Why Are We Here?

Science may infer how we got here, but scientists can never discover why. "Why" is a matter for philosophy and faith. Although comforting and essential to an individual, I've never thought it really mattered to society. If you wake up as an amnesiac and find yourself stranded with many others in the middle of the Amazon jungle, does the "why" really matter to the problem of how to get along? You make the best of it. You try to survive. You try to coexist with your fellow survivors who have varying and contradictory ideas about "how" and "why" and "what now?" This last is something humans can know if we take the time and put our minds to the problem.

It seems to me in such a situation you can proceed along one of two roads: you can attempt to coerce others to act as you prefer them to act, or you can attempt to learn by reason and logic how individuals MUST act in order for all to survive and thrive. Not surprisingly, after about a billion years of failed attempts we still find ourselves at the same crossroad.

When you're young you indulge dreams that all of mankind can and will travel together along the right and proper road. You believe that "love" or some other mystical, unifying "human" spirit will take us all there. But the older you get you conclude that dreams of universal human concord are chimeras. So you stake out your position on the road you conclude you MUST take for your sake and your family's sake, the road that will allow you to survive not only the elements of nature but also the wrath of those staked out along the other road, those whose purpose it is to force you to travel with them.

So far, the story of man has been the history of this struggle.