What are we here on Earth for?

This might seem like a stupid question to some in today’s world. Many people probably hold the view that everyone has their own purpose in life and that there’s no inherent purpose for everyone. After all, many of us are postmodernists, even if we’re not aware of it.

But what if there is an inherent purpose for us all? What might that be? I’d like to discuss a few possible answers to this question.

At the most fundamental level, we can look back at our hunter gatherer ancestors and see that their most immediate concern was survival. And sadly this is still the first and foremost concern for many in today’s world. But what about after we have met our survival needs? According to Abraham Maslow, we can then think about our needs and wants, with concern for creativity and meaning at the top.

What are these “higher needs”?

Creativity

We don’t just live on bread alone…or rice or corn. And we don’t just care about utility. We care deeply about how things look, sound, feel. And throughout the ages, we have spent our free time making things more beautiful. We painted images on cave walls, carved patterns into wood, decorated vessels to make them more pleasing to the eye. We are not just concerned with the final products of our creation; we love the act of creation itself, the state of flow that we get into when creating.

Some of us might think that we are not the creative type. But we are all creative to some extent. The way you spread peanut butter on bread is not just an act of utility but also a creative expression. And we all spread our peanut butter differently (unless one has a peanut allergy).

But there are some people who devote their lives to creativity and to refining their creative skills: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Dalí, Picasso…for them, creativity was their life’s pursuit. And it is not just the artist who views creativity with such importance; our culture places immense importance on their artefacts. They are considered the treasures of civilization.

If we imagine an asteroid hurtling toward the earth with the force to destroy all life, we would probably try to select the most treasured artworks to be stored underground or to cart off into space.

The immense value we place on art is probably tied to the miraculous human accomplishment that we see in it. And these accomplishments are something to hold onto and remember. This all goes to show that creativity is of such importance to us as human beings and constitutes a fundamental reason to continue living: to devote ourselves to the creation and appreciation of art and craft.

Discovery

Discovery is another obsession we have as human beings. We have explored every place on planet earth, set foot on the Moon, and sent probes into the far reaches of the solar system. We have discovered the cells that make up life forms and the very elements that constitute the universe. We have an inherent and burning curiosity to find out how things work and why things are the way they are.

Think Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Ferdinand Magellan, Galileo Galilei, Newton, Einstein.

And there’s still so much to learn. We still don’t know how the universe was created or how to cure the common cold. There are millions of “best” diets, so we still don’t fully understand nutrition and the human body.

But this constitutes another purpose to life: to discover the nature of things. And it isn’t just bound to physical reality. There’s also the metaphysical dimension, that is the things that physics or science in general can’t explain.

The mysterious nature of life is a puzzle that we can spend our whole lives on.

The question arises whether discovery and creativity are in opposition to one another. Many of the world’s greatest scientists valued and utilised their imaginations. We can see the role of creativity in scientific discoveries: to discover something, we have to test a hypothesis, but we often have to use our imaginations to come up with the hypothesis in the first place. In other words, we are only looking to test what we have imagined.

Also, perhaps Maslow is wrong. Maybe our need to survive can intermingle with our need for creativity and discovery. But maybe it depends on how hungry we are and how important creativity and/or discovery are to each person. If we think of “the starving artist” like Van Gogh, then perhaps Maslow got it wrong, because there do seem to be people who are focused on higher order needs even when their basic needs are not being met, or at least fully met.

Equality

But there’s another dimension, which I’ve called “equality,” so that it rhymes with the other two points. But what I’m really getting at is the aim of making the world a better place, trying to solve poverty, global warming, sex trafficking, and so on (unfortunately, the list is very, very long!).

While creation is driven by inspiration, and discovery by curiosity, this aspect is driven by deep care and conscience. We feel so upset by other people’s pain and other creatures’ pain that we feel impelled to act on their behalf or alongside them. We feel a sense of responsibility to use our own energy and resources for the common good.

So here are three purposes in life: to create, discover, and/or make the world a better place.

Now the question is, is one of these aims more important than the other? Is it ethical for us to be sending probes into space if people are still dying of hunger? After all, we could divert the money we spend on space exploration to feeding people.

This is a really difficult question. My initial response is to think that until we have made the world a safe and equitable place, we should not spend money on things like space exploration. But then another issue comes to mind. If we think that health and happiness are the most important things in life, then we should divert all the world’s resources to achieving complete equality. However, if we think that creation and/or discovery constitute a deeper purpose to life, then we would be justified in spending money on things like space exploration.

But again, it’s a really hard question to wrestle with. Perhaps to appease people from different points of view, there should be a balanced approach. And from a more pragmatic point of view, perhaps we are not dealing with the bigger issue: most of the world’s wealth is held by a small minority of rich people. If that wealth was shared, perhaps we could do it all!

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