1 a comment
2 two statements 3 notions 4 what you might like to do 2 two statements statement #1 The point of living is to live. To increase, to add to, life. Let me say it again, only differently, and better. statement #A The point of living is to live; to increase, to add to, Life. Two statements. The words used in both are the same, presented in the same order. Statement #A says more, and means more, however, than statement #1. With small changes to punctuation and capitalization, and combining the two sentences into one, the depth of meaning of the statement changes. I suggest that the alterations from #1 to #A increase the strengths of the ideas the words carry; and the breadth of thought the reader is invited to in the process. Allow me to elaborate. The point of living is to live. The first sentence of #1 implies a rather basic and probably obvious pronouncement/ opinion: we are alive because we are alive, and that is our purpose, to be alive. Take what is given you, what is, because what is is what you have got. Continued existence is the point of life. To increase, to add to, life. An outgrowth of living, for our species as a whole and probably also for most of us as individuals, is an urge to continue our species. It is why, I think, that for most of us, for example, sex is pleasurable, and evolutionarily designed to be so; and why, for example, parents (most parents) grow attached to and would "do anything" for their children even if/ when/ because doing costs them dearly. To increase, to add to, life. The second sentence of #1 refers not only to causing there to be more humans on the planet but also suggests that making more, adding more human life, adds to life as a whole. If we are thinking about #1 from only a human species perspective, or even more narrowly from only a single human being's perspective, and I would guess either one is a likely and usual perspective of we human readers, then the increase, to add to, life sounds like our (we humans) taking over the world (the planet, which is, pretty much, for us, our inhabited universe). Which we have, pretty much, done, as a species. We continue to multiply in number; to mine for more resources from ever more difficult and problematic places to get them. We squeeze out more from the resources we have while continually, and simultaneously, discarding those "extra"; to waste resources which are currently inconvenient. And we keep on taking over more and more acreage, more land from the wild. Seemingly, we headed towards being like Coruscant. We are indeed, thereby, in a fashion, increasing and adding to life. To human life, anyway. As for the rest, as for the other species and types of life? Those we like, are fashionable and profitable, we breed extensively; the others, by and large, we consider incidental and decorative. We keep examples of the latter, the decorative, in increasingly smaller protected spots. We allow some/ many of the "incidental" to die off. We are winning at this game. We are, so far anyway, as a species, satisfying both sentences of statement #1. Noble creatures we are, as the idea of nobility is typically assigned to those who rule. The point of living is to live. To increase, to add to, life. If that is what we believe, if that is what you believe, then why not do more of it, do ever more and increasingly of the same? Why not pump up the volume to eleven, and then twelve, and fifteen, and louder still? We can, and are. Why not enjoy our individual lives to the maximum, use our own personal pleasure as the only yardstick of purpose and life? Why not accumulate as much as we can in terms of goods, and homes, and money and power, and pass them along to our children? Not generic children but our own particular offspring, regardless of their contribution to the whole. Why not? Why not have as many kids as we ourselves can; and use and then discard other humans, the lesser humans, in unnecessary and/ or toilsome labor, in wars; and as subject to experiments; why not disregard humans who are non-productive in the ways we want them to be productive, along the way? Humans are a species of winners and winners need to lead the way. That is obvious, right? The winners need to gather and control as many resources as they can if only to show the losers their way. We have satisfied both the living and increasing measures/ requirements of statement #1. What else is there to do in life but more of it? The point of living is to live; to increase, to add to, Life. Here is the second and I think much better option. #A has the same words and word order as #1 but with one change in punctuation and another in capitalization. #A uses the same words, the same materials, as ! we continue to acknowledge and are happy with being human. The point is not for us as a species or as individuals not to live. We still intend, want to keep going with the species. But statement #A also shows, revels in, our connection with so much more. #1, the one most of us or at least society as a whole seems to operate under, presents a human, here-and-now-and-only sort of stand, we are the ones who are soley important, me and my kids; one which says I take care of myself and mine; add by me doing all the things I can and want, using everything, everyone, or anything I can, side effects and future generations, except for my offspring and kind, be damned. The second takes a broader, exquisite, and complex view. One, which I will put out here now, requires more work from us. More active and productive use of our conscious activity. "The point of living is to live; to increase, to add to, Life." Your eye, of course, I am going to guess, saw the capital L in Life. As well it might. #A, with that change in capitalization, with the additional effort of holding down the shift key with my left pinky while concurrently typing the "L" key on the keyboard with my right hand's fourth finger, ties live with a bigger picture. Ties live with Life. #A sees not only from a human standpoint, an individual human's or human-in-its-broadest-sense, humanity, standpoint; not only from a specific, narrow life view; but from a Life perspective. I am a big fan of science fiction and of science fantasy. I write about, on the page titled more, the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man. Here let me give a nod to Star Trek. In the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a movie with the original cast (TOS), (spoilers ahead!), the daughter of the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire makes an especially insightful comment. She says, paraphrasing here loosely and for clarity's sake, that we who are human always see or at least always tend to see life only from our human species' perspective. (24:03–26) I add: as if there is not, even here on our own little planet earth, much more than just the human species in play. I lived in Northern California at the writing of an early draft of this page, in a suburb of Sacramento. We had had increasingly more severe fires in the area, and throughout the state, and on the whole West Coast of the United States, in the previous few years than in years past. That year was especially bad. I lived in a small city, a suburban town, where the fires did not directly strike, thankfully. Nevertheless, we were greatly affected. Our air quality, for weeks and weeks, was terrible. Indoor living was suggested for all; by those able and wise, practiced. The air quality in our area is usually good. We typically do not live with readily countable particulates entering our lungs with our every breath as happens, sadly, in many cities and areas around the country and world. But we did not escape the catastrophe unscathed. I mention the advent of the fires, the smoke, because they are an apt symbol of a greater truth: we humans, and all species, are all connected. What happens in one place, to one people, to one person, has reverberations elsewhere. (I believe separation is an illusion maintained to try to slough off responsibility: we are indeed our brother's keeper.) We are interconnected with other human beings, of all kinds; and also, importantly, wouldn't be alive without them, with the other animals, and with the plants. All part of one organism. All living on one blue and green globe. All part of one Life. We would be smarter to live like it. 1 a comment 2 two statements 3 notions 4 what you might like to do more |
