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Saturday, October 24, 2015

Meaning and Purpose of Individual Freedom, Social Responsibility, and Malevolence

We discover life's meaning and purpose in the pleasures of individual free choice and social responsibility, yet we also discover our own potential malevolence as well as that of others. We discover people and objects coupled with an anxiety about the dark void of nothing that is empty space without people or objects. All people and all life get pleasure in discovery and yet also have anxiety about the unknown. All life must discover food, drink, shelter, and social responsibility among other needs simply to survive and light the dark void and fill an otherwise empty space with people and objects. The pleasure of discovery of individual freedom and social responsibility drives our meaning and purpose and yet we must temper that pleasure with an anxiety of the unknown dark void of empty space of malevolence. Among the discoveries that are necessary for survival, there is also malevolence lurking.

Therefore we must also have a certain anxiety about the unknown in order to avoid danger and injury. No matter how pleasant a discovery might be, we also need a certain anxiety about our discoveries in order to avoid walking off of cliffs and in front of traffic. We survive and discover meaning and purpose with both the pleasure and anxiety of discovery.

There are many inexplicable questions that have no unique answers. Some of these questions are:

Why is the universe the way that it is? 
Why are we here?
Why are we right here right now?
Why is it us who is right here right now and not someone else?
What is the universe origin?
What is the universe destiny?
What is the meaning and purpose of life?
Where do morals and ethics come from?

We ask these questions as part of the pleasure of discovery but these questions all represent the unknowable parts of the universe about which we can feel but can never really know. Although the pleasure of discovering individual freedom and social responsibility provides an innate meaning and purpose, we can never know why that is. All we can really know is that this is simply the way the universe is.

It helps to have a theory of the mind in order to understand how the pleasure and anxiety of emotion are what drive the primitive mind. It is the feeling of our primitive mind by which we make the choices that we make...