Our desires, Our extinction, Our stories…

Yuval Noah Harari believes that humans are moving towards immortality, divinity in the quest for eternal happiness. And this pursuit will result in a completely new species – from current homo sapiens to homo duos. A being so different in its mind, that the current morals, and philosophies will cease to be relevant. What will the new paradigms be for such an evolved being… Its not possible to fathom… Like how a chimpanzee cannot realize human emotions, feelings or rationale, and vice versa… So can’t we of that evolved being… For the very essence of that being will change…

Human beings, true to the Maslow’s hierarchy have grown from basic survival (food, shelter and everything against the elements and other predators) as their core need to a more evolved organism with complicated pyschological needs… All driven towards self satisfaction – realisation – esteem… Whatever you call it… Humans are the only species who have been able to master over the basic survival so well, that it has allowed their minds the free space to move on, focus and develop this desires…

And I believe that this desire of self aggrandisement is served essentially through role play… Roles that are given by society and accepted by us or fathomed by us in our mind and wished to have them validated and accepted by the society… Take any… That of a good family person – father, mother, son, daughter, wife, husband, or the in law variants… Or that of a accomplished person of society – teacher, financer, lawyer, craftsman, artist, thinker, philosopher…. Or that of ideal in roles like friend, boss, student, citizen, employee… Or just for recognition of our own talented roles of a musician, chess player, singer, well travelled person, wealthy person, physical prowess… Anything… We seek acceptance of our external society of our self perceptions or goals about ourselves or seek to do things that will show accomplishment of the roles we have accepted that the society gave us…

And all our desires, aims, efforts, feelings, emotions, theories and philosophies and morals revolve around these…

And to justify this role plays and more importantly to sustain them at individual and mass level for a prolonged period of time, we create stories… Stories about purpose of our life, about our universe, about happiness, about way of life, about morals and ethics, about society and its rules and regulations… All social sciences are stories… Economics, philosophy, pyschology, etc etc… Our culture that develop, the art we follow also built on and strengthens those stories – music, theatre, epics, novels, movies… Everything…

In everyday terms, the religion we follow, the money we chase, the dreams of travelling the world as a purpose of our life, the theories of good way to bring up our children, the ideals of a human life and relationships, capitalism and growth as the future promise for mankind, the bliss that love will bring, the joys and secret of a married life… All are stories and theories… That help consolidate that belief which self sustains and allows the fulfillment of the defined roles over generations…

But then as with all stories… Some appeal to someone whilst others don’t… And hence there are many beliefs about the same aspect – each suiting their own… And that is the core reason why there is no single true all encompassing theory in social sciences… For at the very core they are stories… Myths and beliefs created for role play…

Another excruciating aspect because of this is that they are not reflective of true reality… Hence there is no absoluteness about them… They change and can be changed… I was recently reading a lot about the great Indian epic Mahabharat, and was left confused – for whilst it preached living life with dharma, it did not mention the heirarchy of various dharma and what to do when dharma of various roles clash… And I realised why – for if it did, it would become a smriti – a cultural book that can only be applicable for a situational point in time – like manusmriti… But it tried to be more encompassing and just leave ideals about various roles – so that it can then be interpreted as required in future and still stay relevant…

And Yuval Noah Harari believes that even that will become redundant once the human mind evolves at its core… The way it did from a chimpanzee to a human being… The very desire of eternal happiness (which he really believes are nothing but chemical reactions in brain that can be simulated with the right impulse in the right area of the brain in the right amount – something that science can control and generate in near future what we crudely enable by our current role plays)… That of immortality (nothing but full mastery on our survival) and divinity (nothing but ensuring our will over everything else to enable our survival and direct our future role play without hindrance)… All of them themselves are bringing humans as we know today to extinction and evolution of a new species altogether…

The changes we made in a blink of world’s time… Will change even faster again in a fraction of that time…

However here is where I differ… What Yuval Noah Harari doesn’t believe in is a human soul or constant conciousness… and I believe that all actions are born from our desires which are carried by a constant conciousness… Our insecurities, vulnerability and needs of our self… And if ever we were to overcome that and become what he believes we will evolve into, have immortality, divinity and eternal happiness… Than we will have no desires… And will not want to exist…

For our existence is spurred on by a desire to achieve… A role we want to play… And if we don’t have that… We might as well not exist…

And that is where I start having thoughts on the real nature of the human mind… Jainism and Buddhism believes at core we can observe and be a mere spectator if we really want and absolve from our roles and become detached… Vedic Hinduism and Gita on the other hand preaches the impossibility of escaping the basic drive after being born and the best way is to live with virtue and be as far as possible from attaching oneself to results…

Both in a sense preach detachment – one by escaping actions and other by escaping results…

And I keep questioning – that if all this is true.. than the reality is that we actually have no purpose… And these elaborate stories we create are just to satisfy the emptiness of an evolved mind else we would be bored to death anyways… The fact is that we all are just existential beings and so is our universe… And that once we are dead, nothing remains… And Nihilism is really the true meaning of life…