Life is Meaningless

Go, eat your food with gladness, and
drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is
now that God favors what you do. Always
be clothed in white and always anoint your
head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife,
whom you love, all the days of this mean-
ingless life that God has given you under the
sun-all your meaningless days. For this is
your lot in life and in your toilsome labor
under the sun. Whatever your hand finds
to do, do it with all your might, for in the
grave, where you are going, there is
neither working nor planning nor know-
ledge nor wisdom.

Ecclesiastes 9:7-10

Far up in the Hills, miles from any town or house, some friends had gathered around a campfire. It was night, and the countless trees of pine surrounding them were indistinct and dark, while a cool, inconstant breeze, which flowed across the waters of a nearby steam-fed lake, fanned the blazing fire, and brushed the friends' flushed faces. They were drinking, joking, and laughing loudly, and their voices rang throughout the valley in which they were encamped.

"I just made the moon rise!" one of them abruptly bellowed, leaping to his feet and pointing toward the sky, a wild gleaming in his eyes. And, indeed, the moon, brilliant and round­­like a second sun of polished bone­­that very moment was ascending above a mountain of cool stone. At first, however, both were equally ignored.

"Stop!" the young man shouted. "Be quiet­­and listen!"

And now, at last, the friends all heard him and obeyed, for a strange intensity had filled his voice, and they had marked it. And when they all had fallen quiet­­when their tiny, raucous bubble had finally been pierced­­the stillness of the place flowed in upon them, and rose, engulfing them like an invisible and ever-patient rising tide.

Meanwhile the friends sat. They stood. They stared. They listened. They did not move. Water gently lapping against the lake's near shore for the first time that evening was heard; stars (though dimmed in their eyes from the light of the fire) shimmering up above were seen; and the moon­­soundless­­continued its ascent from behind the valley wall, flooding the valley and the water and the air with condensing ghostlike sheets of ivory light. The breeze by now had died. For maybe half a minute all things seemed to hold their breath.

"What are we listening for?" someone whispered.

"Shh!" the sky-watcher hissed, and then, pointing with his bottle, cryptically announced: "The moon...."

The young men turned their faces and their ears up to the moon. For some it partly was obscured by the smoke billowing from the fire; for others it was clearer and seemed a disc of fiery polished marble or a portal of whitest light suspended in the sky. But none of them heard a thing.

After what seemed a long time the watcher spoke again.

"Did you know," he offered softly, his voice almost a whisper, "that the moon is moving away from us? Every moment it drifts out farther and gets smaller. Someday it will be so small, so very far away, it won't even be seen. Maybe it will even leave its orbit­­maybe it will wander off far into space, and forever be alone...."

The fire, which seemed to dim in the silence that followed these remarks, crackled softly, the only sound.

"So?" a young man finally queried, setting down his beer and rubbing his smoke-stung eyes. "What's your point?"

The sky-watcher shrugged.

"Nothing's permanent," he said. "Not even the moon."

With this the friends all stared in deep perplexity. But whether this was due to the news of the moon's eventual departure or an inability to fathom just why anyone would say such a thing, only each himself could have declared.

"Let's sing a song!" one of them cried out suddenly, and instantly everyone leaped upon their feet, screaming incomprehensibly and howling, their eyes squeezed tightly shut and their arms and legs flailing and dancing all about. They seemed filled with tireless energy and joy. And yet the first young man, the one who claimed (bizarrely) that he had summoned forth the moon, did not join them, but stepping away from the fire he wandered off, lost in thought. His name was John. When the others saw him walking away, however, they shouted loudly after him, calling for him to come back, and saying his name in funny voices and laughing. But he only turned and smiled weakly before fading into the darkness, and vanishing from their sight.

A few seconds later a second member of the group (who had brought only a six-pack of Dr. Pepper from home to drink, much to the amusement of his fellows) rose from his lawn chair where he had sat all evening and followed John into the darkness. His name was Andy.

