Experience and Meaning

We live in a culture that values experience. The whole of social media is filled with pictures and stories about how everyone is having great experiences: "Look at the food I am eating!", "Look at where I am!", "Look at how happy my family is!", "Here, I am having a wonderful time with friends!", "Look at how cute my baby is!", "Checkout my new expensive outfit!"

For people of our milieu, to live is to enjoy many experiences--especially travelling to exotic places and eating unique food. On our deathbed, we would reflect on the rich experiences we've had and say to ourselves: it has been a good life.

But is that what life amounts to? A collection of experiences? Is 'enjoying life' simply eating and travelling with family and friends? What are experiences anyway? Sensory input? How does one judge the quality of sensory input? Is the value of one's life simply the quality of his sensory input?

There was a time, (and it is still true for some communities today), that life here on earth is to serve a higher ideal--to worship a higher authority, God, so that we may enjoy a blissful afterlife. Happiness is not here in this life but elsewhere--when we die. Or one could be a peasant whose duty is to work the land for food and protection from one's lord or king. Happiness is enjoying a bountiful harvest, having enough for your family and children to eat and wear. Is this life, a lesser life?

By today's standards, it is. Of course, being able to enjoy different experiences all over the world is a better life, you would say. I get to live life to the fullest! How foolish to even question that!

But if pleasant experiences are all we need, are we willing to hook ourselves up to a virtual reality machine where all these experiences are pumped into our senses like a perpetual dream? We've seen this scenario before in many science fiction movies. It is closer and closer to becoming a reality now. Is such a life then, a good life?

No, you would say. Virtual reality and the real thing are different. But what is real? All you ever experience are just signals from your neuron. How do you know where these signals come from? As the philosophers like to point out, you could be a brain in a vat. You could already be living in a simulation, like Keanu Reeves's character in the Matrix. How do you know what is real and not?

Well, since we can't be sure. We might as well enjoy the ride. Experience, share, experience, share, experience, share and die. I presume such a life would be considered a happy life. Or is it?

What other options do we have? Is that why we feel an emptiness inside, which can only be filled by some meaning? But what is meaning anyway? Is 'meaning' a value that we aspire to have in our lives? Is bringing up a family, or starting a business, enjoying the company of friends, or being a devout Hindu something 'meaningful'?

Is meaning just an sensory experience? Doesn't look like it. Meaning appeals to the mind rather than the senses. Meaning seem to give some kind of intellectual weight to whatever we do. To do something 'meaningful' is to serve a higher purpose.

Is that why one becomes spiritual or religious? Or decides to 'serve the people' by becoming a community leader or doing charity work? Is 'meaning' simply the promptings of the ego? Isn't the ego like a higher 'sense' that needs gratification, like how our sensory bodies crave for experiences?

Experiences satisfy the senses. Meaning satiates the ego. If we spend our entire lives pursuing these things, does it make it a good life? Can I say that my life is better than yours because I do more 'meaningful' things?

The senses are forever searching for experiences. The brain then rationalizes and organizes them into meaning. Is that what life is about? Well, I am just a provocateur. You have read these lines; you experienced the imagery of my words. Now you go and fill them with meaning. I am done with my weekly blog post and I am moving on to another experience!