I am now 70 years old. During the last three years we had two health issues in our family . I am glad that both my wife and I recovered totally .Staying at home long hours during Covid pandemic also has changed our lifestyle involuntarily. On the other side my passion for reading turned to a more inquisitorial side on what is life, why we are living , is the life has a meaning, are we living according to that purpose?
I found many books of Lenoir where I found some of the answers of my questions thus I created this summary including my thoughts as well.
We have not decided to born into this world , but we have to learn to live it as like to play a piano, or cooking , or sculpturing .
Since the antiquity philosophers gave various answer on these questions. We too aren't we asking to ourselves on how we could be in peace with others and our self, how we should react against suffering and disasters, how we can recognize our self, how we can solve our contradictions? How we can obtain our internal freedom? How can mute our internal voice? How we can love? How we can attain a long term happiness? How we can achieve success in our social relationships and material acquisitions?
There are so many tangible books and YouTube videos that there is no need that I quote them over here to you. My aim in writing this essay is to point it out few of these that I am mostly finding very important to carry out a good and meaningful life.
I faced all kind of troubles in my life that you cannot even imagine. When I start to examine about on what happened to me I am always thinking on at what stage I made mistakes. Needless to say without "if" s without blaming others. I am pretty sure that if we face again same situation we will react similarly because our past experiences and existing knowledge will not allow us to react differently. You can name it as destiny our coincidence... What is important is to take lessons from our experiences and do not repeat our past faults and wrongdoings.
Many of our surrounding people blame others to whatever evil they experience to find internal serenity. If they are unemployed it is governmental fault , if they could recover from an illness is the fault of the doctor, if they lost at a law court the judge is guilty or the lawyer, in every car accident the faulty is always the other driver. If they football team lost the game the umpire is very bad.
You encounter so many people of such behavioural style in your daily life. As these people do not have any activity to rectify themselves they cannot be happy in their life neither can emit happiness to others.
We do not have to blame ourselves for all the troubles we encounter, neither hold responsable others nor to strive to please everybody. Where can we find equilibrium?
At the entrance of the Delphi temple during the ancient Greek period it was written NOSCE TE IPSUM "know yourself". We need to know ourselves , we need to explore the real truth which is very important not only for ourselves but for all the humanity.
Meantime the truth itself is changing permanently.
Before we go on further let us first find answer, a definition on what is life . We denominate a living creature to any formation who can move with his own willpower , reproduce himself and those who have the ability to control his living activities. All the plants and eukaryotes too are within this scope although their movement ability are very restrictive.
The signals sent by our senses make us to notice that we are living. If we don’t see, smell, feel , hear and taste we can not discern that we are moving hence living.
We live our life in our brain. Moreover in our mind. By remembering all the memories that it is recorded into our mind, makes us to realize the notion of the past and the future , thence the time .
Our memories create awareness that we live. By remembering the past and our accumulated memories , reveal that we have a beginning. And while we are living we learn that our life also has an end. Death is a phenomenon that we cannot accept. We always think about that our life and living is very precious. In reality, our life has no value. The most precious for us the life our belowed persons and living creatures in our surrounding. Losing them give us a big sorrow .
After a death only remains a stack of dry bones.
Has the life a purpose, are we living according to this purpose?
Sometimes by looking to the end of an effort, we may understand the purpose of an endeavour.
Let's image for a person who endeavour to construct a building and when he finishes he starts to live there than we can say that all the efforts spent by him was to build a house for him.
But the end of our life is death. In addition, death does not give us a clue on the purpose of life and living. Might it be all remaining after our death be the purpose of life.
What precious things remain after our death? Children we raised, pieces of art, some inventions, useful foundations.
I like very much this French proverb. ״What is crowning an endeavour is the end".
A child, creation of a very similar creature of our self , biologically is the most important outcome of our life. It is also admirable that our children have also the ability recreate their children.
What we call a living being is a biological program that is working incessantly, an algorithm sorted by a molecular scale. Reproduction process is a very big and complex program. Imagine that coded onto 23 DNA molecules this program is producing by order, in 40 weeks from hair, to our heart, from our eye retina to our liver, our kidney.
Is this program is ameliorating itself -like machine learning process of today- in every reproduction process? It is not be possible to observe and verify this process within our lifetime. But what Darwin and his successors is advocating the evolutions and natural selection in their theory. During the symbiotic reproduction process parental chromosomes are coupling to create the most excellent child possible. The probability to transfer a genetic disorder is diminishing in every reproduction process.
As a benchmark we can take the world most complex machine - a Boeing 737 jumbo airplane- which contains 4 million components while our body contain 17 billion cells. I think this comparison is demonstrating how far we are yet to produce complex forms.
Moreover we do have the ability to run our reproduction program -although unconscious- as many times we want.
What we admire such as Mona Lisa painting can not create another one or The 9th symphony of Beethoven can not compose the 10th.
Is the world move forward to a good and excellency or are we creating our extinct. When you start following the TV and other social medias you just encounter news about disasters. Today in Izmir there was no any car accident or no earthquake has no informative value.
Vaclav Smill have many books on this subject. Even the TV's or social medias do not tell us , the amount of people in hunger or without any kind of shelter is diminishing, literacy is increasing, longevity is rising, working hours diminishing, health are improving.
To my opinion, the increase of the world population is the most realistic indicator. The world population was 1,7 billion at beginning of the XX century. Now in 2022 the population surpassed 8 billion. How on earth the population increased by 5 fold .
The widespread environmental pollution , the access to a potable water and healthy foods, humanistic housing problems stem from this extreme speed of accelerated world population. I would like to draw your attention for not to be duped of myriad conspiracy theories at the social medias but search scientific and academic data’s.
As from the begging of our life , our close neighbourhood impose to subscribe ourselves into a certain ideology and connectedness. Some wants us to be communist , or socialist or nationalist , religious , fan of a certain soccer team, or political party. When we are young we embrace social problems putting aside our troubles and our life.
On the contrary our impact to major social problems is too little. Today's war in Ukraine , or the deadlock in the Middle-East, autocratic regime in some countries, high unemployment , environmental pollution , inadequate and lack of education are challenges that have to be managed at governmental level. Our personal contribution can only be very limited.
WHAT IS EXISTANCE ?
Cündioğlu says that existence and entity are totally different notions. Living is an art. Existence has a beginning and an end.
An entity is identified as infinite. There is no way that we as a human to understand infinity. Maybe the capacity of our memory is not as big to comprehend.
The notion of existence in fact, a beginning evoke many questions over genesis. Many thoughts over genesis , interpretations, descriptions are shaped under traditions , concepts starting from our parents, later on by school friends, relatives , friends and nowadays the social media of the internet. The imposed model of genesis , or presented any idea differ from person to person where who belongs. For instance, the meaning of life according to a religious person is serving to God. But the view point of a scientist may interpret od describe, the purpose of life as reproduction endeavour.
What we say a living creature is in fact an enormous running program, an algorithm of myriad lines. Moreover it runs all along our life time. This unconceivable program is transferred by a by tiniest gametes.
Nowadays the most advanced aircraft Boeing 737 mounted of 4 million parts. On the other side in a living human there are 37 trillion cells. From that point of view, we can realize how we fall behind in science.
Moreover this running program has the ability also to transfer the recreation skill that we own. Admirable excellence of Mona Lisa painting do not have the ability to create another masterpiece. Neither Beethoven's famous 9th symphony cannot create the 10th.
DOES LIFE HAVE MEANING ?
Lenoir says
"The meaning of life is the meaning that we give it".
