Assume that there is no purpose in life, our life. Assume that our sun will slowly consume all of it’s fuel and at the end this rock we call earth. Assume that all of this has no purpose and that this being here, there and everywhere is all there is.

If we, thinking human beings don’t exist, would it than matter that life on earth has it’s rhythm of life and death? That the great ape’s go extinct and that the sun sets every evening and is nonetheless not remembered the next day. Are we, thinking and remembering human beings not the ones that give all of this “life” and death purpose, albeit only in our head.

This is a poem I wrote in may 2018, Day 777.

Objects

Without thought things are nothing

with our existence they get a purpose

Our being is their being.

First of all, we all can agree that we are thinking animals (I know, a lot of people don’t think… that.) Other animals might also think but we not only think with our feelings, emotions and instinct but also with words and reasoning. Even the smartest ape hasn’t written a book telling us we are wrong on this subject.

We think and that’s unique, and I thought: why am I thinking about this particular subject, if a call randomly a thousand people and ask what they think about, probably none of them would say to me that they thought about why the chair is a chair. I guess it is my way of knitting the 14^th sweater, it keeps me warm and busy.

Back to the topic of this post: why is a chair a chair. If we wouldn’t be here the chair would just be a miraculously formed combination of metal and plastic. A dog doesn’t see a chair, it sees a nice flat surface raised from the floor where it can sleep safely and warm. It doesn’t say to other dog’s: hey, there is a chair to lie on. No, it says hey, there is a nice flat surface raised from the floor where you can sleep safely and warm. We humans not only create a lot of the things we see, we give it all also a name and with that a specific purpose, for as long as there are humans.

This “purpose” thing does not mean that all of this is for nothing and that it doesn’t matter that the gorilla goes extinct. All of this is created, is given a name and function because we think and that includes our morals and values. We created our morals and values because we think, or maybe better said: because they are a function of us thinking. The gorilla feels a loss when a close one dies, just like we feel it, but we are capable to reflect on the loss and write a poem or music about it. The gorilla morns but we have given what he does a name so we can think about it and value it if others do the same.