When Andy had caught up to John they walked, side-by-side, into the deepening darkness along an old dirt road, saying nothing. And at first their surroundings seemed quite strange, for their shadows leaped and lengthened through the trees as the fire blazed up behind them, more wood­­and half a gallon of gas­­having been cast upon the crackling conflagration. But soon the forest gloom closed in around them, the crimson flickerings died away, and their shadows were completely reabsorbed into the darkness. Walking even further, the shriek of voices and the violent crash of metal (their friends had seized an empty keg and transformed it into a drum) grew increasingly faint, while the soft sound of the breeze grew ever stronger, until finally it murmured all around them like a living, breathing thing.

Suddenly John stopped.

"Look back," he said.

Andy looked back. Down below­­now seemingly so far away­­he saw the campfire, now little more than a feeble, flickering spark. The voices, once so deafening, were more like whispers that seemed to echo from the bottom of a well. The heat and blinding smoke were gone-only darkness and fresh coolness pressed against his tingling skin.

"Now look up," John said.

Andy looked up. From the place in which stood he could see the stars were burning brighter, and that they seemed even to have multiplied in just a handful of mere minutes. They covered all the sky like sundropped, twinkling sparks on an unbroken field of snow.

It was not long before he noticed other changes. When they again began to walk, he heard the crunching of his shoes upon the gravel (each crunch sounded slightly different), and felt the stones themselves beneath his soles; he inhaled the freshened scents of moistened pine, and loam, and air; the stars, so far away, winked through the needly-canopy above, and seemed to watch and follow him as he moved.

Narrowing his eyes, Andy strained to see into the circumambient darkness down below. He could see nothing. But he could hear and feel, with increasing sensitivity, the interweaving of his breathing with the motion of the breeze that ruffled, breath-like, all around him. And suddenly, for an instant, it seemed as if the breeze had moved inside him, or as if his breath was merging with the breeze. Suddenly he felt dizzy. His pulse kicked in his neck. It was like walking into a cave! He shut his eyes and followed John with his ears.

Having stumbled up the road for several minutes, the two young men at last emerged from the whispering cave of trees, and found themselves beneath an open, cloudless sky. And it was here that they ceased walking, sitting down instead upon a rock from which they could survey the whole of the valley down below. From their new vantage point they could behold the dark face of the lake, as well as the roof of an old and rotting cabin which slouched between them and their friends, and which only fitfully was illumined by glowing fingerlicks of the fire. The blaze itself, however, was now completely lost among the trees, while the raucous, carefree voices had long since been suppressed and smothered by the distance and the breeze, as well as by the sounds of the companions' own more loudly driven breath. And so it was that the two young men sat and stared, each facing slightly different ways, at everything they could see. They stared up at the quiet stars (and saw a falling star) and they beheld once more the moon, still rising higher in the sky, no longer so obscured by the great, thick stands of pine.

John spoke first, shaking that vastness and that silence with human words.

"It looks the exact same size, doesn't it?" he said, nodding slightly at Earth's satellite in the air.

Andy looked at the moon, then at his companion. He said nothing. He wondered if John was making another joke. He seemed to be smiling slightly.

"And what happened to our friends?" John continued, as if Andy had answered him. "We can't see them, can't hear them. We just moved a few hundred yards away from them-and it's as if they don't exist! But the moon: she's 380,000 kilometers away and we still see her no matter where we walk. Always the same."

"As long as we stay outside, you mean," said Andy with a smile, finally deigning to speak. (And ignoring the eccentricity of referring to the moon as "she.") "And also as long as the sky stays clear­­and as long as our eyesight stays good."

"And as long as we are alive," John added flatly.

"And as long as the moon is still there­­as you say, someday it won't be."

For several seconds John and Andy sat in silence. John seemed lost in thought, staring fixedly, almost reverentially, at the moon, as if expecting it to do or say something. Andy, meanwhile, watched it too, though he also observed John out of the corner of his eye. (And once glanced over at him directly)

Finally, becoming uncomfortable with the silence, he said, "Back there you claimed that nothing is permanent. I was wondering­­did you mean that? I hope you don't mind my asking."

John shook his head, but was silent for several moments before responding.

