My last three articles for Meer became something of a trilogy examining the importance of remaining human and humane in an era currently flooded with dehumanising artifice. The theme expanded over the three essays into a celebration of the specifically human capacity to create patterns from what had historically appeared to our species to be the chaotic nature of existence. Human evolution has chronicled an exceptionally inquisitive mammal’s peculiar instinct to organise observed information and communicate derived meanings across the void of ignorance to serve itself. Along with finding food, seeking shelter, and procreating, that human imperative has given rise to the three great human evolutionary obsessions of art, religion, and science that the renowned zoologist Desmond Morris claimed set us apart from all other species.1

The final essay concluded that a new understanding might be emerging in which humanity no longer sees itself as a species apart but more an integral part of the indivisible whole that is our planetary and wider cosmological existence.2 The rolling imperative of science, religion, and art is nothing more than the planet sensing itself, analysing itself, praying to itself, painting itself. I maintained that the meaning we derive from those activities, or any other, will always remain questionable, constructed as they are from a myriad of diverse, ultimately subjective human perspectives. My argument concluded that in an age of digital distortion, to consciously engage in the process of creating meaning is to unequivocally ensure an organic life well-lived.

So good so far. But what of that questionable notion of meaning? As the scope of modern science stretches its grasp outward into the currently observable universe of two trillion galaxies (quite probably a tiny fraction of what actually exists) and inward into the quantum minutiae of particle physics, scientists are all too familiar with how little humans actually know about anything. We are merely scratching the surface of possibility, most of our pattern-making from the apparent chaos being grossly speculative at the best of times. The more science observes, the more it has had to reckon with the subjective nature of its observations. In short: the perspective from which humanity observes phenomena has a determining influence on what occurs.

We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy, we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.

(Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (In Closing: Ourselves))

What has our pattern-making made of meaning itself? In the galactic scheme of things (our own tiny galaxy is formed of approximately 400 billion stars - each, like our Sun, supporting its own solar system), where human existence is barely a fractional blink of an existential eyelid, surely meaning (human conjecture) is rendered entirely meaningless. Isn’t life just happening, unfolding as it does to its own creative rhythm regardless of any opinion humanity might devise?

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

(Thomas Nagel, What Does it All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (Chapter 10: The Meaning of Life))

To look out into those two trillion galaxies and expect the cosmos to hand over the fundamentals of our inherent purpose is to misinterpret the nature of the universe entirely. It’s not withholding meaning out of indifference or spite; it does not require the machinations of human intent to operate. It possesses no grand narrative and no opinion on our longing for order. Yet, by some fluke of probabilities, that same random, cosmic ‘master plan’ has equipped us with an overdeveloped prefrontal cortex and an unbearable sense of self-importance, such that we spend our brief sojourn on this pale blue speck of water and dirt badgering the silence for a comprehensible storyline.

When no cosmic fairytale is forthcoming, our conjecture turns to philosophy - a linguistic construct of its own. We have the great mythologies, theologies, and religions; pantheons of gods and theories of logic; pagan, animist, and indigenous schools of thought tracing a lineage from the earliest evidence of human activity on Earth. Wherever there’s a human, there has been a storyteller attempting to make sense of their experience.

20th-century thought gave rise to three heavyweight movements of modern thinking that focused almost entirely on the construct of meaning. It could be argued that humanity tasked nihilism, absurdism, and existentialism with dismantling our comfortable illusions of objective purpose, providing context for the unrelenting subjectivity of human thought and activity instead.

Nihilism confronted the void of our ignorance directly. Exponent in chief, Friedrich Nietzsche recognised that once we deconstruct our traditional theological and metaphysical frameworks, our inherited moral and existential foundations tend to crumble.

The hardline nihilist looks out at the unfathomable enormity of the cosmos and draws a stark conclusion: there is no inherent truth or cosmic destiny, and actually no intrinsic value built into the fabric of what we term as ‘reality’. Humanity, like life in general, is a temporary arrangement of matter in an impartial physical system. Everything that happens, i.e. circumstance, is essentially neutral - merely life unfolding in immeasurable magnificent splendour to the oscillations of its own peculiar tune and rhythm. Nihilism strips away the vagaries of human illusion, offering the simple realisation that the universe never promised us a master plan because the master plan never existed. Existence is simply the playground in which matter has come to play.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Part 3, Chapter 56: Old and New Tables, Section 23))

Absurdism, articulated most famously by Albert Camus, centres its case on the paradoxical tension at the heart of human behaviour. Camus observed that the problem is not merely that the universe lacks objective meaning, but that humans are driven to search for it regardless. The ‘absurd’ highlights this juxtaposition: a clash between our intense desire for clarity and purpose, and the lack of it in a quiet, generally unresponsive cosmos. Camus employed the metaphor of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology,3 to describe our predicament. The story condemns the poor fellow to repeat the same meaningless task forever: pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll all the way down again just as it approaches the top, an image with which many of us might empathise.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

(Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

Existentialism offered a subtle yet decisive shift in perspective. Jean-Paul Sartre and his beatnik Parisian contemporaries proposed the fundamental principle that existence precedes essence. Unlike a tool or an artefact crafted with a specific function in mind, a human being exists in a conscious, undefined state first, and then, through choices (thoughts, words, actions), builds an identity on that blank canvas. Because there is no recognised external cosmic guidance dictating those choices, we actually face total responsibility for our lives - leaving humanity, in Sartre’s famous interpretation, "condemned to be free."

