You ask what the meaning of life, existence is? 42. Or a nice cup of tea or something. The question is not interesting enough to have a real answer. There is no meaning to anything, and there never has been. Life is just an amazing sequence of random things. The question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is meaningless because it does not refer to anything. It is like asking ‘why is the color of green, green?’. However, I would add that just because life is a sequence of random events, does not mean that the outcome of those events is ultimately random. If you understand the notion of stochastic dynamics, then you’d understand that the outcome of any dynamic system is quite deterministic regardless of its initial conditions or any other arbitrary input to the system.
Nature is like a giant, vast stochastic dynamical system. It operates on quantum mechanical principles (as we currently understand them), and it can’t be fully comprehended by humans. However, we humans are also a part of this big stochastic system, so we can have some influence on its outcome. It is a system governed by probability, and I would suggest that the best you can hope to do is influence the probability of one of the possibilities you want coming into existence. Humans have been asking questions that they believe can give them control over the universe for a very long time. The question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is an example of this. Theists believe that God exists. I do not believe that God exists. This means that theists and I occupy two different points in the probability space that the stochastic system of the universe has constructed.
In regards to your OP, I’d share several thoughts
we need an ideology that allow both sides to exist.
that allows the rational, the logical, the scientific to exist alongside
the emotions, the magical, the mystical to exist alongside the rational,
logical, scientific.
what we seek to replace the one-sidedness of both the scientific
and the magical way of thinking with the multi-sidedness of thought.
with the scientific, the rational, the logical, combined with the emotional,
the illogical, the magical.
is that something that we can look to? something that we can aspire
to?
it is the very heart of the search for understanding, that which seeks to
explain, to understand all aspects of our universe
it is in that search that we realize that we have not been alone for all of
time. we seek to know not just as humans, but we seek to know the universe
as well…
for it is in that context, that we realize we are part of something, and
part of something larger than the sum of our thoughts and ideas. and that is
the quest for finding the unifying ideology that allows us to seek to know.
what is the ideology that unites us? is it the commonality of humanity?
is it the commonality of the earth? is it the commonality of the stars?
for all of the ideologies of the past it was of the heart, of the mind,
of the head…we are now at the crossroads of science and of the spiritual.
at the crossroads of science and of the magical.
how will our ideologies of the future be different?
one of the most important things about the internet is that it allows us
to go beyond the barriers, beyond the bounds, beyond the borders of our
locales.
we have never had that before. we can find people, places, ideas, and
communities that were simply not available before.
we need to begin to use that opportunity to seek out the commonality
between ourselves and those that are far away. we need to go beyond the
walls, beyond the fences, beyond the borders of our cities, our towns,
our counties, and our nations. we need to go beyond our borders and into
the rest of the world.
the only way we will move forward, as a culture, as a nation, as a people,
as a civilization, is if we begin to seek out commonalities with the rest
of the world, commonalities with the whole of creation.
if we cannot do that then we will never break free from our cycles of
repetition. if we cannot do that then our species will become extinct.
if we cannot do that then we will continue to become trapped in our own
individuality. we will continue to become more and more disconnected and
distanced from each other.
and all the while we are going about our lives thinking we are the center
of the universe, we are the sole entity in the entire universe. when we
look around, when we notice our own lives, our own bodies, our own
thoughts, our own ideas, our own desires, our own goals, our own
identity, the only thing we are is those things. we are all of those
things and none of them. the center of the universe is actually all of
ourselves. each and every one of us. that is the ultimate power. we have
only to recognize it. only to know it. only to recognize who we are.
if we are unable to break free of our individualism, our smallness, our
self-importance, our separateness, if we cannot recognize the true nature
of our being, if we cannot recognize our own commonality with all others,
if we cannot live as one being then we will never be free. we will never
be free. we will never find that home that we seek. we will never create
that civilization that we so desperately want to create.
Existence cannot be fixed, it can only be negotiated. There is no more or less than there can ever have been, or will ever be. If truth is out there waiting for us, we’re already too late, for the questions that could have been asked, have already been answered.
The philosopher cannot be an agent, nor an instrument, nor a subject of some other aim; philosophy is a being in itself, a force and an act. What speaks, when philosophy speaks, is not a philosopher, but a force, not a human being, but a power. When this force, or philosophy, is inspired in us, and brings the soul into its height of activity, it finds itself thrown forth in all directions, as though it has need of everything that exists, and its life consists in drawing all of this into itself, as the instinct of life likewise draws the spirit into matter, while death dissolves the body into matter. The whole movement of the soul is from action to passive state, from substance to being, that is, this very force and movement. Philosophy can then be compared to a vast ocean where there is both calm and storm. There are calm currents, and then again there are sudden tidal waves, so powerful and tempestuous as to create an almost inconceivable turmoil. Philosophy is in the storms of the heart. Philosophy then demands an unceasing vigilance, which comes only from experience, not from reading or study. For philosophy is not one of those intellectual exercises in which a philosopher tries to make a theory conform to a system, but a power of our thought that does not leave us; a force that has been made captive by a will and that takes possession of the soul in whole. Philosophy speaks not by itself, but by a force with which the soul is filled, and it is this force that speaks. For when we speak of philosophy, we are speaking of an experience. It is not an experience in the sense in which we might speak of an experience of love, an experience of pain, or of any one thing in isolation. No: Philosophy is the sea in which the soul encounters itself, the experience in which it finds itself. The only true philosopher is not that man who is a philosopher simply for an hour in the day, or a moment; he is he who is a philosopher all the day, who never ceases to think, but thinks, thinks, and who thinks. The philosopher has a thousand times the work to do than any other; he has much experience and not much theory to go on; he has to begin a thousand times and to end a thousand times what other men have begun and have finished. The philosopher may be a fool, but the philosopher who therefor ceases philosophy, is doubly the fool.
