The Whole Book in 5 Minutes
“What’s the purpose of a honeybee?”
“Its purpose is to collect honey, of course!”
“Anything else?”
“Well, I suppose it's also to build and maintain its hive, tend to the larvae, etc.”
“How do you know that that is its purpose?”
“Well, all I have to do is to look at it! The structure of its body, what it does all day, what effects its actions have, and so on."
"Can you explain a bit more?"
"Look at its body. It has a tube protruding out of its mouth and a storage sack to collect the honey. It spends its whole day buzzing around the garden from flower to flower and doing its thing. Search on YouTube and you will find all kinds of videos about the life of honey bees. How they build their hive and maintain it, tend to the larvae, communicate with other bees and so on. Once you learn about all that, their purpose becomes pretty obvious.”
“That’s all? Maybe I should clarify myself. What I really meant by ‘purpose’ was, what is their ‘greater purpose’?”
“Oh, I know what you mean! It's pollination of course! Everyone knows that they pollinate gardens and farms all over the world. You might have heard that there has been a decline in honey bee population and it is a major ecological concern. They say, without them the whole ecosystem could collapse! So keeping the ecosystem 'humming' - literally and figuratively - that’s their greater purpose, of course!”
“Sure, but that wasn’t exactly what I was getting at. Isn’t one's ‘greater purpose’ supposed to be something mysterious, originating from some sort of a god or supernatural power, requiring some sort of a divine revelation to discover? All your answers so far were simply based on straightforward observation and analysis that anyone could do! Surely that can’t tell us everything about greater purpose?”
“Well, do we really need anything more to find their greater purpose? What you said may have been true in the past when we didn't really understand a lot about how the world works. But now we do. At least we know a lot more than we did and can already start to get some insights that weren't available before. What we know about bees and ecosystems and so on today is quite sufficient to figure out what their smaller as well as greater purpose is. And isn't that quite wonderful and meaningful already? What can be more meaningful than ensuring the long-term survival of not just itself and its hive, but also the entire ecosystem?”
“Hmmm.. Interesting. And I’m glad you brought up things like 'wonder' and ‘meaning’. I was just about to ask you about that. What is the meaning of a bee’s life? What makes its life meaningful and wonderful?”
“Well, we don’t know if bees understand concepts like meaning, but I suppose we can try to imagine what it could be. So, I suppose, for a bee, a meaningful life would be something like knowing what its greater purpose is and living in complete harmony with it. Knowing that its work helps it and its hive and even the garden survive and thrive. If I was a bee, I would find that quite meaningful.”
“I like that! Everything you've said so far makes a lot of sense. The next philosophical question that usually comes up after discussing meaning is that of hope. Where does hope come from? What might make a bee's life hopeful?”
“Hmm, I just realized something. The great thing about this way of thinking about purpose and meaning is that hope is already built into it!”
“How?”
“We know that life is a process that started billions of years ago and has continued unbroken ever since. It has faced many challenges, of course, some even dire, but through all of that, it has spread and diversified in innumerable ways. It has faced severe climate changes, volcanic eruptions that blackened the skies for long periods of time, ice ages, asteroid hits, geological upheavals and every kind of disaster one can imagine in the past and come out of it stronger. In fact, this process of life looks almost impossible to root out once it has gotten started!”
“OK, but what has that got to do with hope?”
“Well, if a bee realizes that its life is an integral part of this process of expansion and enrichment of life, then doesn't that provide a seriously strong foundation for hope? Because this process of life has managed to continue through every calamity imaginable and will very likely continue literally as long as the sun shines! When we have such strong evidence, we don't really need to invent any feel-good stories for hope as we usually have to. It just falls naturally out of the evidence.”
“Sounds very logical and reasonable. And yet somehow wonderful! You've not only given great answers to my questions but provided solid reasons for why those answers are, in fact, great. No handwaving or appeal to mysterious phenomena or anything. No reliance on anybody's opinions either. Just the facts! I myself am a big 'evidence and reason' guy. No mumbo-jumbo for me, thank you!"
"Yes, but many other people have tried to define things like meaning, purpose and hope in life using only facts and logic before and failed miserably."
"That's true. But they missed a very important angle."
"What angle?"
"Let me ask you one more question to give you a hint.”
“Go ahead! I’m enjoying this.”
“Ok. If we want to find a human analog to what bees are or what they do all day, what would that be?”
“Hmm.. We have certainly heard the phrase 'worker-bees'."
"But they are more than just plain workers, right? They build very interesting and complex things, discover new gardens, organize themselves in teams and societies and so on."
"Yes,. So artisans, maybe? Or even engineers?”
“Hmm.. Can you elaborate?”
“Well, they do build some amazingly complex, and huge - for their body size - and resilient hives. They keep maintaining and fixing them. And yes, they organize themselves into highly functional teams and have a strong, collaborative work ethic. They discover new sources of honey or even new locations for a new hive, plan how to migrate there and build afresh when needed. These are all the things that engineers do. At least when they aren't slacking like we are right now!”
“Well, we are having seriously important philosophical conversations, aren't we? Engineers are big suckers for those sorts of things too, you know!”
“Yes. But what does engineering have to do with the 'life, the universe and everything' stuff that you started with? And why are we talking about bees? How does any of this apply to people? Aren't we way more complex and demanding than bees?”
“Sure. People are certainly a lot more complicated and demanding as you say. We won't be satisfied with such simple answers. Yes, some of what we've talked about here does apply to us, but we need to go a lot deeper and broader and be more thorough with our analysis before we can say how any of this applies to people."
"Of course we do!"
"And we need to do something different from what other people who have tried to do this in the past have done, otherwise we will fail the same way they did."
"Definitely. So is this the new angle you are talking about? I hope engineering isn't that angle!"
"Of course it is!"
"What? How?"
"Umm... You’ll have to read my book to get into that! It will take a lot longer than 5 minutes!”
“Aha! I was wondering when you were going to shill your book!”
“Sorry about that! But you know…”
“Sure, I understand. And don’t worry. I'm already intrigued. I'm going to read it!”
“Great answer!"
"Anyway, all this talk about honeybees has made me thirsty for some honey-lemon tea. Would you like some? I make it from scratch, you know! From First Principles as they say, not from that industrially manufactured, pre-packaged stuff that no one knows where it came from!”
“Yes! That sounds like a great idea!”
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