The only belief anyone needs to embrace
This is something I have thought about many times before, but it's worth writing down and recording so that others may take onboard this, the ultimate belief.
With what we know in our own life-given intelligence, everything changes. People, empires, and species all come and go. We even suspect that the universe might ultimately die an entropy death. Is that then cause to abandon our lives to fate, nihilism, hedonism, or depression?
Everything in its present form will end eventually. BUT, what is life if not persistent, tenacious? We should celebrate the monumental struggles life as we now know it has already overcome: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, meteors, ice ages. Long-term thinking suggests that we should embrace this resilience to face our collective mortality head-on.
I suspect that the purpose of life might be to either extend the life of the universe, or escape the bounds of the universe altogether and for the essence of living things to escape entropy death and therefore for life itself to persist forever or as long as it possibly can, or to discover some altogether higher purpose to existence further down the line, something we just aren't smart enough to fathom yet.
Therefore, what should our goals be? When faced with the death of the universe, a cold hard entropy death of everything, it may seem as if there is no hope. Except humans bore hope out of existence merely by living. The burden of consciousness is exceedingly heavy. So heavy in fact that many people choose to opt-out of life. But we develop religions and meanings in order to inspire us to work together and to become better than we can be individually.
So here's my proposal: a religion based on the persistence of life to outlive the universe! An inspiration to all life, not even just human-kind, all life that may exist in the future too.
Life will take universe for a ride!
I give you then these rules for life, the commandments bestowed by life itself:
- Respect all life - Although you may need to come to harm or end a life, you must acknowledge that it resides with you on this mortal plane, and has faced (and up to this point overcome) challenges much the same as you have.
- Live for life's future - Live in the present, doing all you can now to fortify the prosperity of all life in the future. This means prioritising sustainable and growing ecosystems over the needs of individuals: A utilitarian view of life as a whole, over individuals.
- Be a caretaker of life - Other forms of life can provide you with marvellous treasures: smell of flowers, taste of meat, sound of birds, feel of velum, so nurture it. Cultivate as much life to live as densely together as possible, so that it can interact together in new ways and evolve new wonders symbiotically.
- Technology can aid life, but must not replace it.