The Biggest Picture

We often speak of backing off from details to look at the big picture. Here I'm going to back up to the biggest picture I can think of. In descending order of importance:

1. The world is an amazingly complicated place. There might have been nothing at all, or a universe with nothing but stars, dust and rock. But here on the surface of this planet we can perceive amazing complexity. The world is interesting!

2. We long for purpose. We want to know what's right and wrong -- what's good and bad. Whether we live up to our standards or not, we want to know those standards exist. They don't. There is no inherent right or wrong and no inherent meaning. In reflective moods people sometimes rage over the unfairness of our mortality -- whatever we create in our minds will be destroyed when we die. Mortality isn't the key obstacle to meaning, however, it's just the first and most obvious one. If we lived for thousands or millions of years, there would still be no objective meaning, or right and wrong.

3. We are animals, and a big part of our human nature is our minds. Our minds have been profoundly shaped by evolution. Like other animals, we seek pleasure and avoiding pain, but we as humans have more complicated desires. In the absence of an objective right and wrong, we still feel that there is right and wrong. The source of this conviction is our human nature as shaped by evolution. We value fairness, loyalty, and love, for instance. We value our human relationships, especially those with partners and children. We seek status and strive to better our condition or keep it from worsening. The most profound reason we fear death is that we are programmed by evolution to fear death. For some people religious belief is central. I'm confident they are mistaken as to matters of fact, but in the absence of any objective purpose, what they have chosen is no worse than any other.

4. Our collective human activity is causing damage to our environment and natural world which cannot be corrected for millions of years. Our future for those millions of years will include far less biological diversity. Climate change may make the planet a much less hospitable place for humans as well. Yet bad consequences that last millions of years seem unable to motivate most people more than bad consequences that last ten years (or even just one year or one month).

5. Our human nature constrains us but also allows us considerable freedom in how we organize our societies. Compared to most of human existence, things are very good today in western nations. We do not fear the arrival of some army within twenty years that will kill, rape, pillage, and destroy everything we have built. It is rare that others take our property or our lives. The vast majority of the time, our fellow citizens will help us achieve our goals if it doesn't inconvenience them much. To take a very simple case, in the grocery store aisles we move our cart to the side when we stop to let others get by. We have also created great prosperity, even for our poorer citizens. Entertainment via electronic devices is virtually limitless. We have eliminated serious infectious diseases, we have effective medicines for medical conditions that have plagued humanity throughout our past. And effective painkillers mean we don't have to die in agony any more.

6. We also can see so many ways that things could be better. People have somewhat different values. Some value greater independence and less government involvement in their lives, even if it means more suffering for those who are less well off. Others (including me) value the common good more, and seek reduced income inequality, a better social safety net, and less political power for the rich. We seek to reduce discrimination based on identities, such as race, sex and nationality. I value the rule of law, democracy, and an open society, the constellation that is perhaps the single most important thing under attack by Trump and his Republican allies.

7. Everything else. Here are the more mundane concerns of our lives that occupy 99% of our attention and effort. Eating, sleeping, working, socializing with others, sex, exercise, and TV shows. Bigger-ticket items here are getting a better-paying job or one with better working conditions, finding a life partner, and maintaining our health as best we are able.

A wise formulation of how to live life is to accept what cannot be changed, to work to change what can be changed, and to be wise enough to tell the difference. Items 1 through 3 above, the most important, are impervious to change.

Some of us take time to celebrate what we've achieved in point 5 and work to not lose what we've achieved. Some work to make things better regarding points 4 and 6. A very few put a lot of effort into them. Mostly we live our lives in category 7. And given our human nature, that is as it should be and how it has to be. But understanding the earlier six points is part of an authentic, grounded life.

I wonder how other people would formulate their big picture differently.