What Is Life?
It is my turn.
Having read and discussed a number of paragraphs submitted by readers of Philosophy Now Magazine my appreciation grows for the effort put forth by these readers to formulate their ideas on a philosophically interesting question. The variety of approaches is stimulating, a reminder of the suppleness of our minds. No doubt the effort expended on this project was it’s own reward. I am sure each respondent’s life was enriched thereby. Following a summary of the reader responses I’ll risk my own answer to the question.
Life is the expression of a story (DNA) which gathers the past into the present. Life embodies a iterative plan, which has no pre-established end. Life acts through matter, a toolmaker.
Life is a throw of the dice: either meaningless or a step in a planned ‘experiment’, arising from the laws of physics in a meaningless universe.
A selfish/competitive being which must learn to play well with others of like nature. An unanticipated, epiphenomenon of this process is incipient aesthetic experience of life’s environment.
Life described from the inside entails: A. a grasp of agency, no longer living as a victim B. a sense of destiny/mission C. a sense of being held and the ability to hold D. a sense of belonging E. self-care F. a why of one’s life. These are the preconditions for life to thrive, taken from a human internal experience of life. Thriving is defined as the ability to create meaning.
Life is a big accident, chance in all of it’s randomness. Therefore it’s counterproductive, dysfunctional to attribute external meaning to “life.” Just be like the cow, modestly ruminating, sleeping until maturity in order to reproduce. Why give to life a purpose when there is none? Be happy.
Life is the survival of cause and effect, the slings and arrows of the organism’s experience. Life presents the opportunity/your fate of becoming a victim or a victor. You have to “take a hand” to survive.
The famous quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth “Life’s but a walking shadow…and idiots tale, signifying nothing.” — suggests a Buddhist interpretation of life. The code DNA and RNA is ultimate. Just code, a string of information. Another way of putting it: In the beginning was the Word…
Life is the recognition of it’s own contingency. This is a form of transcendence, the god-like ability to recognize the network of possibilities entailed in existence. Life transcends the “is” and aspires toward the “ought” seeking “a reason not to die — not yet.”
Life is many things, conceived by many approaches — according to the reports of many field correspondents. Each instance of life is but a dot in the cosmos, but humans are important dots for their very ability to consider the question: What is life.
Now my turn.
Life is a biological expression of a hierarchical structured Reality. What are the odds that life could arise from the basement of Reality where the void, just field exchanges are detected? Life rising from the various molecular combinations of matter, so organized to form an entropy resistant organism even to the apogee of sentient “self” awareness? So what if the “self” is a delusion, who would not argue that it is a necessary one, a human one? As selves, the human expression of life, we are existentially and psychologically divided, palpably incomplete. (Ergo the impossibility of emulating the cow) Perhaps Reality, all the way down, entails friction, incompleteness, yin and yang? There is reason to journey on, there is more story to tell, more ground to explore. — Jerry Nov 2019
Today is thanksgiving eve, the day before our national day of giving thanks. I offer this tune in appreciation of being here with you, alive to give thanks.