He may therefor, the philosopher, well be poor, a fool, a coward; it does not matter. His poverty is his advantage; his foolishness is his strength; his ignorance, his wisdom; his cowardice, his bravery; his insignificance, his importance; his idleness, his labor; his imbecility, his perfection. The philosopher is a poor man with his soul alone, a beggar on the Earth, but he who stakes a livelihood against the needs of the spirit is doubly the beggar. The philosopher cannot make use of anything but his reason; that is his wealth; that is the treasure that he has; all that he has of all that he knows, he must give back to himself. He will give back to himself all that he has; he must return himself again to himself.
To the philosopher, the world appears as a picture; he is like a man looking at a picture from a distance. He sees the objects; he touches them, and he learns about them; and yet they remain strange to him as to the rest of the world. He is as though looking at a picture of which all the parts are distinct, and which he cannot put in place; they remain to him in a state of confusion and of chaos. We have just shown how in these cases the philosopher acts differently from all other men, and we have just spoken of the philosophy that comes into existence with such beings; the philosophy of the man who has passed the gates of the world in a dream, and who has come out like a man who has seen the day. He becomes as another man; he is no longer the same, and he can have no experience in common with those to whom the rest of the World appears to be in good order. The philosopher feels as though, to know any one thing at all, he must know everything; to see any one thing, he must see all; and, as confused as this scene of life might appear, he can not accept that it were but a chaos and fury of atoms, but matter: he can only admit it to his thoughts, as it were, as a labyrinth of things which he does not yet understand, of which he only has seen some portions. He cannot know what the whole is, he only knows what it is not. All that he is able to imagine is only that the universe is the result of an immense number of phenomena, the effect of a certain and unique cause, which could not be multiplied without a multiplication of effects, without a division of the whole.
On vient d’une île où toutes les étoiles sont en désordre; in this state of confusion and of chaos which are the result of the philosophy of the wise dreamer, there needs must appear to him a contrary state, another opposing order born out of a state of pure intuition, a complete act of Mind; the thought of some point of equilibrium in the universe which he cannot perceive, a point of rest and of peace between his questioning and its answer, which he cannot perceive. He then must be astonished at this state of rest, and must consider it as the Absolute, a supreme Idea, from which all others ideas spring, or rather as their cause; and he would imagine all this chaos to have been merely the result of the universal agitation of this supreme state of the Universe. We are quite mistaken in thinking that the philosopher makes a more exact use of thought and knowledge, and that he forms a more accurate and more certain judgement upon the Universe, than the rest of mankind. It is not at all that he forms any more just or sure judgment; no, on the contrary, in this thought which he has formed, in this idea which he has accepted, he finds something as it were a support and a comfort, a discovery of the Imaginative which is neither known to himself nor to any other being. But this highest idea is only an idea, not an object; it is the Idea, not a God; it is an abstraction, not the object which it contains. It is an idea without any existence. It is thus that we form ideas of the Supreme Being; but of this Being, we are not yet able to obtain an object to represent it. We can only say that the Supreme Being is infinite; that this thought which he has formed gives him a support and a consolation, but that it does not produce in him either knowledge or certitude.
We have spoken of philosophy as a force. Its force is that which raises ideas to a higher or lower level; its instrument is that which renders them more or less perfect. It has within it the power to add to and to diminish ideas; it is the organ, and even the instrument, of those ideas. It multiplies ideas. What is an idea? An idea is that which we form of a fact or of a phenomenon or a collection of facts; we make of them a whole and in this way, the whole becomes great, greater than the parts of which it was constituted. There is no great effect without an infinite number of causes. This multiplicity is a great force, it consists in multiplication of beings; it consists in the production of species. This idea may perhaps be a more certain thing than what has been found hitherto; this idea may perhaps give a certain security and consolation in our life, in its greatest dangers and distress. Let us then make the effort to think. Let us consider ourselves, let us consider the Infinite; let us find this point, let us find this centre of rest, let us find this point at which the various beings are restored, at which the order of the Universe is established and is stable and species are distinguished from their individuals. In this state of rest and order, let us fix our mind, let us put it in order as well; let us imagine that it, in its being, in its movement, is also in repose, in complete repose; let us contemplate the Infinite in this state of repose, let us take the whole as an image; the result of all the various representations which we have been able to form of the Universe; the result of all our experience and all our thought. And let us think that this being is also a being which is in repose, which is complete; which, by its will, has given its own impulse, which gives itself the power of continuing for ever; the power to continue and not to return into nothingness, to continue to make itself felt. In this state of repose of the Infinite, in this state of the repose which the Intellect enjoys and which it manifests, let us put in order our mind, let us arrange it,- let us bring it back to itself.