Fundamentally, meaning of human life is derived from basic human
instincts of survival, progress and procreation with the purposes of living a
lifespan and continuing it through generations in line with natural design. These
are natural demands of life applicable to all known forms of life, but human
life has evolved differently from what natural life is, as a superset of
natural life. This means that the human life includes all that what nature
demands from life plus a few things more. The cause of the additional things is
the evolution of human intellect to a high level as compared to that of the
other forms of life. This has caused evolution of three more instincts in
humans.
Memory - Memorizing
experiential information and using it whenever needed,
Curiosity - Being
curious, hence making efforts to know things in vicinity, and
Imagination -
Imagining what is non-existent and trying to develop them
Directly and indirectly, all these three additional instincts aim at improving
quality of human life. Therefore, a meaning of life may be contributing to
improve quality of human life. With this idea, let us examine some meanings of
life through basic and additional instincts of humans.
Basic Meanings
Survival
The human experience proves that lifespan of an individual form of life
can't be endless. Thus, every birth is complemented by a death. Therefore,
survival is not the meaning of life but a healthy survival can be the meaning
of life to an individual. For this, the individual is required to take care of
health resilience and agility which are included in true meaning of good health.
Progress
In living beings and also in every organic system, regular changes are
inevitable. These changes may be for betterment of the system or for its decay.
Therefore, even for avoiding decay, betterment has to be adopted to by an
individual in his/her life as an organic system. This betterment is renamed as
progress through which the individual seeks and creates more and more convenience
and comforts of life.
Humans have made rapid strides in this respect but many such efforts
have become counter-productive for their adverse effects on health resilience
and agility. Therefore, a balance between health and progress has to be made
through trade-off between the two. For some individuals, this may be the
purpose of life.
Procreation
Humans procreate with the intention of surviving after death through
respective generations carrying their genes. Thus, genes appear to be immortal providing
an apparent immortality to an individual. But this can't be ensured as a break
in procreation of generations may be possible at any stage for various reasons.
Secondly, marriages introduce amalgamation of genes from different sources,
therefore, after a few generations, the original individual's genes may be
present in individuals in part only. Say, a new born may have facial features
of his/her one ancestor, body structure of another, characteristics of some
other ancestor, etc. Therefore, the individual's set of genes gets lost through
permutations and combinations of genes from different individuals down the
generation chain.
Thirdly, with continuity of a certain practice different from the
original practice for three or more generations, the genes undergo
modifications. This upsets continuity of genetic inheritance from an ancestor.
Thus, surviving through genetic inheritance can't be the purpose of life
for an individual. Through procreation, an individual can only contribute
toward continuity of life on earth.
Procreation being futile for an individual for immortality through
genetic inheritance, the humanity has successfully sought another purpose of
getting sexual pleasure in process similar to that of procreation. Therefore,
all sexual intercourses of humans don't aim at procreation which is the case
with other forms of life. This makes sexual pleasure as a possible purpose of
life for some individuals.
Advanced Meanings
Propagating Human Experience
Lifespan of memory records of experiences of an individual may be
extended through transfer of information through generations for taking
advantages of these for betterment of human life. Creating written records of
experiential information through use of languages, enhances this process
further. Therefore, propagation of human experience to the future generations
may be a purpose of life for some individuals. Some authors may be working with
this contention.
Probing the Unknown
Human instinct of curiosity may compel some individuals to improve human
knowledge base through efforts for knowing the unknown. The science behind this
process is to probe the unknown through
what is known. This may be the meaning of life for some individuals
benefitting those who seek more knowledge.
Imaginative Innovation
Human capability of imagining what is non-existent until that time works
for seeding innovations through lateral
thinking for improving quality of human life, but this has potential for
misuse too for creating like atomic weapons to destroy a part or the whole of
humanity. Whatever be the case, this may be the meaning of life for some
individuals leafing to more innovations in the world which may improve or decay
quality of human life.
The Grand Purpose of Life
We have seen above that various meanings of life have some potential
subscribers for their own choices and provide benefits in their limited ways.
Therefore, the humanity is in a process of differentiation for pursuance of
different meanings of life based on basic or advanced instincts by different
persons. No purpose is capable of taking the whole humanity to a higher level.
In the process, some humans pursuing their basic instincts as their meaning of
life may remain what they are today or even get degraded. Others pursuing their
advanced instincts for their meaning of life with the basic instincts relegated
to routines of life may evolve further. As a result, the humanity would get
divided into humans and super-humans. This takes some of us to pursue a grand
meaning of life to evolve to super-human level through conscious pursuance of
advanced meanings of life.
This point of further evolution of only a part of humanity is supported
by the evolution process so far wherein only parts of species have been
evolving to higher levels under circumstantial differentials. Even the humans
evolved from species still existing on earth in their forms of pre-human
evolution. Differentials in circumstance and practices keep on creating
diversity in evolution levels within each species of life, thus giving rise to
multiple species from a single species.
To summarise, the whole of this treatise, those willing to evolve to
super-humanism must consciously pursue their capabilities of memorizing and
recording human experiences, curiosity to improve upon the human knowledge
base, and imaginative creativity, while the basic instincts of survival,
progress and procreation get pursued through their routines. Those who fail to
do so and keep on relying on the basic instincts only would remain as ordinary
humans.
