Chapter 4

The Meaning of Life

Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel, c.1508-12. Michelangelo’s masterpiece
also came to symbolise our hope of reconciliation with God, which has now occurred.

Chapter 4:1 Summary

313While the conventional view in science is that there is no direction or purpose or meaning to existence, and that change is random, there is, in fact, a very obvious theme, direction, purpose and meaning to existence, which is the ordering or integration or complexification of matter into ever larger and more stable wholes. Indeed, the answer to the great question of ‘what is the meaning of life’ is that it is to live in accordance with this integrative, order-of-matter-developing, cooperation-and-selfless-behaviour-dependent theme or meaning of existence. HOWEVER, until we could explain our seemingly imperfect human condition, explain why humans appear to have been living in defiance of ‘Integrative Meaning’, namely in a divisive competitive and selfish way, such a truth could not be faced. BUT, as seen in the previous chapter, since we CAN now at last explain the good reason why we humans have been divisively rather than integratively behaved, we CAN finally admit the truth of Integrative Meaning and acknowledge that there is a direction or purpose to existence. And furthermore, since our concept of ‘God’ is actually the personification of the unbearably condemning truth of Integrative Meaning, through admitting this truth humans can also demystify ‘God’ and, by so doing, change from being a ‘God’-fearing species to a ‘God’-confronting one. Yes, the instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition makes sense of and reconciles all the unresolved manifestations of the polarities of the human situation—‘good’ vs ‘evil’, idealism or ‘God’ vs human’s non-ideal existence, religion vs science, holism vs mechanism, altruism vs egotism, communism vs capitalism, conscience vs conscious, and so on—thus ameliorating or healing, and finally ending, the psychologically upset, divisive way we have been living!