Ryan Lynn
Dr. Adam Johns
The Purpose of Humanity
For thousands of years, ancient philosophers, priests, and ordinary people have all pondered the question “What is the meaning of life?” or similarly “What are people for?”. Personally, I interpret the question “What are people for?” the same as asking “Why are we, as humans, on this planet or what is our purpose in life?”. There is no one answer to this question, and is based solely on that person’s beliefs and life experiences, which would shape how they view the world, the human race, and what they conceive to be the sole purpose of mankind. People drift in and out of time, trying to leave their mark so people in the future will remember them. Otherwise, they will be forgotten, and what was the purpose to their life? Our lives are just a small ripple in an ocean of infinite time, where we are easily forgotten. Maybe people were put on Earth to preserve its life, maybe they are here to continually advance technology to a point where it reaches its potential and replaces mankind as the dominant race on the planet, or maybe there is no purpose to mankind’s existence.
At the beginning of McKibben’s Enough, he starts off by describing a personal experience of running a marathon and training to beat a goal he set for himself (1). Even though this goal is not with the likes of those of experienced athletes, the satisfaction of pushing yourself to the limit and seeing what you are truly made of is something that McKibben was striving for. Pushing and pushing your body to its absolute limit and accomplishing a feat you thought impossible is one of the greatest feelings you can experience. During the feat, the pain, the determination, the dedication, all of this makes you feel human. As an athlete for the University Of Pittsburgh, I know this feeling. I know how it feels to put in the time and effort and achieve the impossible. You can really find out who you are and what you are willing to do to achieve something. As McKibben comments “ [r]unning is an outlet for the spirit, for finding out who you are…[i]ts a volutantary beauty, a grace” (1). McKibben believes that running is a way to find oneself and perhaps purpose in life. So, maybe people are here to find the limits to what they can accomplish. However, if this is true, genetic engineering stands to threaten this mentality. McKibben states that genetic improvements to the body would take the “personal” out of the “personal challenge” of sport (1). He wonders what the point of competing would be “…if it was a test of the alterations some embryologist had made in you…”(1). Therefore, genetic technologies could be threatening the one of the many purposes of people.
On the contrary, Christians believe that it is not a coincidence that God created humans and that our planet can sustain life. They believe that “…God created us to have a relationship with him”(2). This means that God “…wants to know us, to love us, and to rejoice with us”(2). This interpretation of what people are for shows that Christians believe that people are here to worship God and to live life the way he wants us to live. Perhaps spreading the word of God and converting more people to Christianity can also be considered what people are for in the eyes of Christians. Either way, God wants people to live a spiritually fulfilling life and praise his word. Therefore, people are here on Earth to prove themselves worthy of living with God in heaven.
In Bill Joy’s essay Why the future doesn’t need us, he expresses his concern about how technology is evolving at an incredible rate. He believes it must be regulated, or it could otherwise lead to the extinction of the human race (3). But what if that is the purpose of mankind, to create a new dominant race or species that would be better fit to take care of the planet, as we have already shown irresponsibility to Mother Nature by polluting her skies, her oceans, and destroying her earth. This is quite an extreme thought, that people are here to create a new species that can take care of Earth better than we can and thus destroying ourselves in the process, but we are heading in a direction where technology can overrun us in the future. If that is what humans are for, than we should embrace this and go head on to create more technological advances.
These purposes may not be entirely correct, for I think that there is no real answer to the question “what are people for?”. I do not think that there is a purpose for why humans are here. For many of us, the things we accomplish in our life do not make in impact in the world and prove the lives we lived to be insignificant. Different religions have different answers to these questions as well as those who are highly educated in science. But to me, I think it is coincidence that Earth is life-sustaining. People are here to live their lives and maybe find some shred of purpose in their short time in this world that allows them to believe that they made a difference. But as a whole, there is no real purpose for human life, and even though we can’t yet explain how or why we are here, I say we enjoy our lives while they last.
Works Cited
1. McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. New York:
Times Books.
2. http://www.existence-of-god.com/meaning-of-life.html. 2004. 21 Feb. 2009
3. Joy, Bill. “Why the future doesn’t need us”. 21 Feb. 2009
http://www.wired .com/wired/archive/8.04/joy pr.html.
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4 comments:
I like how you used multiple opinions of what the meaning of life may be. I also like how you decided to include your own personal opinion. However, you have a lot of ideas and opinions of what the meaning of life really is and they're not really tied together well. It seems a little unorganized. If you could find a way to make the different views relate to each other somehow, I think it would flow better. Also, the prompt sounds like you should formulate just one answer to the question of "what is the meaning of life?”. You included several, which makes it difficult for your paper to have a good argument. You also contradicted yourself a few times. The last sentence in your introductory paragraph gives several possibilities of the meaning of life. The body of your paragraph makes it sounds like everyone does have a purpose and that your purpose is being an athlete. Then you conclude your essay by saying that there is no purpose. I think you should decide whether we have a purpose or not and then just stick with that opinion throughout the entire paper.
