I went on two road trips in as many days. First up to Mt. Adams then down to the Redwoods. They ended up not so much being about photography, but more about getting through an audio book, Jerod Diamond’s Collapse. It was a profound experience. I’m not exactly sure what to take away from it other than that humans have a propensity to destroy themselves but also to muddle their way through threats to their survival.
It continues to leave me with the question of what’s worth saving about humanity and why? In the ultimate cosmic limit, it’s not clear that anything actually matters. I suppose mattering requires leaving a legacy, some impact that distinguishes the future from the past. Perhaps that’s the answer. Dividing the future from the past with the future having some form of qualitative improvement over the past. The future is bounded in that it has a duration. It’s possible to have some influence over this duration. The pursuit depends on the orthogonal axis and optimizing the area under the curve. The shape of the curve is the result of the actions of a system of interacting constraints. Those actions and their interactions may be influenceable.
I suppose the curve represents instantaneous happiness or misery. The area under the curve is the aggregate of that over time. A different label for this is well-being. Maslow’s hierarchy may be an example of the calibrations along this axis. As you climb Maslow’s hierarchy it transforms from what may be objectively measured to what can only be subjectively measured. Achieving the higher levels requires a subjectively aware entity. Humans are the only currently known examples of this though it’s possible that this may be true of some human community-based entities as well.
Self-actualization requires esteem and self-worth. Esteem requires a community, at least in part, in which it can be developed and evaluated. Communities require stability and security to exist for a sufficiently relevant period of time. Security requires that basic needs are met otherwise there’s nothing to secure or has been secured. It seems like the bulk of human attention today is focused on security. Next perhaps is community, often without concern for esteem or self-actualization. Self-actualization requires some form of detachment from the rest. In this sense it is transcendent. The belief that it is enough without regard for what achieved it.
You could likely do worse than to say that the purpose of sentient life is to maximize the quantity of well-being. The space is three dimensional; time, quantity of sentient entities, and quality of life (Maslow’s hierarchy). Anything that increases this quantity is the definition of good. Anything that decreases this quantity is the definition of bad. Note that goodness and badness are highly context dependent. You can do what appears to be a bad thing in the immediate context that in a larger context has a positive impact on the quantity of well-being. The converse is also true.
There are, of course, many contexts to choose from. The ultimate being the life of the universe, which may be redefined as spanning from the origin of the first sufficiently sentient entity until the departure of the last. These events, in turn, may provide some insight into what the bounding conditions of a context are. Essentially a grouping of sentient entities interacting in the pursuit of improved well-being for that group. This is social behavior. Societies are defined by social behavior over time. A society is a context. This pursuit of group well-being may do so at the expense of well-being for a different group. Competition arises from this.
It may be that self-actualization is making a contribution to the quantity of well-being. The act of doing so is love. The experience of doing so is joy. This makes sense to me.
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