The (Possible) Greater Purpose of Human Life on Planet Earth
I think I know our socio-philosophical role in the wider global ecosystem… And I think I can prove it.
As far as I’ve discerned, human beings are here on earth, spiritually and in a sense evolutionarily, in order to make meaning. Just like all other species, we have a role to fill within the creative systems of ecology. As the bee makes honey, the human gives meaning to the world and nature around us. The symbol of the raven is nothing without the internal sentience of the human to see it.
That is to say, logically, human beings have very little literal set purpose in the ecology of the planet. We are somehow outside of the food chain, thanks to our perplexing and relatively quickly evolving ingenuity. We don’t quell or support other species with any predictability or balance, by now, because of our massive outward proliferation. We also are bipedal and, as such, highly mobile, with opposable thumbs for tools and all sorts of other strange outputs of generations of dexterity.
Humans have one thing, however, that no other living being has on this planet. (Well, as far as we know or have reason to believe.) We have advanced cognition, more specifically, consciousness. We have self-awareness, to the point of understanding our own morality. Our overall level of sentience, as individuals, as groups, and more importantly, over the course of time, generations, and thus over the course of evolution, has prompted us to create elaborate systems of communication by way of sound, (language) that exist almost solely to spread the meanings that we make, whatever that may be.
I think, however, that we’ve misinterpreted our planetary task. That, as a global species, we’ve thwarted the essence of our larger existential task on this earth. Rather than give meaning to the worlds of detail all around us (in nature, in community, and well-beyond,) we have fervently pursued physical creation, insisting that we must do something at all times to figure out how and why we exist.
Let’s just let ourselves figure out how to exist at all and then, from there, maybe just interpret and experience the existence of all else that was already here on the planet. Namely, the natural world outside of us humans and our human creations.
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