"Yes. I suppose I did," he at last allowed.

"Nothing?" said Andy. "Not even a mother's love?"

John smiled grimly.

"Depends on the mother," he said. "But, seriously, a mother's love can't outlast a mother, can it?"

Taken aback by this question­­as well as by John's almost mocking demeano­­Andy blinked in surprise.

"I don't know," he answered. "I was kind of joking when I said that. But maybe it does, you know. Some people would certainly say so."

"What would you say?"

"I would say I don't know-but I'd hope so."

"Fair enough," John nodded. "Any other questions? Stocks, bonds, World Series? Issues with your girlfriend?"

Andy shrugged. Talking to John was often strange, especially when he got in one of his peculiar, supposedly profound moods. At such times John never completely made sense. He never totally revealed what he was thinking, would make incomprehensible comments or claims, and would often argue, it seemed, for the sake of argument itself. Worst of all, he would sometimes seem to be laughing secretly at everyone around him-as if they were too stupid to understand him and the mysteries he beheld. He was in one of those moods right now, and Andy, with a frown of annoyance, thought that he could almost hear him laughing even then....

Suddenly, in the middle of these thoughts, Andy found himself falling into a memory: he remembered his mother-how she dried his hair with a towel when he was a little boy, and how it spun around him like a whirlwind. He remembered her smell; her pressing him close to her. The strength of the memory was uncanny. The next instant he felt mildly annoyed. The instant after that, he found, to his surprise, that he did have a question for John.

"I have a question after all," he therefore abruptly, and rather loudly, announced. "About this change thing: if you are right and nothing is permanent, then how can you say there is good and evil for instance? Or truth? If nothing is permanent then that means nothing is stable, that nothing has a firm foundation: everything, according to what you have said, would be baseless and meaningless, because there could be no permanent standards. Even a mother's love would be empty­­and love itself would be dead."

John turned his head and stared at him.

"What in God's name have you been reading?" he demanded incredulously. "You should probably stick to engineering!"

In the darkness Andy blushed.

"Why?" he asked. "Was it a stupid question?"

John shook his head.

"No. I don't think it was. It's just...."

"Just what?" Andy demanded.

John glared at the ground next to Andy's left foot.

"Well, all right," he said at last. "Let's look at it. If we must."

"Let's."

"Very well. First of all, I need to know what you mean to discuss exactly. Are we talking about science or morality?"

"Um.... Both... I suppose."

"Well, science is not really so difficult-it's only the product of our human reason: it's as true as our reason is, right? Of course saying this raises the possibility that human reason isn't actually 'true,' that it doesn't really correspond with "real" reality. But if this was the case, how could we know it? Science is based upon faith in human reason; faith that human reason is somehow in harmony with what we might call the Great Reason of the universe. If we do not enjoy this harmony, then that means we're hopelessly trapped in an opaque, reflective bubble of falsehood. But as I said, we could never really know this, even if it were true. Reason can't demonstrate reason is false­­if it could, then reason would be true, but that's a paradox. "

"But that doesn't mean that science doesn't ­­or can't potentially­­give us a reliable, permanent view of the universe."

"Well, maybe it does. Maybe what science sees really is something like what really is. If we do enjoy that harmony I was talking about, then, in time, perhaps we can discover the real truth about things in the world by means of the scientific method, which is just the fundamental principles of human reason objectified and conscientiously applied to theories and things. Maybe we have already discovered many truths, though perhaps we're not positive about them since, after all, we have yet to see the big picture. Because until then, really, we could never know for sure. Just because things happen to be a certain way now­­or in this particular, limited place­­that doesn't mean they will be that way in the future or were that way in the past. And, you know, maybe it all never really had to be this way in the first place; maybe everything could have easily been different? Maybe our universe is just one kind of universe amongst an infinite number of universes, all different, all coming into existence and all dying and there's no more real reason for any one of them to exist than any other. The point is, I suppose, can you really understand anything­­ let alone know you understand anything­­without understanding everything? Maybe what we don't know invalidates whatever it is we do know. So maybe science is a crock."

