38 | New Scientist | 20 November 2021
W
E CAN attempt to answer the
question of why we exist in a
literal sense: by tracing our human
story back through the whorls and rifts of
evolution, through the contested origins of life
on Earth and the collapsing cloud of dust and
gas that became our home planet 4.5 billion
years ago, back to the birth of our universe
some 13.8 billion years ago – and perhaps
further still (see “Why is there something
rather than nothing?”, previous page).
Yet none of this story of happenstance helps
us in finding the kind of meaning we crave:
meaning in significance. “Now we know that
the cosmos contains at least a million billion
galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions
of stars, most of which have planets around
them. In one of these zillions of planets, as
probably in many others, chemistry became
complex and evolved in all sorts of critters,
one of which, not particularly good inWhy
do
we
exist?
lacking one? It needn’t be a superhuman
aim, says Strecher – you should think of it
as a goal built around the things you value
most. “If they mean zero in the big picture
of the universe, who gives a shit?” he says.
Tiffany O’CallaghanThat started in earnest in the 1700s, as
scientific inquiry began to upend our
assumptions about our central place in the
universe. Simultaneously, the industrial
revolution first saw people leaving long-
established rural communities and venturing
out into a wider world in large numbers.
The mistake, says Rovelli, is to tether our
search for meaning to our cosmic importance.
“Our marginality in the cosmos does not
diminish our significance for ourselves at all,”
he says. The point of existence becomes to find- or make – meaning with the improbable bit
of life we have been given, something humans
are particularly skilled at. “We are ourselves
sources of meaning, desires, thirsts,” says
Rovelli. “And we are so because evolution
designed us this way.”
Philosopher Albert Camus concluded
something similar after some serious
grappling with the subject, says Strecher.
Like Sisyphus forever rolling a boulder uphill,
our tiny lives may seem pointless – but as
long as we are driven by pursuit of our own
purpose, it can all work out. As Camus put it:
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
The question of what it all means may
have particular weight at this moment in
human history, says Strecher, not just because
of our growing cosmic understanding, but
also because we are pushing back the length
of human lives. “A year is not a year is not a
year,” he says. “Life has meaning because
it is limited.” If we start to extend people’s
lifespans to 150 or 200 years, we need to
also think about how to ensure those will be
worthwhile years imbued with purpose.
How do we find a sense of purpose if we are
Humans are skilled
at finding meaning
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