Yes, but in which context?
Back in the day I wrote about entropy and the meaning of life. The next question to follow is: why life at all?
Short answer:
Life is here to explore and map physical reality, which is the ultimate meaning and reason for its existence. It is reality-mapping process constrained by physics.
Long answer:
Life is here to explore and map means building and fine-tuning systems to get the best possible description of reality. How do we know that a hot frying pan will hurt and burn our fingers? Because mama told us, or because we already reached out to touch it before she could teach us?
Our minds (or AI LLMs) can go crazy and imagine anything. The physical world is then the limit, or the proof of concept, of whether something is possible or not. Every animal or plant grows within its physical space until a boundary of reality is reached; then it has to adapt, adjust, and try something else until a new boundary is reached. And so it goes on and on.
I don't believe that we are random nonsense evolved over time. I believe that there is a creator who had a meaning and purpose for this creation we call life. And so our meaning of existence is to explore, to go beyond the limits of what we believe is possible in physical reality. This is why we are fascinated by so-called beauty. This is why we long for faster, higher, farther - for more, for competition, for change...
And the outcome? The outcome is in our heads, but most importantly inside our bodies — the genetic information that has been storing maps of reality for billions of years already. Must be a fascinating book to read, if we ever learn the language.
And what about context? Context is the important middleman that allows change. If we stayed in one place and did the same things year after year, there would not be much conflict — but there would not be much growth or exploration either. I currently work in the news business and question its meaning a lot: what is the value of information that is outdated, uninteresting, and replaced the next day? News has value only when it shifts our context and makes us do something different than we otherwise would. News production makes sense when it shows us that things once thought impossible are now real. News is crucial when it takes us out of repetitive thinking and makes us rethink. It has no value when it merely repeats the obvious or serves only to consume our time for the sake of more news. News, as new context, has to reach into reality and spark (creative) thinking in us.
Longing for new context drives people from their villages into cities, pushes them to travel, to meet new people or cultures, to change life partners, or simply to change jobs. Will my version of reality stand the test of the next stranger? That can be both threatening and exciting at the same time.
What is your (next) context?