Andy stared into the darkness, not feeling particularly enlightened by this exchange. Meanwhile, the moon, continuing its journey into the sky, was rising, a perfect circle, over the world.

After a pause of perhaps a minute Andy spoke again: "Why don't we just say that scientific knowledge is at best approximate knowledge­­also that, in any case, we have little choice but to work with it and pursue it? It's like in a trial: have we found a reasonable doubt? I don't think so. In fact, I think we've got a lot clues which should lead us to think we're on the right track. Maybe we've got a long ways to go-but it doesn't seem unreasonable to say we're on the right track. Look at all that science has uncovered and helped create. What other view of the world has flown people from America to Europe in less than a day, or found a cure for Polio, or put a man on the moon? That's got to count for something. At least that's what I think."

In response to this John at first said nothing, but only smiled up into sky.

"Very well," he then agreed, "on the basis of failing to find a reasonable doubt we'll convict science­­and human reason­­of bringing us closer to the truth. Satisfied?"

"Yes," said Andy. "But there's something else too."

"Oh?"

"There's the question of morality."

"Ah," John said. "Of course. I suppose that has to fit in there somehow too. How do you suggest we go about it?"

"I say we cut right to the chase. Answer this question: Do you believe in God?"

John's eyes widened in mock surprise.

"Believe in God?" he asked. "That's supposed to mean, I suppose, do I think He exists? But it's an odd way to frame the question: because generally one does not believe in things one does not know exist. The question's assuming the answer to the question it's asking. Because I can believe in my father or my mother or my friends or myself, or even my country I suppose-or even humanity as a whole. After all, I know that they are real and I have a fairly clear idea, I hope, of what they're like. I have experiences of them from which to judge. But God? What experiences do I have of God?"

"You're playing games," Andy remarked sternly.

"Well, think about what you say, then! But assuming you just mean by that question do I think God exists, I would have to say I don't know­­but also, to be honest, I'd have to say I'm pessimistic. Assuming, that is, you mean God in the sense of being a magnified human."

"A magnified human? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean just this: the popular view of God is that He is somehow an emotional being who loves us and cares for us and has a plan for us, and that we, in fact, are his central concern. They call him Father and believe they can have a personal relationship with him. But all these attributes-love, fatherhood, etc., are all uniquely human things-at least in the sense in which people mean these terms to be taken. Because they don't mean fatherhood as in the relationship between a father cockroach and his offspring, nor do they mean by the term love the love a dog has for his owner. They mean these things in a very human sense­­and if this is not what these terms are meant to mean then tell me what in the world do they mean? Unless we take them to some extent literally, they're meaningless! And so that is why I said that God is like a magnified human."

Andy shook his head.

"That's sort of interesting," he granted, "but not really where I wanted to go. I think you've taken us off the track with your... semantics."

"Well where do you want to go, then? Lead on, sweet prince and I shall follow!"

"You better...."

"So," Andy began again, "if you don't believe in that kind of God then what kind of God do you believe in? Is there no God at all?"

"I don't know," John answered, moonlight gleaming off his hair like a soft halo. "Maybe there's a kind of Aristotelian unmoved mover­­but who can really say? It's a paradox any way you cut it. Because how can something come from nothing? Similarly, how can there be something whose existence is itself uncaused? Whether this uncaused cause is anthropomorphic or not is irrelevant to the basic issue of how such a thing could possibly be, though why it should-or needs to be­­anthropomorphic I can't imagine. I think the answer, if there even is an answer, is incomprehensible, is beyond the power of the human mind to comprehend. It may be there, but we can't see it. It would be like a dog trying to comprehend the workings of the space shuttle. What else can you say?"

"But then what about morality?" Andy pressed. "If God is dead, and this seems to be what you're suggesting, then everything is permitted and there can be no Good and Evil, no real meaning at all. In the kind of universe you're propounding, life would be meaningless! Surely you can see that!"

John sighed. He kicked at the rock upon which they sat a few times, then turned and gazed intently into Andy's eyes: "If you want to know my personal opinion­­and you do­­life is meaningless."

