What is the Point?
"I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything" - Van Gogh
“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
- Vonnegut
The easy answer is to say that there is no point at all, but that would be a lie. As Alan Watts put it, “If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.” Indeed, it is a form of mendacity to suggest that there is no point, when the very question itself necessitates some form of belief in a point. Here is an interesting anecdote, when rodents have their dopamine neurons destroyed, they will starve to death even when food is placed in front of them. If those rodents were humans, they would surely not become nihilistic philosophers.
But the question remains. It is a question that lurks in every mind from time to time. We remain all too acutely aware of many facts which place in doubt the significance of our lives. We may look up at the stars and we know that the universe is so vast, that comparing ourselves to a single grain of sand on a beach would not do justice to our relative smallness. We are very small. Additionally, we know that our actions will crumble into dust eventually. Ozymandias! “Round the decay/of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
What more do we know? We know that everyone, every blade of grass, bird, bee, flea, and reverie will die. Our vision displays to us on a daily basis the death of all things. But would you consider for a moment how absurd this seems in the context of the way in which we value things? As society, we constantly value ends. We value medals, awards, degrees, promotions, positions of authority, Nobel prizes, etc. We wish to become; we ignore becoming. But the irony is this: becoming is what lasts. All statues crumble to dust. Consider how we construct things. Straight lines. Symmetry. Suburban housing complexes. Parallel roads. Geometry. Lawns. Order to distract from the inherent chaos of life.
But the chaos is what there is. You never step in the same river twice. Life is a process of becoming. There is no end, no final destination, not “point”. The point is the process of becoming. We invent a point only so that we can enjoy that becoming. If all of this seems depressing to you, it might be a sign that a change of mindset is in order. Because life moves quickly. The moments that make life worth living are often brief. If you concern yourself too much with what lies ahead, you lose the real wealth of your life, and that would be the true tragedy.
Nietzsche said it best: “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.” To become what you are, that is the point. Because what you are is something beautiful. And it is something unique. Have you ever stopped and looked at a tree because it had grown in some fascinating and magnificent way? Didn’t you think that it was nice that the tree had grown in such a way and not remained unremarkable?
I maintain that life can be seen in a totally positive way. And I don’t believe that we need to think about endings, about death, about what we want to become, in order to do so. The dance itself is the point of life. We have no destination. There is not even any real up or down. The earth exists at a fixed point relative to nothing. There is no up and down in the universe. The earth is not heading anywhere. There will be no arrival. It just goes round and round. So, why not try to be okay with going round and round? You might notice things you’d otherwise miss.