Ryan Lynn
Dr. Adam Johns
The Purpose of Humanity
For thousands of years, ancient philosophers, priests, and ordinary people have all pondered the question “What is the meaning of life?” or similarly “What are people for?”. There is no one answer to this question, and is based solely on that person’s beliefs and life experiences, which would shape how they view the world, the human race, and what they conceive to be the sole purpose of mankind. People drift in and out of time, trying to leave their mark so people in the future will remember them. Otherwise, they will be forgotten, and what was the purpose to their life? Our lives are just a small ripple in an ocean of infinite time, where we are easily forgotten. I believe that people have no specific purpose, and life is what you make of it. But there are a few opposing views to my own opinion.
At the beginning of McKibben’s Enough, he starts off by describing a personal experience of running a marathon and training to beat a goal he set for himself (1). Even though this goal is not with the likes of those of experienced athletes, the satisfaction of pushing yourself to the limit and seeing what you are truly made of is something that McKibben was striving for. Pushing and pushing your body to its absolute limit and accomplishing a feat you thought impossible is one of the greatest feelings you can experience. During the feat, the pain, the determination, the dedication, all of this makes you feel human. As an athlete for the University Of Pittsburgh, I know this feeling. I know how it feels to put in the time and effort and achieve the impossible. You can really find out who you are and what you are willing to do to achieve something. As McKibben comments “ [r]unning is an outlet for the spirit, for finding out who you are…[i]ts a volutantary beauty, a grace” (1). McKibben believes that running is a way to find oneself and perhaps purpose in life. It seems that running to McKibben is more of a spiritual activity, or getting in touch with oneself, or empowering one’s spiritual side than the purpose of human existence. However, even if McKibben is right, genetic engineering stands to threaten this mentality. McKibben states that genetic improvements to the body would take the “personal” out of the “personal challenge” of sport (1). He wonders what the point of competing would be “…if it was a test of the alterations some embryologist had made in you…”(1). Running or any other sport is just for competition, and a way to test your body’s limits, but it is not why people are here.
On a more religious note, Christians believe that it is not a coincidence that God created humans and that our planet can sustain life. They believe that “…God created us to have a relationship with him”(2). This means that God “…wants to know us, to love us, and to rejoice with us”(2). This interpretation of what people are for shows that Christians believe that people are here to worship God and to live life the way he wants them to live. Perhaps spreading the word of God and converting more people to Christianity can also be considered what people are for in the eyes of Christians. Either way, God wants people to live a spiritually fulfilling life and praise his word. Therefore, people are here on Earth to prove themselves worthy of living with God in heaven. However, these thoughts seem more like a reason to believe in God, and not the purpose of humans. Why create Earth when humans can gain a relationship with God in heaven, where we can rejoice and love him? I am not saying that heaven doesn’t exist, just that our sole purpose is not to try to gain entry into heaven. This is more of a religious goal than purpose.
From a technological stand point, in Bill Joy’s essay Why the future doesn’t need us, Joy expresses his concern about how technology is evolving at an incredible rate. He believes it must be regulated, or it could otherwise lead to the extinction of the human race (3).. This is quite an extreme thought that people could create a new species that ends up with the total destruction of mankind. But we are heading in a direction where technology can overrun us in the future. This is definitely not the purpose of humans, to create something that results in the replacement and removal of our entire race. In a way, it seems contradictory that the purpose of our creation is to create something that kills us. Therefore, this cannot be the purpose of mankind.
If these three viewpoints are all wrong, then what is the purpose of mankind? The answer to this question is there is no purpose to human existence. For many of us, the things we accomplish in our life do not make in impact on the world and prove the lives we lived to be insignificant. Different religions have different answers to this question as well as those who are highly educated in science. But to me, I think it is coincidence that Earth is life-sustaining. People are here to live their lives and maybe find some shred of purpose in their short time in this world that allows them to believe that they made a difference. But as a whole, there is no real purpose for human life, and even though we can’t yet explain how or why we are here, I say we enjoy our lives while they last.
Works Cited
-could not publish, would not allow post with html links. see first draft for works cited
Julie - This is an example of how a fairly brief response can also be effective. Good response.
Ryan - There's not much to nitpick about here (other, perhaps, than you seem to confuse "the meaning of life" and "what are people for"); your individual sentences and paragraphs are effective & well considered.
Let me rephrase one thing that I think Julie was getting at, though. You say a lot of smart things while questioning/rejecting the views of others on this subject, and I thought each section was pretty solid in its own right. But taken together, this paper reads like a series of negatives, then at the end you make what I basically see as a leap from those three criticisms into your assertion that life has no particular purpose. That's not crazy, but it's certainly not completely satisfying, either - to focus on what it isn't, rather than what it is.
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