus, enlightenment, which is man’s desire to conquer ignorance is motivated by a fear that is irrational. We can conclude, then, that enlightenment itself is the result of an irrational process based on the irrational fear of the unknown.
In this characterization of enlightenment as a force of irrational regress rather than one of rational progress, lies a pointed critique of modernity itself.
What is modernity?
In simplistic terms, premodernity is the historical period when religion held a strong grip on all intellectual discourse. Modernity is the period when science replaced religion as the primary foundation for all reason. Postmodernity, which is our present day, is when intellectuals lost faith in both science and religion as guides for our reason.
At the time, Adorno argued so that postmodernism would not be a return to premodernism in all its irrational faith, and it indeed was as if his calls were heeded.
In today’s postmodernity, we have effectively lost faith in all science and religion as explanations for our social conditions. What with the dozens of pseudo-scientific and anti-science societies on one hand, and atheistic circles on the other, both belief in rational science and pious faith have dwindled under the weight of postmodernity, resulting in a society where nothing means anything, and nothing is true. Nihilism, absurdism, and other brands of existentialism have thrived in this postmodern period.
Through enlightenment, we have paved a path towards the total destruction of all human civilization. Even science has lost its purpose in bettering our lives, as progress for the sake of progress has become a virtue, while progress for the sake of profit has become the norm. Long gone are the days when progress was for the sake of man. Now, progress seems to be for the sake of giving meaning to life that is otherwise meaningless. This has become the purpose of enlightenment: to provide meaning, to answer the eternal question… “What is the Point?”
Humans have installed themselves as masters over the world through a radical zeal for untethered progress, and in the process, have degraded themselves as slaves under the titanic machine of uncontrollable enlightenment.
It is of little surprise, then, when such large swathes of mankind have succumbed to a general apathy towards anything and everything, for nothing means anything, and nothing is true.
To Conclude
In conclusion, feelings of apathy have poisoned our world for a long time, but they have taken unprecedented control over it in most recent decades. This deterioration in the collective mental state of society is most evidently due to its obsession with, profit on one hand, and enlightenment on the other.
And then… What is the point?
If profit is not the point and neither is enlightenment, what is to be said of life? Is it inherently meaningless? Are we destined to wander around aimlessly in an endless search for meaning? Perhaps…
Yet… there is a way out. If, in postmodernity, we have recognized that life — and I do disagree with this characterization — carries no inherent meaning, where do we go from here? and really, should we?
I think we should, for life itself, by virtue of its existence, is worth living for. Else, it is not worth not living.
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