I was asked by my youngest daughter, a senior in high school, a series of questions for her “worldviews” class.
Of course, I thought I would answer in a blog post.
Here are the questions…
- Where do we come from?
- What went wrong with the world?
- Where do you go when you die?
- What’s the point?
I’ll take them in turn.
Question #1: Where do we come from?
The hardest one would have to come first.
On this one I don’t believe anyone has a really good and complete answer.
Sounds like a cop out, but a truthful one, no less.
Religion tries to answer this question, but in ways that just don’t hold up very well to scientific scrutiny.
But then again, science itself falls short.
So, I guess my worldview is that there really isn’t an answer, yet.
Maybe the premise of the question is faulty.
Maybe we don’t “come from” anything.
I mean surely there was a start to it all. But what was the start to the start?
Pondering this question intensely will make your mind feel like the dog who chased his tale to the point of exhaustion.
There may in fact be an answer to this somewhere out there, or in here.
But so far, no one knows.
And I don’t really think making stuff up to explain it away is a very useful exercise.
Question #2: What went wrong with the world?
Okay, now this one’s a little easier for me…
Nothing, that’s what.
Now, something did in fact go wrong with its inhabitants…more specifically, those of the homo sapiens variety.
And what was that?
Well, among other things, we invented this convenience called money, which led to this phenomenon called greed, and to the further insidious and dis-harmonizing state called accepted gross inequality.
We just kind of shrug our shoulders and say to ourselves…well…that’s just the way it is, or is supposed to be.
Not the kind of inequality that wins foot races, mind you.
Here we’re talking about races where life itself is at stake.
Some of us were motivated to figure out how to manipulate and oppress others, usually on the basis of economic power.
And we did a damn good job of it.
Actually a lot of things went right with the world…evolutionarily speaking.
I mean, we no longer live in caves and we don’t hunt and gather anymore…so I guess we can be thankful for progress on many fronts.
But when progress leads to enrichment of some at the expense of others…well, that’s when things begin to go wrong.
You can try to pin an evolutionary label on it, such as “survival of the fittest.”
I just call it evil.
Yes, in my worldview there is a thing called evil and it most often manifests in the form of greed and oppression of this group by that one.
So, where does this evil come from? Well now, that wasn’t one of the questions.
But more often than not, it stems from really whacked out worldviews. You see, the evolutionary benefits we’ve reaped, like exiting the aforementioned caves, have also enabled us to do some pretty serious harm to ourselves, often at the impetus of a worldview.
Question #3: Where do you go when you die?
The idea of a “life” that survives the end of our conscious existence is purely a religious one.
There is no scientific basis whatsoever for believing that one exists.
Now there is a scientific basis for the fact that we are all made up of pretty much the same thing…matter.
And matter is made of molecules. And atoms. And other things that are kinda, well, just weird.
And that stuff is in a constant state of flux. Meaning, so are we…
So, maybe the truth is that we don’t really die…we just change.
I mean if you plant me, when permanent lack of consciousness sets in, a tree may very well grow in that same spot.
We’re all connected. It’s all connected.
And I believe it’s high time we stop worrying about what’s next and began to pay more attention to what is.
Where do we go when we die?
Perhaps, everywhere!
Question #4: What’s the point?
I saved this one for last because, well, it kinda points in the direction of what my blog is all about.
I believe there is in fact a point.
I believe our lives do have meaning.
But it’s not about how big of a slice of the pie we can lop off in an individualistic quest for meaning…
It’s about how much we contribute to making that pie larger and tastier for the whole sum of life.
It’s about how much impact we can have on helping things “go right” with the world.
This one…the one we’re living in and the one those who come after us will perhaps get the privilege of living in…
hopefully.
I was so happy to see my daughter asking these questions and her school, a Christian one, allowing her the liberty of getting diverse opinions on these issues.
Worldviews are vitally important things.
They tend to galvanize action that actually works to shape the world we live in, for the better, or the worse.
They are therefore more than just views…
They are vehicles that can transport humanity to a more fulfilling future realization of our world.
image credit: lanskymob via Compfight cc
