Essay 41 - Do We Have an Evolutionary Mission?

If we had an evolutionary purpose, we would see our activities in pursuit of that purpose as meaningful. It would help us make sense out of our lives in terms of something larger than ourselves.

But this gets tricky as purposes are often something we superimpose upon the world. For example, we say the purpose of the zebra stripes are for camouflage while the purpose of a lion’s claws is to help it catch its prey. In the case of humans, Darwin’s theory suggests that our main purpose is to attempt to pass on our DNA on to future generations. So, is our purpose to produce offspring? Is there is any larger end to which that would contribute?

Yuval Noah Harari author of Homo Deus suggests that our larger purpose might be to explore the universe. That may be true although we might not find out for another hundred thousand years. And if the purpose of our species is to explore the universe, we might ask - to what end? And if we get an answer then might we not again be able to ask the same question? To what end?

But whether we get an answer in 100,000 years or 1 million years or 100 million years can that be meaningful to people today? And, if we figure that out in 100 million years, will that be meaningful to people then (assuming that people are still around). Somehow, this notion of an ultimate purpose does not seem to hold up too well.

It seems to me that all meaning is local. I need a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I need a reason to get through the next week or year or decade. I need something to help me through the suffering of life and its ultimate end. If a visitor from the future were to tell me what the ultimate evolutionary mission for humans was, I don’t think it would help me with any of that. So, if we do have an evolutionary mission, I don’t think we could even know. And if we did know I don’t think we would care.

This essay is 367 words long and the audio is just over 2 3/4 minutes.