Humans and the Universe Episode 11: Why Do Humans Continue to Create Meaning Anyway?

Humans and the Universe Episode 11: Why Do Humans Continue to Create Meaning Anyway?

Last time, I talked about how a silence called 'heat death,' where nothing happens, awaits at the end of the universe.

If that is true, no matter how hard humans work to build something up now, eventually everything will be leveled and disappear. If so, what is the point of creating meaning in the first place? This time, I would like to face this question head-on.

The feeling that 'it will end anyway' is actually not new

The feeling that 'it will end someday anyway, so there is no meaning' is something many people experience at some point in their lives, even without knowing cosmology.

If I die, much of what I have built will eventually be forgotten. Companies, works of art, and memories will all weather away as time passes. When people become aware of the death of loved ones or their own aging, many encounter this feeling.

The story of heat death is merely an extension of this feeling that 'it will end anyway' from an individual's life to the future of the entire universe. The scale has become unimaginably large, but the structure of the question itself is actually the same one humans have faced for a very long time.

There are things that are born precisely because there is an end

And humans have not lived their lives completely detached from this feeling that 'it will end anyway.' Rather, there are many things that were born precisely because we know there is an end.

A single flower is felt to be beautiful partly because we know it will eventually wither. As the saying 'ichigo ichie' (once-in-a-lifetime encounter) goes, the knowledge that the same moment will never come again is what creates the sense of wanting to cherish that moment. If everything were to last forever, the reason to treat this very moment as something special might fade.

The fact that there is an end does not erase meaning; in some cases, it is the very condition that makes meaning stand out.

'Whether it remains' and 'whether it has meaning' are different stories

There is one more thing I would like to clarify. That is, the idea that 'nothing remains in the end' and the idea that 'it had no meaning' are actually different things.

For example, a fun day spent with someone will never return once that day is over. Even memories will eventually fade. Still, the joy felt while spending that day was certainly there. There are not many people who would think later, 'Because it didn't remain, that joy was meaningless.'

Meaning may not be determined by whether it remains for future generations, but by whether it was truly experienced in that moment. If so, even if the universe eventually meets its heat death, that does not retroactively cancel out the meaning of what humans have built up until now.

Creating meaning might be a 'reply' to the universe

In the first episode of this series, I mentioned that there is probably no meaning prepared on the side of the universe.

Even so, humans create science, create stories, love others, and live while cherishing things. This might mean that we are offering, from the human side, the meaning that the universe did not provide. While the universe remains silent, only humans continue to try to say something.

The act of trying to speak, even while knowing that an end awaits, might be humanity's own reply to the overwhelming silence that is the universe.

Next time, as the final episode of this series, I would like to summarize the meaning of 'being human' while looking back on the path we have traveled so far.

(Continued in Episode 12)