“But the individual body, so familiar to us on our planet, did not have to exist. The only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator.”
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition (Oxford Landmark Science)
There is a question that when asked to all people, across all cultures, across all of time, everyone provides the same answer. Furthermore, observation would tell you that if you could ask all living beings this same question, their response would be the same too. The question is this:
“Do you want to die?”
Now spare yourself the vivid imagery of a scene in a horror film, and instead just for a moment, think about it genuinely. If this were a question in some sort of routine mental health questionnaire we would view it pragmatically; but all of us would have the same answer. But wait you say, that’s not true - what about suicide? Some people seemingly answer “yes” through their tragic actions. I’ll address that in a moment, but for now lets talk about the vast majority of people who would commonly answer “no”.
Can you think of any other question to which every person, and every mammal for that matter, across all of time would have the same answer to? I don’t think there is one, and I think this fact is extremely meaningful. There is almost nothing that we humans agree on besides this question, and this answer. That’s a big damn deal. If this answer is the one thing that is common across all of is, that unifies us, then maybe within it holds the key to understanding ourselves.
Death has, and always will be, the dark undercurrent running through our society. Most people would probably say they don’t think about death on a daily basis, but that wouldn’t be exactly right. The concept of health and safety is a much more regular occurrence in our thoughts, and most people consider these on a daily basis.
and the thing about health is that, well, it’s quite simply just the opposite of death. I would guess that most people
Exceptions
On the topic of suicide, there is really two main types. The first we could call “sacrificial suicide”, this includes suicide bombers or anyone who voluntarily gives their life for a cause.
The second we could call “distress suicide”, this is the more commonly thought of type that takes their own life because they feel they can no longer handle living in the world. Oftentimes we refer to this group as “victims of suicide”. Notice the word choice there: “victims”. If you’re like me, you would say that is the culturally appropriate way to say that; while we may reflexively say “those who”, when we think about it, victims seems most appropriate. They are victims to a set of circumstances that brought them down a path that surely is not what we are meant to do. We may not know why we are here, but we are pretty damn sure we’re not supposed to do that. In other words, these are people who have deviated from the answer to that exact question. We are so convinced of this that we all agree that at some point in that persons life, whether it be as a toddler or child, the person did not in fact want to die. So maybe the revised version has a “at some point in there” but you get the point.
It’s a peculiar thing isn’t it to think about the one opinion we have on something that we all share.
Evolution 101
Okay, so none of us want to die, now what? Well as we alluded to earlier, “us” actually extends beyond humans and into all mammals and frankly almost every living being. It’s the common thread within all of life, with very few exceptions (many of which we will address because it turns out they are not actually exceptions).
For the sake of analysis, we could flip our common thread of “not wanting to die” to its more cheerful inverse: “wanting to live”. As a result, it’s then fair to say that “life wants to live”. Seems pretty obvious and straightforward hey? Great. Now that we have that established, we can ask the next logical question of “how life accomplishes its desire for wanting to live”.
How do we do it?
Consciousness is a Gradient
If you look up the word “consciousness” you’ll see its (at the time of writing this) defined as a noun. That’s consistent with the way most people use the term; we think of ourselves as conscious and a tree as not conscious. However, it doesn’t take much consideration before this classification system quickly falls apart. Consider your favorite mammal (besides humans); ill use a dog for the sake of example. Is a dog conscious? Most people agree that a dog is somewhat conscious; not as much as a human but more than say, an ant. And there it is, the usage of the word somewhat implies that there are different levels of consciousness, and therefore it must be a gradient. This is consistent with the fact that if we agree that evolution is a continuous spectrum, then point me to the exact gene that controls consciousness. As of right now we haven’t found it, but even if we did we could go a level further and ask “within the consciousness gene, point me to the extract pair of nucleotides that controls consciousness”. No biological scientist worth their weight would tell you that this could ever be done. No one trait, especially one as complex as consciousness, is ever the result of one single pair of nucleotides - that we know for certain. Consciousness most certainly arrises from a complex interplay of different genes, which means that it is not simply a binary switch. If it were, then where on the evolutionary spectrum might this “switch” exist? Is it between the dog and the ant? If so, what exact nucleotide turned it on? And more importantly, what set of nucleotides are responsible for the varying levels of consciousness? You can look for them but I am quite certain you won’t find them because consciousness is not only a gradient amongst all living things, but it is an emergent property resulting from complexity, not a “consciousness gene”.
The Emergence of Symbols
Conclusion
We are just self-replicating chemical concoctions - nothing more, nothing less. But don’t despair, a belief that life is meaningless does not have to result in nihilism.