Essence of Creation, Purpose and Playing God
The purpose of life is to create, but it's not that simple playing god.
Life is funny. Short and sweet. Long and painful. Depends on the day.
Recycled wisdom, lost parts and found parts, forgotten memories, and devised fantasies – we live our lives the best way we know how.
The time we have in our mortal flesh is short.
How should we use our time on this planet? What is the purpose? That’s the oldest question in the book, and we’re still asking it. I don’t know if anyone has come up with a sufficiently good answer yet, but there are many great ideas and hypotheses out there.
Richard Dawkins said we are here to propagate our genes and spread our seed. Buddhism supports that but adds that we should be wary of our genetic programming; it clouds our perceptions and feelings, presenting a false view of reality. There are many books about finding happiness, letting go of our desire for happiness, allowing ourselves to be happy, and the non-existence of happiness. The questions around purpose and happiness are interconnected, so the answers might also be.
My hypothesis about the purpose of life and our existence on this planet is simple: we’re here to create. It’s a simple idea, but don’t let it deceive you. Creation comes in many different forms.
If you reference Dawkins theory, creation is the propagation of genes. If you believe in evolution, you would agree that we’ve come a long way as a species, and with that – could our definition of creation have also evolved? Creation has many forms and derivatives and spans almost everything.
You can create people, art, music, scientific discoveries, poetry, food, structures, technology – anything we see, feel, hear, smell, and touch was at one point created.
Humans have no better purpose or a stronger sense of pleasure and satisfaction than when they have created something. The first and simplest way to test this theory is to reflect on your experience creating something. How did it feel?
The second easiest way to test this theory is to ask yourself, when was the last time you created something? If it was a while ago, how are you feeling? Has something been missing?
Scientists and historians say that the human species diverged from animals because of our ability to create tools, amongst other things. What I find interesting is that to create life, essentially offspring, we didn’t need any tools. Before we had our first tool, we were already creating. Creation is visceral.
Creation is a fundamental part of our existence. Arguably, it is one of the first things we experience after we are brought to life.
It’s a simple idea, but I have yet to meet someone who finds harnessing and converting creative energy into material form easy. We struggle through the process and equate it to giving birth – bringing something to life. Some avoid it at all costs.
But there is no escaping that we are created, and then we create.
Does the act of creation push us to embody the god within?
Do we resist because we are scared of playing god and living purposely?
Sincerely,
Getting comfortable here
Second law of thermodynamics says that entropy is always increasing. The world around us is constantly falling into disarray and as human beings, we're constantly expending energy to locally decrease entropy by creating order of things. We build sand castle's only to see them quickly washed away, we drop puzzle pieces onto the ground and enjoy putting them into the correct order.
Eventually we get the heat death of the universe it approaches maximum entropy. If we value creating so much (using energy to decrease entropy) maybe it's just the universe fighting back against it's own fate.