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Question Hello panel, My question focuses on a space in time where everyone ever associated with a person including themselves has died, where everything of that person's experience down to the most miniscule details of their existence is no longer in the minds of the living. This is assuming the non-existence of an afterlife. At this point in time, does this render that person's existence utterly meaningless? There are many people who survive in history but there are also many faceless, nameless people who lived through the ages and had experiences common to all the living now, but in this present day, those experiences no longer exist except in the distant past, and are thus inaccessible. (I apologise if this is making little sense, I am absolutely struggling to grasp my own problem.) Essentially what I mean to say is, while our experiences on this earth have meaning to us and the people sharing them with us in the present, on a grander timescale, is there any argument to allay a feeling I sometimes experience of utterly hopeless insignificance?

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June 29, 2007

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Who invented the wheel? Who first figured out how to harness the power of fire? Who devised the idea of written language? The identities of such individuals have been entirely lost to history, and yet our society continues to benefit from the enduring legacy of their achievements. Indeed, were it not for the contributions of innumerable anonymous men and women such as these, there would be no such thing as human society at all.

Indeed, it goes deeper than that. People sometimes talk of how, when a butterfly flaps its wings, it generates tiny currents in the air around it, which lead to others, and those in turn to others; until finally, six months later, a mighty hurricane rages on the other side of the world -- a hurricane which, but for that humble butterfly, would never have arisen. But, of course, this is not peculiar to butterflies. We all do it, every one of us, all the time. Whether through some great flash of genius, or some more idle and ostensibly inconsequential action, or even just an involuntary bodily twitch, we affect the world around us at every moment of our lives. Sometimes in big ways; sometimes in small ways; and sometimes in tiny ways that lead to enormous effects, effects that we could never have planned or predicted. And maybe some of these effects (like the hurricane) will be dreadful. But others will be wonderful. And they will continue to make themselves felt in the world long after we ourselves have been entirely forgotten.

How you live will have effects long after your death (see also question 1689). But if these effects carry no message of your character and personality, of your thoughts and emotions, loves and successes, they may not mitigate the feeling of looming utter insignificance. The dreadful feeling is that there will come a time after which you, along with everything in your life, will never again mean anything to anyone. Even the greatest authors face this feeling -- only the vainest don't.

I see two ways to allay this feeling, both articulated in Derik Parfit's work.

One is to dissociate what you care about from yourself. Say you care greatly about the environment or the preservation of animal species. If you really care for such a goal, and believe that people in the future will also work for it and will help achieve it tolerably well, then you can feel that -- even if your own contribution is entirely forgotten -- what you worked for is achieved.

The other way of allaying the feeling of utter insignificance involves undermining the idea that, to be significant, something must continue to matter. I think you need this, because you cannot realistically hope that the environment or animal species or any other things human beings might promote will last forever. You should rethink then the idea that, to be significant, something must continue to be accessible and to mean something to intelligent beings all the way into the future.

How to challenge this idea? Start with the past. A hundred years ago, you and everything in your life were inaccessible and hence meant nothing to anyone. Does this make you feel insignificant? Or think of beings on distant planets to whom our lives and experiences are likewise inaccessible. If someone found these facts deeply depressing, you would probably laugh heartily. So why do we take future people so seriously?

The cause of this is, presumably, that so much of our lives is geared toward the future. So much of what we do involves plans, hopes, goals; and much of our conduct then seems meaningful to us in virtue of what it entails. (Studying is meaningful because you get a good test score which is meaningful because you get admitted to a good university which is meaningful because it helps you get a good job which....).

But if everything were meaningful only in virtue of what it entails, then nothing seems meaningful once you start thinking further and further ahead. If this is what it takes for a life to be significant, then all lives are insignificant. But this insignificance of all lives is not a sad discovery about the world, but a necessary consequence of how you conceive significance. Once you realize that you have understood or defined significance so that there couldn't possibly be any, you must stop viewing your insignificance (so defined) as a misfortune.

Perhaps you will then develop a different understanding of significance. You will still accept that, to be significant, some things must have certain consequences. (If I get a lousy test score, then my taking this painful test really was utterly pointless.) But you will also see that this does not hold for other things. You will see that your wonderful conversation with a person you love while walking along that little river is deeply meaningful regardless of whether anyone in the fourth millennium will have any inkling that it took place.

To conclude. On one understanding of significance, there couldn't possibly be any, and we might as well then discard the term. If significance is to be possible, it cannot depend on access and memory "all the way" into the future. So: develop an understanding that renders significance possible, and then try to make what you do, your life, significant in this sense. Do have that conversation along the river.