Andy recoiled from his companion in shock.

"Meaningless?" he cried. "How can you say that? I've seen you donate money to causes, give five-dollar bills to beggars! You get angry about politics and world affairs­­and individuals too! You're a vegetarian for God's sake! How can you do all these things and say that life is meaningless?"

John smiled at his friend's dismay.

"I mean," he added, "that it's meaningless in the cosmic sense-in the sense that there is no meaning imposed on us from outside. Not that I mean 'imposed' to sound negative­­for most people, myself included, some kind of divinely mandated meaning can sound pretty intoxicating, particularly when coupled with an all-powerful, all-loving, perfect God. Who wouldn't want that?"

"Then why don't you believe it?" Andy demanded.

"Because I care about the truth. I don't want to believe in a lie, even if it feels good."

"But people who believe in God aren't lying!"

"But they're not telling the truth either! But listen, I'm not saying they're doing it intentionally-though, to be perfectly honest, I would be chary about throwing out personal motives altogether. No one's view of things can be entirely unselfish in the end. We all get into a certain pleasing rut, so to speak, and get caught up in the habit of mainly seeking out that evidence which will support our view while, simultaneously, we attempt to debunk or trivialize or ignore evidence or experiences to the contrary. It is easy to get trapped. It happens to me all the time. This is why we must be ever vigilant-and never turn our back on ourselves."

Andy glowered in frustration. This was just the sort of beside-the-point commentary that made talking to John so hard.

"But as usual," he said, "you still haven't answered my question. Because if life is meaningless in the cosmic sense then how can it be meaningful in what we might call the microscopic sense? Isn't that like trying to build castles in the air?"

"It is! It's precisely that!"

"But how is that possible?"

"How is anything possible?" cried John, throwing up his hands. "How are you possible, how am I possible? Everything is like a castle floating in the air-and a sand castle at that! Because when you really think about it, the only logical answer is that there really shouldn't be anything at all!"

"But there is something!" shouted Andy in exasperation.

"Exactly!" exclaimed John, stabbing at Andy triumphantly with his finger. "Exactly! And that's the point! Even when we admit the universe is meaningless in the cosmic sense, we're still here! Andy, it's so incredible! And you know what? Sometimes when a man comes to this realization about how nothing existing is the only logical answer he almost expects himself to suddenly vanish-as if he had kicked away the supports which had previously upheld both the universe and himself! And so some have done this-they've kicked away all the supports! But guess what?

"What?"

John's arms flew open wide, as if he were trying to embrace the earth and sky.

"It's all still here," he cried. "The world's still here, I'm still here, the stars are still here, the moon­­the whole universe is still here! And so here I am, sitting here on this rock with you at this moment having just said the universe is meaningless. I expect the entire thing to come crashing down-but it doesn't! I expect to vanish into nothingness­­but I don't! So the moment I don't vanish I'm faced with a question­­a question which is entirely unavoidable, a question which I am completely and utterly incapable of escaping. Do you know what that question is?"

Andy stared back wonderingly at John, whose eyes, by now, were glowing feverishly, while his breath was coming in quick and almost violent gasps. Above John's head, meanwhile, Andy beheld the moon-the seemingly ever-silent, never-moving-when-you're-looking-at-it, always ascending moon. Instead of answering John immediately, however, he took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Oddly, he almost thought that he could hear his mother's voice inside his head. She was singing. Suddenly he was calm, a strange sense of confidence and security warmly flowing through him.

"No," he said.

"What next?" exclaimed John triumphantly, leaping to his feet. "What do I do next? I've got fifty, maybe sixty years of life left: what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do with it? What? Tell me!"

"You're asking me what you should do with your life?" Andy demanded incredulously while gazing up at his seemingly intoxicated companion in mild alarm.

"Or your own if that's easier," John replied. "But first you must accept, at least in theory­­and for just the next few minutes­­that the universe is meaningless in the cosmic sense. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Andy softly. "At least I'll try."

