Humanity's Endgame

What is the purpose of life?

Photo Source: Greg Rakozy

Ah, the forty-second question that everyone has had. A lot of effort has gone into answering this, and religions seem to thrive on it. I think the question is a bit flawed.

The word "purpose" implies "intended purpose", which in turn implies deliberate design. This is a dead end in terms of logical reasoning.

Instead, I would like to tackle this question:

What is my vision of the future?

Okay, a couple of points:

• First off: Why the reduction is scope?!
  Purpose implies design. Design implies the existence of creator(s). It's hard to rationally progress further with the idea of "creator's agenda for life", if we are to stick to a logical framework. Instead, I can look at recorded and logically deduced historical trends, and make a forecast for the future. This forecast may be speculative (it's my painting, after all), but is likely to provide us with an appreciation of what the purpose could be, if the the question of purpose is worth pursuing.
• Second: A short note on "life":
  From a physics standpoint, life arguably holds no special value, but the abstract and perhaps ambiguous concept holds value for the purpose of this article.
• Third: How far into the future are we talking again?
  Not too far in cosmological terms. I want this discussion to be relevant to life's future, and I am limiting the discussion to life that continues from earth.

Life includes other beings too, but on earth, humans are the latest and most advanced form of life today. It may be that we evolve to more advanced beings, but I cannot imagine my forecast being affected by that. We have in some ways hacked evolution. While in the strictest sense, that would involve changing our genetic makeup (which seems possible today, and probable in the future), in the looser sense of enhancing our capabilities: I think we have already made good progress.
This involves the sophisticated means we have developed to cure and prevent diseases, similar means employed to enhance our physical and cognitive capabilities, and finally the complex social structure we have developed that is ever-diverging from other animals. In a far more looser sense that I'm sure many wouldn't share with me: thought and reasoning can in itself be argued to be evolution, but that's another topic.

Plants and Micro-organisms may be "fitter" in some
respects, but our potential for fitness is arguably greater
(Image source: Wikimedia)

Living beings evolved over time, but what has really changed? Natural selection favoured beings better at survival and reproduction. Now there are microorganisms and plants who have done that, and today we are very much dependent on them. One could argue that we may find a way to reduce that dependency, in which case we would truly prove to be the "fittest" species. Sure, we may self-destruct ourselves and microorganisms can easily evolve on other planets, but technically, that does not mean we are less fit, just that we are unlucky (paraphrasing my understanding of John Maynard Smith's view; see slide 24). Hence my focus on humans/enhanced humans. 

The trend so far:

We have had plenty of advanced civilisations, and it may be tempting to think that not much has changed since ancient Egyptian, Greek or Indus Valley settlements. But I would argue that human rights, technology, and our understanding of science and technology has impacted our brain and intelligence. We are collectively smarter and more empathetic today, and lead more productive and peaceful lives.

We spend less time on surviving; citizens of many developed countries today have no issues in the achieving the fundamentals of Natural selection: Survival (Food, Healthcare) and Reproduction (Family incentives and larger population pool to choose a mate from).

In general, I think of these changes in the last 50 years to be valid for the next 50 or so years:

• Evolutionary Aspects: Survival and reproduction become easier for the "world population" 




• Poverty reduction
• Population increase
  
• Lifespan increase
• Social Aspects:
• Human rights improvement
• Prominence of religion will decrease
• Gender/race/sexuality discrimination will reduce
• Tolerance and Empathy increases in general, but the extremes are more polarised
• Reduction in opportunities disparity
• Technological and Societal Changes
• Strain on resources
• Automation and AI (can trigger temporary setback discussed below)
• Lower Privacy
• Greater Government Power (can trigger temporary setback discussed below)
• Familial bonds weaken
• Increase in Depression and Mental Health issues
• Increased dependency on addictive substances or habits
• Uptake in virtual (telephone in past; internet in the present) social interactions
• Education more accessible, but specialisation more likely and degrees less valuable
• Cyclical irrational setbacks to progress
• Fascism
• Wars
• Bigotry
• Discrimination
• Cultural biases
• Popular Uprisings Hijacked for political motives
• Economic downturn

Humanity's Endgame:

• Conventional Evolutionary Selection factors like survival and reproduction are not a problem to any human, unlike just the developed countries, today. 
• Opportunity disparity is negligible or non-existent. 
• Humans have enhanced all evolutionary defects with technology, and even our present Social Selection factors like wealth, education, physical and genetic attributes can be modified at anyone's own will.

This frees us up to concentrate on the only activities that have mattered throughout our human existence: explore (the cosmos), understand (fabric of the reality), love, and be loved.

How about doing everything you can to get there, for "Purpose of Life"!

Edit 2020-July: Given the rise of disingenuous populism, aversion to global coordination displayed by citizens and leaders of some countries, and the fragility exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic: I would add that the "Cyclical irrational setbacks" has the potential to be destructive beyond what I originally thought, and can even be non cyclical if we are not too careful. 

I would also add that despite the progress of our society as a whole to be more intelligent, compassionate and empathetic, I do not believe that a lot of humans today, if suddenly teleported to prehistoric times, would be all that better (in the aforementioned traits) compared to humans of that time period.
This may be a result of me being more cynical over time, but if not: this article reflects the future that I'd like to see and am motivated to bring about. Hence, the addition of the last line.