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Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
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We're gonna do something a little different today.
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We’ll explore a series of potential purposes for life, and see what exactly they might tell us about life and how we live it.
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Then we’ll leave it up to you to create your own answers.
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What is the purpose of life?
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This is a question that has been asked countless times over the course of human life, and we have developed many ways to answer it.
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Christians believe that the meaning of life is to worship God and accomplish his will.
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Buddhists believe the purpose of life is to end suffering.
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The Krikkiters in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy believe the purpose of life is to exterminate all other life in the universe.
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There are even secular groups that claim that the purpose of life is to maximize the positive for yourself and others, while minimizing the negative.
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But who’s to say these groups know what each person should be doing with their life?
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The best judge of your values, your beliefs, and your goals, is, well, you.
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So let’s figure out what it is you value most, and how you can bring yourself to focus on this purpose.
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Perhaps the purpose you choose to follow is to strive to exist as long as possible.
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You want to remain alive and cognizant, so that you can witness as much of life as there is to witness.
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But then, by avoiding potentially risky activities, would you in fact be limiting your own experiences?
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There’s also the question of how far you would take this purpose.
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In order to survive, would you put your continued existence over that of another?
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For example, would you allow another person to die to save your own life?
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What if it was two people?
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Or ten?
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What if it was a child?
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Or a family member?
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These are important factors that must be considered when deciding where your priorities lie.
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Maybe rather than focusing on your own survival, you wish to help the human species to survive.
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Whether this is directly, by saving lives as a police officer, firefighter, nurse, or doctor, or indirectly, inventing helpful machines synthesizing life-saving drugs,
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your choice of career would be greatly affected by this purpose.
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Furthermore, this could involve giving your life to save that of another; is this something that you are willing to do?
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Or will this purpose need some caveats?
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Perhaps you wish to focus on maximizing the happiness of sentient creatures.
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You want humans as a people to be as happy as possible, while limiting suffering as much as possible.
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If this is the case, do you allow the suffering of less sentient creatures, like animals, in order to improve conditions for more sentient creatures, namely humans?
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We can even take this a step further.
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Imagine aliens came to earth that were as far ahead of us intellectually and emotionally as we are ahead of ants.
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If you are willing to harm less sentient creatures in favour of humanity, should you then not be willing to harm humans in favour of the advanced aliens?
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Or would this purpose possibly be better worded as the protection of sentience, while minimizing the negative impact on others of a certain sentience?
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To take this still further, imagine you could simply snap your fingers and cause all of humanity to suddenly become vegetables in a state of pure happiness.
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Would you do it?
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Or, do you value personal freedom and progress too much to do this to humanity, even if it would make them far happier than they otherwise would be?
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Alternatively, it could even be that you do wish to align your goals with those of a certain religion.
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If this is the case, would you allow this religion to cause you to act against your own beliefs?
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If your religion tells you that certain people should be shunned and you disagree, do you change your morals to match those of the religion,
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or do you bend the rules of your religious identity to satisfy your personal morality?
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If you would choose to bend the rules, would this defeat the purpose of following the religion in the first place,
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or are there other benefits gained from religion, that outweigh the discomfort caused by this cognitive dissonance?
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To take things to a more primal level, it could be that your goal is to procreate and pass your genes onto the next generation.
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This has historically been the purpose of animal life everywhere, including humans.
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But nowadays, feelings on the subject have changed.
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Some choose to avoid children and focus on their own personal development.
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Others, like anti-natalist philosopher David Benatar, hold that the inevitable suffering one will experience in life makes having a child immoral.
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Incredibly, even this most basic of purposes has its opponents.
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All this is to say that your purpose should be what’s right for you.
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Only you can decide what aspects of life to prioritize.
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Only you can decide whether you choose your own life over that of others.
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Only you can decide if human life is more important than animal or alien life, or if personal liberty comes before true happiness.
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All of these potential purposes have their merits, and we must all decide which to focus on.
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And you don’t need to have just one; you can pick and choose any combination of goals you wish, and create your own set of ideals by which to live your life.
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Your life, is in your hands.
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Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting, thought-provoking, and maybe even inspired you to think more deeply about your own life.