If you read my previous post on other place I asked about dating and most responses sounded like it was nice. Yes, I’m aware that relationships are not only good times (I’ve seen my mother being tired of her partner and scared of my father) but when you have literally NOTHING in your life you can’t help to idolising the things you never had…
I don’t think that’s weird, but it’s definitely sad
I would say that survival is the main purpose. For which reproducing is one of the available ‘tools’ like is eating, fighting, and running away.
Reproducing doesn’t require having to join the other. I mean, gametes exchange can be done without mating (ask plants) and you also have asexual reproducing. Mating is the way human beings are doing it, like many living species but it still is just one way.
At the individual level, reproducing is not a necessity (a far less urgent one than is eating and surviving, ie get a shelter, get away from trouble,…). It’s only a necessity at the species level. At least, as far as I understand it.
Many people do not have sex or have sex and do not reproduce. They are fine and not unhappy and their choice is fine at the species level — it’s not like human species is on the verge of extinction because of the lack of humans: we’ve never been that many on teh surface of the planet (most probably even a little bit too many ;)
Edit: even among other species, reproducing is not the aim of all individuals. Just look at bees: the queen is the only one that will lay eggs (other bees are either workers/fighters/nurses, even though they can switch role during their lifetime they won’t ever have a baby bee) and the males… well, the one that gets to mate the queen die just after that.
This was very interesting but I wonder whether all species or even just one actually have a (shared) purpose? As humans couldn’t we all just try to find our own?
For me it would be to be a net positive to society in certain ways (that I’m not sure how to put into words and the bits I know how to could get long) before departing.
In a way we are just a very complex system that can reproduce and we are just configured to do so. Life is very good at persevering but does that make it our purpose?
Not sure to understand what you mean here? Would you care to develop?
We are.
If I were to define them, I would separate life (as the yet-to-be-understood ‘force’ that make some things being alive), species (all the various kind of living things, arbitrary grouped and separated in categories by science), and the individuals (be it that plant on my desk, you, or I). I don’t think they all need to have a purpose, nor that this purpose is the same.
To me, life has no purpose beside maybe being what it is. Like fire has no purpose, it simply burns and converts some types of maters into light and energy (heat). At the very least, I cannot imagine life as a ‘conscious’ being wanting something. It just is a state of thing/fact (being alive) that science still can’t explain or reproduce.
Species on the other hand they all share a same purpose, which is to thrive as a whole (grow in numbers, but not too much in order not to endanger the very space they need to live in). At least that’s how I see it.
And then there are individuals. They may or may not have whatever purpose they fancy within a somewhat restrictive 'species limitation’.
I mean, as a butterfly I would not be able to live more than a few days no would I be able to mate with a whale, no matter how badly I would want it. And we, as humans, we may have managed to push our species limits way beyond what they were (we can fly, dive underwater, even go into space, we can also live much longer and if we still can’t mate with any other non-human species we do have learned to manipulate their genome, who knows where that could lead us?) but all of that is still very fragile and very limited (flying is a thing as long as we have access to enough energy and knowledge, we live longer but we all still have to die no matter what we try). So, within those boundaries set by what our species is, I would say we’re more or less free as individuals to be what we want to be. We’re less so in certain countries than others, and in certain times.
On the other hand, I have no idea what the idea of the individual could evoke in a bee’s mind? Or ‘personal desire’?
Imho, that is a very nice objective to pursue. No matter how you would manage to achieve that goal.
When I wrote “I wonder whether all species or even just one actually have a (shared) purpose? As humans couldn’t we all just try to find our own?” I was trying to say that I don’t see a species or all species as obviously having a purpose. Basically stating that what you said in the following quote is not a given to me.
And that I see species very similarly to the way you see life here:
If it comes up again it might be best to use the same definition for ‘life’ I personally like the one from Wikipedia: Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not.
A species is only one possible configuration of life that produces similar copies of itself. What would give a species its purpose of thriving as a whole? If you ask me it just does, just like simpler systems also try to find a balance.
I’ve just realized that I made an error assuming that an individual having a purpose and their species having a purpose would be mutually exclusive. Though I do find the possibility of a species wide purpose for one to fulfill slightly constraining though I suppose it can be pretty permissive.
I think we pretty much agree here.
Whether or not we have free will is something have not been able to decide for myself but it seems unlikely that it would require us to be able to control the reactions in our brains. Unless you really want to I would rather not open that whole new can of worms. Anyway I think there’s nothing stopping whatever we are from being what we seem to want.
The personal desire seems impossible to answer. I’m also not sure how a bee could find its own individual purpose and I find likely that it is incapable of comprehending it. But could a beekeeper or even the bee’s environment assign it an individual purpose (maybe less applicable to a bee than other species but I hope I’m making myself clear).
Thank you very much, it’s nice to hear that. :)
I’m very much enjoying this back and forth so far.
Edit: Fixed formatting lol
This is an interesting take that I honestly hadn’t really considered before. As someone without the human instinct to reproduce that 99% of all humans seem to experience, it has always felt a bit like I am an alien from a different planet. Or like I am born without one of the lesser senses or something. But thanks for this. It was an interesting read.
You’re not. Or you’re not alone.
My spouse and I (50+ year-old) have been together for 25+ years and have no children — be it by making them the good old way, or by using some medical help, or by adopting them (to remind the OP there is more than one way to ‘reproduce’ as human beings).
We never had any drive/urge to have and raise children, so for us it was a question we tried to answer in a calm and non-emotional way: will we or will we not have children? Also, we were still a young couple when we realized the absolute shit world they would have to live in as adults, which did indeed help us a bit in deciding to not have children.
25 years later, I don’t think we ever regretted it. But, who knows, maybe people like us do indeed lack of something important? I doubt it, though.
You’re more than welcome.