Consciousness arrived like a Trojan horse bringing gifts of reflection, memory, and foresight but burdening us with the awareness of inevitable death.
Arun Kumar + AI: Three-Body Problem
Summary: Humanity, since the dawn of consciousness, has grappled with the intricate triad of life, mortality, and meaning. While biology compels survival, the awareness of death sparks existential unease. The search for meaning weaves itself into our finite existence, turning life into an ongoing dance — questioning, seeking, and striving to reconcile the tension between existence and impermanence.
From the moment consciousness flickered into existence, humanity has been haunted by the trio of life, mortality, and meaning. Like celestial bodies locked in an eternal dance, these forces pull at our thoughts, shape our fears, inspire our deepest inquiries, and have been an unending fountain of creativity.
Life begins with birth, an inevitable emergence dictated by biology’s unrelenting imperative — to procreate, to persist, to be. If biology did not have this imperative, it might as well be a rock.
In the grand equation of existence, the laws of nature do not ponder purpose or follow a design; they simply act. We arrive in this world because, at the core of existence, biology must be carried forward. The instincts woven into the tapestry of evolution have ensured this to happen. If our ancestors had failed this impulse, life as we know would have flickered out like a dying star. Our birth is a testament to natural selection’s quiet, unwavering, inevitable hand.
Yet for all its persistence to procreate, life ends with death, an event no biological form escapes. Death is not merely the counterweight to birth; it is also an intrinsic necessity. Without it, biology would spiral into chaos, overflowing beyond sustainability of limited resources in the environment. Aging, entropy, mutation, and competition ensure that no biological form continues indefinitely. It is here that biology finds its limit, surrendering to the forces of nature once again.
For most of the natural world, this cycle of birth and death unfolds with utter indifference. Organisms live, they multiply, they vanish, without pause to question the rhythm of their existence. But the emergence of consciousness in us changed the rules of the game.
Consciousness arrived like a Trojan horse, bringing gifts of reflection, memory, and foresight — yet hidden within was the stark awareness of our own mortality. Suddenly, we had the ability to visualize the finite nature of our being here long before its conclusion, and with this vision came the psychological state of unrest — the state of being in existential angst.
A natural death would have been fine, much like it is among animals who live and perish without dread. But consciousness is not passive — it also probes, it anticipates, it brings fear about the inevitability of death before it arrives. It wants to find a meaning that underlies the game of life. It whispers the unrelenting question: for what purpose do we go through the motions?
And so, with consciousness, the trio became complete. Life, awareness of mortality, and the search for meaning.
For many, existence still remains tethered to survival — an autopilot of biological demands, where the urge to search for meaning is overshadowed by necessity. But for others, consciousness reaches beyond the realm of ordinary. The prospect of simply being born and perishing, without deeper significance, feels hollow. Surely, life must reach beyond biology, beyond the mechanics of survival, into something richer.
In the modern world, a new force has entered the equation — the availability of non-discretionary time. It is the spare time we have that is above what is needed to sustain biology. Advances in technology, in social constructs like division of labor, have granted moments not bound by survival’s demands, yet the responsibility of how to use them falls upon us adding yet another layer of questions. Do we dedicate that time to wonder? To the pursuit of meaning that transcends mere sustenance? To creative pursuits? Or do we, despite our awareness, remain entangled in the matters of biological necessity alone, or worse, just squander the gift of non-discretionary time?
Straightforward answers to these questions remain elusive. They shift like the light of distant stars. Perhaps there is no singular answer, only the perpetual search, grasping a glimpse of the meaning but then not being able to hold onto it. Perhaps it would always be the ever-changing pursuit of meaning against the backdrop of the certainty of mortality.
And so, the dance of the trio continues. Perhaps it always would be like the infamous three-body problem where three celestial bodies find themselves entangled in an unpredictable dance. Their paths tugged by forces too intricate to tame. No law governs their motion with certainty; no equation captures the chaos of their celestial embrace. They drift, influenced yet unbound, mirroring the uncertainty of existence itself — a reminder that not all things move with purpose, and not all destinies can be traced before they unfold. Not everything has to have a meaning. Why should it?
Ciao, and thanks for reading.
Note: The scope and complexities of necessities to maintain our biological forms have expanded with the evolution of societal structures and norms. We may no longer have the need to hunt and gather for survival, but now, we have to earn money to serve the same functional purpose.
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