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respects free because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

(Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism)

Despite their nuanced differences, these three philosophical schools converge at a singular, inescapable, common understanding: there is no objective meaning anywhere in existence outside of human subjective opinion.

If you climb a mountain to admire a glowing autumn sunset, the photon wavelengths filtered through atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen do not contain an intrinsic element called ‘grandeur’. You cannot mine that majesty; you cannot store it in a jar. The wonder exists entirely within the biological auditorium of your observing mind as a precursor to emotional response. When we pronounce a poem ‘profound’, a love affair ‘tragic’, or a plate of ratatouille ‘life-affirming’, we are not uncovering any kind of hidden predetermined cosmic properties. We are projecting our own cultural and social values, memories, and delicate individual neurological wiring onto the neutral, physical canvas with which we identify.

Take away the human audience and the sunset is merely radiation, the romance a set of rampaging hormones, and the ratatouille simply hot salty water with a range of soggy vegetables.

But far from being a reason to plunge into roll-neck sweatered, existential gloom, this is precisely the moment to summon a little joie de vivre, pop a few champagne corks, and get this life-affirming fête started.

Any lack of an ordained cosmological master script means that each and every preference, every joy we express, and every moral conviction we have ever held is an act of undiluted human creativity. Our subjective opinion isn't a poor second place to the grand prize of objective Truth; it is the only determination of value that exists anywhere in the known universe. Meaning is not something we fortunately stumble over or find, like a tenner in the street; it is something we fabricate, continuously and brilliantly, out of the intangibility of our own awareness.

In recognising our subjective meanings for the exquisite imaginative constructs that they are, we embrace our role as storytellers, furiously spinning the yarns of our internal dreams across the void of ignorance to invent bridging concepts like art, religion, honour, justice, and the perfection of a Tarte Tatin. None of these designs exists as cosmological phenomena waiting to be discovered; they are collectively stitched - emotional and sensorial human tapestries woven entirely from the enduring mystery of consciousness itself.

When we accept that all meaning is nothing more, nor less, than an imaginative construct, the erroneously perceived divide between observer and observed can begin to dissolve and close. Unfortunately, the pervasive paradigm of dualistic thinking still positions ‘me’ (the lonely observer desperately seeking purpose) on one side of duality, in opposition to ‘other’ (everything outside that ‘self’ focus). It’s a pretty beguiling perspective and difficult to argue against in an immediate sense: here I am (the writer), and there you are (the reader) - two separate entities.

But in a non-dual reality, one which the renowned physicist Carlo Rovelli continues to explore in his new book, On the Equality of All Things: Physics and Philosophy, that boundary evaporates. His contribution to contemporary physics suggests that, contrary to appearances, none of us are isolated entities dropping in from elsewhere to experience the seductive duality of the cosmos. We are, more accurately, the universe experiencing itself locally through a human nervous system.

Rovelli states, “The resulting image of reality is haunting. Every fact is only a fact relative to something else, and even the fact that a fact is relative to something else is itself relative. There is no ground floor.” But insists that, “None of this prevents us from describing the world from one perspective. Ours.”

So where does that leave our grand interrogation of the cosmos for meaning? Answer: exactly where we started, but again, with far better reasons to party.

If physics tells us there is no "ground floor" of absolute truth, then searching for some irrefutable master plan becomes fundamentally futile. But far from diminishing the value of our existence, the total absence of objective meaning grants us unadulterated artistic license. Our subjective opinions, our fleeting passions and curiosities, our absurdly specific love for a well-cooked French pastry or watching a sunset in the mountains are not demeaning delusions; they are the universe’s only way of seeing, tasting, feeling, and celebrating itself.

In an age increasingly influenced by automated artifice and inhumane algorithms, to embrace the wildly imaginative, unapologetically subjective construct of our own human experience is a refined act of quiet rebellion against the mounting, ungainly digital distortions. I might suggest there's a strong case for letting the boulder slide back down the hill to be left there a while. Let’s encourage the Sisyphus in us all to take a rest and raise a toast to the magnificent, unscripted, chaotic drama of existence. If the cosmos didn't see fit to write that elusive narrative, the joy and responsibility of authorship has fortuitously been left to us.

We are stories, contained within the twenty complicated centimeters behind our eyes, lines drawn by traces left by the (re)mingling together of things in the world, and oriented toward predicting events in the future, toward the direction of increasing entropy, in a rather particular corner of this immense, chaotic universe.

(Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time (Part 3: The Sources of Time, Chapter 12: The Scent of Madeleine))

Notes

1 The artistic ape: three million years of art by Desmond Morris at Internet Archive.
2 Art, science, and the creative ape at Meer.
3 Greek mythology at Wikipedia.