"Good," said John. And suddenly a smile flashed across his face and he sat down again beside his friend. And now, as they continued speaking, they instinctively leaned closer together, and the rest of the world beyond their voices and their minds seemed to fade without a trace away.

"So," said John, narrowing his eyes in concentration. "You're sitting here with me right now-on this rock in the Black Hills in the middle of nowhere. You have just come to the realization that the universe is meaningless. What do you do?

Andy took a deep breath, considering carefully.

"Well," he said, "obviously I can do anything I want. There are no real laws so I could, say... kill you and take your wallet."

John nodded.

"That's true, "he said. "You could do that­­if you really need three dollars. But of course, there are the local authorities who haven't heard that everything is meaningless and so they could still arrest you and you could end up spending the rest of your life in prison."

"And yet," Andy countered swiftly, "what would be so bad about that? If it's all meaningless it doesn't matter where I am. I may as well just take the risk and kill you and take your money."

"True," John­­just as swiftly­­retorted, "but if it's all meaningless why would you kill me and take my wallet in the first place? If being nice to people is meaningless then surely being mean to them is equally meaningless."

"Okay. I guess I would just commit suicide."

"Yes," John agreed, "you could certainly do that. Though of course committing suicide is just as meaningless as living."

Andy blinked momentarily with surprise.

"Well," he said, "yeah.... But at least I wouldn't suffer."

With this, however, John's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

"What was that?" he demanded, his voice almost quivering with intensity. "What did you just say?"

"I said at least I wouldn't suffer."

"But what does suffering mean?" John countered. "Suffering is meaningless!"

"Yeah," Andy admitted with a grimace. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. I guess I wouldn't know what to do.... Maybe I'd do nothing."

"Sorry!" John laughed, shaking his finger vigorously at his companion. "Doing nothing is just as meaningless a choice as any other!"

"So what? Absolutely anything I could possibly do is meaningless?"

"It sure looks that way."

"And yet it seems a matter of simple logic that I can't help but do something...."

"That's absolutely right!" agreed John. "We seem to have tripped ourselves up on another paradox. Because if life is meaningless, then any choice we could possibly make must be equally meaningless: there is just no way out of it. But the fact is that we are already here, and so we just don't have the luxury of simply vanishing without having to do anything. We have to do something."

"So then what do we­­I­­do?" Andy murmured confusedly. "It's a paradox, as you say."

"I agree. Let's think about it for a few minutes."

And so they did.

Finally John spoke: "Now, Andy... earlier you had said something about committing suicide to avoid suffering, a course of action­­and a form of motivation­­which we both decided was just as meaningless as everything else­­including, I suppose, pleasure?"

Andy nodded, "Yes. I guess pleasure must also be meaningless if everything else is."

"So that means that pain and pleasure are, in a sense, the same thing?"

"I suppose-something like that. Though it sounds strange to hear it put that way."

"I agree, it does sound strange. So strange that it deserves a closer look. So here­­let's take a closer look at it by way of an example. And let's put our particular example in what some might consider extreme terms. Do you want to hear it?"

Andy smiled.

"Of course!" he said. "Please! You're torturing me! If you have a solution let's get to it!"

"Okay," John answered. "Listen carefully. After you realize that life is meaningless you are given three choices­­and you must choose one because, as we have already agreed, not choosing is not an option."

"Right. So what are my choices?"

"The first choice will be a manner of life that the ignorant would call a life of torment. You will be cast into a prison cell without lights, heating, or air conditioning. The cell is full of biting bugs and centipedes and such-like beasts. You will be fed raw human intestines for food­­"

"­­Ugh!" Andy groaned, interrupting his companion in mid-sentence. "Do you have to be so grotesque?"

"What do you mean grotesque?" John responded, utterly straight-faced. "We have experienced the Death of Grotesquery! Everything is meaningless, remember? There's no difference between human intestines and chocolate cake. May I continue?"

"I'm sure you will.... Meanwhile I'll try to get that image out of my head."

