If there is a purpose to human life, as far as I can tell from these limited sensory organs and this very insufficient brain, it is to become as conscious as possible.
If you were given a video game to play without knowing anything about it, probably one of the first things you’d try to figure out is what the goal is. How can you make it so that you do well in the game? What do you have to do to go from this level to the next? How do you earn?
If you weren’t given any instructions, you would probably try to figure out the point of the game by seeing what actions make things better for the character you control on the screen. Does the game reward your character for solving the puzzle? Do you earn points for killing space aliens? Does it make a nice noise and get you to the next level when you find the blue key? Whatever improves things for the character and their progress through the various levels possibly has something to do with the objective of the game.
I think that if we were to look at the human experience with the same kind of distant, global perspective as someone playing a video game, we would end up deducing that what makes things better for the characters in the game is the expansion of consciousness.
You would probably start to notice that things get better for humans as they become more aware of how their world works. As their understanding of toolmaking, medicine, and plant life increases, so does their ability to survive and reproduce. When their scientific insights really take off, I will surely notice their population skyrocket along with those insights.
Later, you might observe that human life tends to become less unequal as people’s awareness of each other’s situations expands. By expanding your awareness of what other people experience in the world, a slow realization would begin to emerge that we are all basically the same and it doesn’t make much sense for some people to be treated differently than others. This expansion would occur at the same time as advances in philosophical, sociological, psychological, political and historical understandings.
You might also notice that individual human beings tend to experience greater enjoyment of life as their own personal awareness expands. As they become more aware of how their actions affect others, they would begin to behave more harmoniously in society. As you become aware of your own individual psychology and personal history of trauma, you will find yourself doing fewer self-destructive things. If you become deeply aware of how thoughts, perception, and experience actually occur on a fundamental level, you could find yourself embodying what spiritual traditions call awakening or enlightenment.
You would probably begin to notice that, in fact, every major positive change in the functioning of human beings, whether at the level of an individual or a group of any size, is preceded by a broadening of consciousness.
And from that I would probably deduce that this game of humanity that we all play is to become as conscious as possible. Becoming aware of our own internal processes as individuals, becoming aware of the human condition, and becoming aware of what is true about the world around us.
From this I gather that anyone who is on the frontier of expanding human consciousness in any way or direction is playing the game well, and those who are stuck without learning or growing haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.
If you choose to accept this as a legitimate perspective, then it would make sense to think that our short lifetime on this planet is best served by expanding consciousness in some way, or all ways.
You may even find that expanding your awareness in one way helps your ability to do so in other ways. For example, expanding your awareness of how your own mind works allows you to be more aware of how the minds of others work and how they can be manipulated by powerful people through propaganda. You may also find, for example, that broadening your awareness of the situation of people who are socio-economically and geopolitically less advantaged than you, broadens your own personal awareness of the various socio-economic and geopolitical dynamics that have given rise to the shape your life has taken. right now. You may also find that expanding your awareness of your own internal processes gives you a serenity that makes it easier for you to face the horrors you encounter as you expand your awareness of what is happening in the world, and gives you the humility to see that you are not you are totally separate from those horrors.
The game of humanity will continue to improve as long as our consciousness continues to expand. I would go so far as to say that this is the only thing that can make things better, and not doing so is guaranteed to make things worse.
As in a video game, I think that we humans are free to win this game, or lose it. Either we continue to expand our awareness of what is really going on in this strange universe our mothers have thrust us into, or we annihilate ourselves through nuclear war or ecocide.
In any case, if you decide to accept what is said here, each of us has the power to improve things with exactly one unit of human effort. We can help spread awareness of what’s going on in the world by fighting the lies we’ve been told by the powerful and drawing attention to the things the powerful prefer to keep hidden. We can help spread awareness of the human condition through art and empathy. We can expand our own awareness by being curious about how we function and what makes us tick, and being very realistic with ourselves about what we find in that exploration.
Whatever you choose to believe about all this, it is your adventure. I wish you the best in your journeys.
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