The local newspaper carried a small article about a guy who died in a road accident. It so happened that this young chap happened to be an old classmate of mine, one with whom I was quite friendly, but over the years, as distance and careers had separated us, did not have much contact with. Nevertheless, I thought that i should attend his funeral.
The whole exercise went on as usual, with the body being brought, the funeral service being offered, the body being buried and relatives and friends weeping and wailing inconsolably for they had lost a son, a grandson, a lover, a friend ; death at 23 years was probably too hard for them. In any case, for me, all these things were expected. But the seemingly usual things which followed after the funeral, for some reason, got me thinking.
What happened was that after the funeral, I went home, switched on the T.V. , had my dinner, and thought: His death has not changed the way I live, it probably will not change the way of life of the hundreds of other people who had attended his funeral. Such would be the case with almost every other person on this planet. What then, is the purpose of birth, the struggle through life, and death? This cycle has been happening since the beginning proabably will continue forever.
What got me wondering was that this whole system seems so mechanical, so predictable, so mathematical. If one were to look at the entire human population from the outside, it would seem that the entire mass of humanity behaves as an organism; where each human being would become an individual cell. Continous birth and increasing population would represent the growth of the organism( in this case, the human population) and death of individuals are synonymous with degeneration, which occurs with any cell. Given this observation, one direct implication would be that we, the cells of this organism, are born , and live for the sole purpose of developing and nourishing the organism of which we are a part of. It is our biological responsibility to ensure that our lives our spent in trying the best that we can, to ensure that this organism lives.
That however would raises serious questions. Where does our individuality go? Do our own individual lives matter? Why do we seek happiness, peace, love? Is it only to ensure that we can work better towards our biological goal, or is it deeper? If all of us are sad, unhappy and depressed, would that mean the organism would tread the path of self destruction? ARE WE PROGRAMMED?
2 comments:
The argument that you have posed is built on an analogy that has been drawn based on a contestable premise that There needs to be a purpose for our existence and the way we go through the cycles
Also in case the above were true and an analogy might be drawn between an organism and humanity there are a few differences which come to mind
1. An organism reaches its state of maturity and limited growth and then the growth process reverses.It is finite whereas humanity has been growing in size ever since its been created
2.While in an organism the cells are co-ordinated and subservient to the central goal of supportinng life humanity has been competitive in many ways as there are scarce resources which everyone competes for
3. While an organism will die alongwith the constintuent cells such is not the case with humanity. One civilization gives way to another. So the need to co-ordinate and co-operate is not so important for humans.
more on it soon
1) Our growth process may reverse. It may not seem that way, but we're just 200,000 years old while the dinosaurs were the dominanat species for more than 160 million years. The general theory is that they were wiped out due to natural calamities. In our case, we have the ability to survive most if not all natural calamities. Yet our organism has been infected with various "cancers". Can we survive that before it becomes malignant and ultimately kills us?
2) Human beings competing for limited resources is akin to our cells competing for energy and oxygen. May not be exactly similar but its an analogy.
3)same as point one. who knows? Besides, if our ancestors hadn't co-ordinated and cooperated with each other, we probably wouldn't have been born yet.
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