"You can try," John said. "All right then. So you will be fed raw human intestines every day, as I said. These raw human intestines will be delivered, say, through a chute into your cell. In addition to having to eat raw human intestines, you will never see another human face or hear another human voice. You will never leave the cell. You will never go outdoors. Every day, meanwhile, electric currents will be run through the walls and floor and ceiling of the cell, causing intense but meaningless sensations of pain. The temperature of your humble abode will vary from extremely hot­­say 130 degrees with high humidity­­to extremely cold-somewhere around freezing-but never anywhere in between. Finally, we will decree that you survive here seventy years­­into your nineties in fact. Then, at last, after seventy years in your meaningless cell eating raw human intestines while being devoured by bugs and roasted, frozen, and electrocuted twenty-four hours a day, you will die and be gone and no longer exist."

"And so what are my other two choices?" Andy inquired despondently.

"Your next choice is suicide."

"Ah, thank God!"

"Now wait a moment!" John cried, grabbing Andy by the shoulder.

"What?"

"You keep breaking our agreement concerning the meaninglessness of everything! You don't thank God, or anything for that matter, in a meaningless universe! In a meaningless universe, life in the cell is no less preferable than suicide­­isn't that true if it is true that everything is meaningless?"

"I suppose, but-"

"-No buts! Either the universe is meaningless or it isn't! And don't worry, we'll review that question later on. But for now I want to complete our survey of the options. The second option, as I was saying, is suicide. That's quite straightforward I think and we can probably move on­­if you have no objection?"

"I have no objection," said Andy. "Let's move on to my third option."

"Your third option is this: you again will live seventy years, but instead of living in the cell you will live here at the cabin along the shores of this lake, beneath this moon and these stars, and with our friends and myself and your family and your girlfriend, who­­for the sake of our argument­­becomes your wife."

"Ooo­­she'd like that! What else?"

"Let's also say that there are still many communities in the surrounding hills and that everyone gets along well together. Every person is free to work as much or as little as he or she pleases-although, presumably, there will in any case be certain minimal duties to perform, such as cutting wood and making meals and the like. You're the woodsman, you tell me. But most of your time will be spent talking with your friends and family, paddling in your canoes, and visiting neighboring towns where scientists and artists are learning and creating and people are always doing the sorts of things that people are wont to do. You eat lots of good food, have lots of good friends, and, dare I say it, enjoy lots of good sex with your good lady wife-which means you will most likely produce many children, who no doubt will be seen running and playing in these woods here, as it is in their nature to do, oblivious to philosophies or religions or what have you."

"What else can I do besides cut wood and make babies?" asked Andy excitedly. "Not that I'm complaining!"

"What else would you like to do?"

"I would like to be a space explorer."

"Would you like to go to Mars?"

"Yes! Mars would be wonderful! Or one of the moons of Jupiter!"

"Or maybe other planets around other stars? Why not?"

"Why not indeed!"

"Maybe you'd even find other planets with life on them-even intelligent life!"

"It's possible! You know I just heard a theory the other day about how­­"

"­­Wait, wait, wait!" cried John, laughing and lifting up his hands. "Let's not leave the track just yet! Suffice it to say you can do whatever you want. I suppose we can't really say whether it would be possible for you to go to another star, but surely you could, in the next seventy years, theoretically be able to travel to another planet in our solar system. But this doesn't need to be completely realistic­­only a theoretical possibility. But let's move on to the end of your life."

"What is it like?"

"It is quiet and painless. Doctors are there to provide you with medication to minimize your suffering. You are surrounded by your children and grandchildren, maybe even your great-grandchildren. And so that is how you die. And when you have died you are gone and you go to the same place, so to speak, as that other man in the cell and the suicide-you all, as they say, return to dust. So, Andy, these are your three options. What do you suppose happens next?"

Andy smiled as he replied: "I suppose I have to choose."

"Exactly!" his friend exclaimed. "You must decide! However, you must simultaneously remember that, since everything is meaningless, no choice is really any more proper or true or better than any other."

"Hmm."

