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Hitchhikerianism
I was having a conversation this morning about the meaning of life. I suggested that one of the biggest problems is that it's such a vaguely specified concept, and another is that talking about the ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ of life in the first place suggests a presumption of some sort of intent in the mind of ‘whoever’ put life there in the first place, and hence a presumption of some (fairly nonspecific) form of theism. Which is fine if you're a theist anyway, but makes the question a difficult one to even start answering if you're not.
So I said that if the question were rephrased into one which is neither presumptively theist nor hopelessly and unanswerably vague, I'd be happy to try to answer it; and then I mused that actually it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that any such reworded question was embarrassingly trivial to answer, and that the really difficult aspect of the original question lay in determining what non-
This seemed like a basically defensible position to me when I said it, and nicely articulated the essential frustration I have often felt when discussing the question. ‘If you tell me what you mean by that, I'll try to answer you!’
However, it wasn't until an hour later that I thought about what I'd said. Giving an answer to the Great Question is relatively easy compared to working out what the Question was in the first place? Suddenly I realised I'd heard someone say that before, and it was Deep Thought.
So my philosophical worldview has apparently been subconsciously shaped by Douglas Adams. I suppose there are far worse people, but I'm still a little unnerved to discover that.
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Until a few days later, of course, when he had to explain to an irate Dean that he'd been completely serious.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/may/14/books.booksnews
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I wasn't really intending to express surprise that Adams was philosophically astute. I've lost count of the number of times I've quoted from Hitch-Hiker because it contains an eloquent passage making exactly the point I wanted in some discussion (and, as an added bonus, is funny in the process). I was more surprised that in this particular case his influence on my thinking appears to have been subtle and subconscious, whereas usually I know it's happening.
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No, I wasn't suggesting that you were surprised that Adams was a philosopher at heart - but I've certainly heard his books dismissed as 'funny science fiction stuff' by people who simply missed the point.
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Actually, Buddha got there first!
A common problem in zen is the "unanswerable question" - when a question is asked which, in its asking, contains implicit contradictions or falsehoods.
The traditional answer is "mu", meaning in this case "no-question". Another common answer was to respond with a seemingly nonsensical answer, reflecting the question.
So, the question: "What is the meaning of life?" could be answered with "Mu", or the phrase, "Sunlight in the trees."
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I accept "mu" as an answer in humorously pedantic contexts, or when the implicit falsehood is entirely obvious, or if the rudeness is deserved (due to persistent repetition of the question, for example, or a thoroughly insulting question in the first place), or other such mitigating factors; but when I see it in Zen koans my instinctive thought tends to be that if I'd been in the novice's place at that moment I would have been strongly tempted to grip the master firmly by the throat and shout "Go on then, you with all the answers, what's wrong with my question?".
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I agree that a master who only ever answered "mu" wouldn't be a very helpful master. But, the answer "mu" was given in the context of many other interactions between the master and the novice, and some would contain more of the kind of direct instruction that you describe.
I think it's a bit similar to martial arts work with an experienced instructor. Sometimes, it's helpful to get feedback from an instructor as you train with them on why your technique is failing. But, sometimes, they just need to stand there and be the place-where-your-technique-fails so that you are forced to find improvement within yourself.
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A pedant writes…
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ETA: not to mention that it's also cracking an unrelated joke about computers, and their tendency to occasionally do completely mad-looking things which it can take a lot of thought to realise were exactly what you turned out to have inadvertently asked for.
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Most of the things we must do, or most of the things we choose to do, we do in order to achieve some other end: we buy soup to eat soup, we work to earn money, we exercise to remain healthy, and so on, they are means to ends. I think that people are asking "what are the ends", what are the things we do not in order to do anything, in essence what are the fundamental particles of motivation. It's become a sore question because the way things are structured in the modern world has little to say on the matter, on these "unhypothetical ends", but places great weight in them, as they determine the choices (the hypothetical ends). In fact it raises these motivations a stupendous height by almost everything we do being oriented around hypothetical imperatives (aka choices), and steadfastly refuses to give them foundation (by keeping us 'free' from such things). It's a bit like an absurd religion founded around a god about which it says nothing at all. I don't mean this as a criticism.
To mainstream religious people it's easy because religions usually have some kind of fundemental particle of tuit, the glory of god, or whatever. For the rest of us, the atheists and borderline nutcases, it's more complex. Just like the dividing of matter, and the tracing of pointers through a data structure, there are three plausible bottoms. First, perhaps there is such a unitary nanotuit (either objective or subjecitve). Second, perhaps it's circular, or otherwise self-referential. An A is made of a B and a C; a B of an A and a B; a C of an A and a B. Or the parent of the top of a tree is itself. Third, perhaps it just goes on forever in infinite regress.
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I think, after some thought, that I have to respond to this in a "mu"-like fashion, by rejecting the presumed dichotomy between things done in order to do other things and things done for their own sake.
Consider the well known cycle of working in order to eat in order to live in order to work. It seems plausible to me that all of these things will contribute to any given person's feelings of happiness and worthwhileness (in varying proportions). So they are all things done in order to do the next thing, but also worthwhile in and of themselves.
One could argue that in that case the primary goal is "feel happy and worthwhile" and that engaging in the work/eat/live/work cycle in the first place is something one does because it contributes to that primary goal; but that seems to me to sort of miss the point, in that it raises the obvious question "but what sorts of thing make me feel happy and/or worthwhile, and why?", which suddenly seems more interesting.
Which, I suppose, supports my original belief that finding the right question to ask is the hard bit :-)
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I guess I see where you're coming from if you're saying that the "meaning of life" is more of an essay question than a mutliple choice or short answer one, :). But there are a lot of questions like that. Most famously "The Irish Question". I have no idea what that was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the kind of question which had a one line answer, :).
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