The Storytelling Animal
In my early twenties I began to be plagued with questions like:
Why are we here?
What is my life’s purpose?
Is there a god?
Is there an intelligence at work in the universe and can I connect with it?
Why would I even ask such questions in the first place? What is it about our human mind that propels us to ask THESE kinds of questions? What is it about humans, beyond the impetus for survival, that cause us to do and think certain things?
Infantilization and Attachment
If we were to be born and just grow, like a tree, breathe the air and BE we would be content. But we don’t. For some reason we choose to ask questions to which there are no answers. Then we make up stories about things that can never be proven to answer our own questions. This creates a feedback loop of nonsense.
Let’s go back to ourselves as infants and children. We live in a world of imagination and dependency on our adult caregivers. We play make-believe and live in our play world where we are the authors of our lives and whatever we make up is true. We have imaginary friends. We create elaborate fantasies. There is a monster in the closet or under the bed and we need someone to rescue us.
Our adult caregivers protect us, hopefully. Hopefully, our dependency needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_need) are met. If our caregivers are mean to us or abuse us or punish us harshly this stays with us. We continue to have dependency needs as adults in the form of emotional support and the same many of the survival needs we had as children that we now provide for ourselves. But sometimes these lines between childhood needs that were not adequately met and our adult needs can get blurred. This leads us to begin a search for something out there to fill a void inside we are not even aware of.
In essence we are still partially that little child searching for that adult to care for us and love us.
_The Storytelling Animal _
In an attempt to make sense of the information coming into the human brain through our organs and senses the mind organizes this in the form of a narrative or stories. If this did not happen we would feel like we were under assault with meaningless data. Our stories organize themselves with a beginning, middle and end with meaning, plot and characters along the way.
Kung Sang African Pygmy Storyteller 1947
Looking up at the adults responsible for our survival turned into looking up at the sky and making up a story about a heavenly parent who created us and put us here to make sense of why we seem to have been placed or abandoned here on this planet. However which way you want to look at it, most of us at some point feel abandoned.
Humans looked to these projections full of awe, gratitude, worship and of course fear. That which gave us life could also take it away.
The Magical Mind
Our magic making, creative minds are never ceasing to create fantastical, beautiful, whimsical and terrible stories of how we possibly came to be on this planet and who is responsible.
I think it’s beautiful. I also think if any of these beliefs help anyone live a better life or feel more fulfilled or complete and they are a better person because of it and make the world a better place then so be it.
Perhaps it would behoove us to temper these beliefs with rationality and put our beliefs to a litmus test:
~ Do these beliefs support my everyday mundane reality?
~ Do these beliefs make sense?
~ Can I distinguish between metaphor, myth and have a grounded psychologically, kind and humane posturing toward my fellow human beings?
These are the type of questions that guide my life now. And because I can answer YES to them ~ I am happy as hell.
I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Note: Markdown is being flaky. I'm hoping the editing starts working properly
It's so interesting thinking of how we model our view of the universe based on our experiences as we were growing into our consciousness. Thanks for provoking some thought!
Thank you dear :)
I write a lot on the meaning of life so I hope you don't mind if I share a thought or two!
I think for people who are content, the question of the meaning of life doesn't come up. It comes up when we feel our values antagonized by life, or when an investment has gone wrong, etc. So let's say you work and work, building a house say, with your own hands, building it up brick by brick, you've been working on it a year, and then some hurricane tears it down just like that within hours. So you ask, what is the meaning/point of working? There's disappointment there, effort wasted, investment gone awry.
More dramatically, a person close to you dies, at a young age. Then the question becomes more general, "what is the meaning of life?"
So, behind every "what is the meaning of..." there is a value thwarted. The value of work, the value of love, the value of health, etc. Something bad happens, that negates our effort/investment, and so we ask "what is the meaning of...". We ask more generally "what is the meaning of life" when a bunch of our values/dreams have been antagonized, and so we feel a general ennui/anomie/despair whose source we're unaware of. The generality of the question makes it even harder to answer in that case, cos it directs our gaze away from the real source (which is that we have values/hopes/dreams/expectations that have been actively antagonized or else not endorsed by life) and toward something nebulous and ungraspable.
That's very valuable feedback, thank you
I often wonder what the world would be like if everyone were atheists. No religion holding back the scientific advances of yesteryear and today. With no God to fight over, killing countless men and women for no reason, knowing that there are no second chances in life. If nothing was promised after death, would everyone hold life more valuable? Would you have taken the same path knowing the end is really the end?
I know...
I wish I was able to think so positively and spiritually, but unfortunately I've lost a lot of hope and become cynical over the years. I do however embrace my natural instinctive wonder, in things like nature, music, human affection and science. There doesn't need to be any gods for the world to be magical.
If people were to internalize their faith more, and not be so concerned with everybody agreeing with them, there would be a lot less conflict. The world IS a magical place; all you have to do is look, listen, taste, touch, and think about it. I don't know why so many adults choose to discard their imagination; it is a beautiful tool (and as noted, always to be tempered with reason). I don't have any issues with people asking questions with no answers, and answering them for themselves. That is one of the beautiful things about being human. However, I do have an issue with externalized and forceful dogma--it just builds walls and does nothing to help enlighten us as people.
I agree. I am a "Happy As Hell" atheist and I embrace wonder and creativity xx
First of all, amazing style of writing. A joy to read your piece of art :) I think the reason why we are constantly searching and most of us don't find a satisfying answer is the less magical aspect of our mind, not the creative part of it, but the purely rational part of it. It can only function in dualities, in valid pros, valid cons, and therefore is incapable of grasping knowledge. It only creates doubt. And the reason why there are these so called myths that explain everything, that tell about a higher meaning, a higher power, is because deep down inside we know it to be true. It's just that we have forgotten how to tap into that inner wisdom. To some extent we only need to remember, remember how it was when we were children. Then we all had the connection to the part of ourselves that knew. We only need to remember
Thank you for the compliment I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
I have enjoyed reading your post a lot! I look forward to read more of your religion, spirituality, philosophy posts. :)
Thank you very much :)
I do believe in a higher power or 'God' but not in the traditional sense. In my view, it is more like a force. Also, cells combine to make your body and I see god in a similar way. All alternate universes or multiverse are the cells of this entity. Everything in the universe must co-exist, is suggested to have been designed with computer codes by theoretical physicists... achieving god consciousness is a realization we are all one of the same. This belief of mine makes me see every other human being as part of my family. Also, scientists do not know what consciousness even is and have a difficult time explaining various aspects related to this... Nonetheless, science is part of the answer and I think religion/introspection/philosophy and spirituality are complementary to science. They provide a world view onto which we can design experiments and answer important questions like the ones you raise... Also, my further reasoning for a belief in a god if you will is the nature of quantum physics; it is as if the universe is self-aware, we have progressed and now we have to work harder to find out natures "secrets". Is that to hide the truth that we are all a part of god and all consciousness is one? It is very interesting to think about this and this is what I think on the concept of god. I respect everyone's opinions and ideas nonetheless...
Thank you for reading my essay and for your engagement :)