"So what do you choose? Behind door Number 1: the cell; behind door Number 2: the noose; behind door Number 3: the cabin, missus, and Mars. Which is it going to be? Remember­­you have to choose!"

Andy smiled slyly in the soft and bluish moonlight.

"You're going to yell at me for this," he said, "but I choose door Number 3."

"Door Number 3?" John exclaimed, for all the world appearing utterly astonished at Andy's reply. "Why Number 3? How can you justify that choice?"

"But how can I justify not choosing door Number 3?" Andy demanded desperately. "As far as I can tell, I have no choice at all! I could never choose door Number 1-to do so would be sheer insanity. And when having to choose between doors Number 2 and Number 3, why not choose Number 3 if we're all going to the same place no matter what we do? I'd rather have Number 3 than nothing at all!"

"So what you're saying is that Number 3 is better than Number 2?"

"Yes. That's absolutely true."

"And Number 2 is better than Number 1?"

"One would have to be a madman to say otherwise."

"Then you must be a madman, because if everything is meaningless then it doesn't­­cannot­­really matter! The only rational thing to do is put the options in a hat and pull one out at random."

Andy, however, shook his head.

"You know," he said, "I'm not sure what you mean by 'really doesn't matter' anymore­­what does 'really' mean? Because as far as I can tell, no matter how meaningless I try to imagine the universe being, I just can't imagine my being indifferent to which 'door' I choose. If I could be indifferent to it, I don't think I'd be human­­I wouldn't be anything."

John nodded thoughtfully.

"So what you're saying in a sense is that your life, at least as far as you're concerned, could only be meaningless if it didn't exist?"

"It seems so," Andy answered in amazement. "Because that's the only way my human nature, dare I say it, could not get in the way of a clear judgment. But of course, if I have no life then I don't exist which means I can't choose at all-in which case there is no question and no problem. So you're right, it seems: to exist is to be, somehow, meaningful, even if the universe is meaningless on what we have been calling the cosmic level. Even if, to make it explicit, there is no God."

John was smiling.

"Isn't that amazing?"

"Yes­­I'm almost feeling a little breathless!"

"But is it all that simple though?"

"What do you mean?" Andy asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

"What if," John answered with grin, "I gave you a fourth option?"

"I almost don't want to know!" Andy groaned.

"First we need to rewrite option Number 3 a little bit, so it is less Edenic and more realistic. Let's say you can have a wife and kids and family and friends, but you will live in abject poverty and be unable to afford health care or be able to adequately feed, clothe, or house your family. In short, life will be a struggle for all your days. You'll have some good times, maybe, but you will also definitely have bad times too, and probably a lot more of them. So that's the new choice Number 3."

"And what's Number 4?"

"Number 4 will be just like the old Number 3­­so you'll get to have all your old pleasures and avoid having to work fourteen hours a day for a pittance and live in such terrible conditions."

"What's the catch?"

"The catch is that if you choose option Number 4, you must inflict severe suffering, perhaps even death, on others in order to get the good things you desire."

"Must I inflict suffering on others?" Andy asked with a wince.

"No," John answered. "It's just going to be one option among four. You're still completely free to choose any one you like. So what will it be now?"

For perhaps a minute Andy thought carefully.

"You know, John," he finally said, pronouncing his words slowly, and with care, "I think I'll stick with Number 3... even though you've soured it."

"How brave of you!" John exclaimed. "But tell me, why did you choose Number 3 when you just as well could have chosen Number 4 and had everything?"

"I didn't want to hurt anyone I guess."

"You're hurting your own family-but I suppose that really isn't the point is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the point is that you are taking the infliction of suffering to be bad­­why? Remember, the universe is still meaningless in the cosmic sense: there is no God who's going to reward or punish anybody for what they do. Besides, why do you care what someone else is feeling? Why should I care? Why should we not live our lives for ourselves and enjoy it to the greatest extent possible? If that means slaughtering millions, so what? Why not?"

Andy frowned in frustration. Despite all his efforts, it seemed he could not put an answer into words.

"I don't know," he finally said. "It just doesn't seem... right."

"But what do you mean by 'seem right?'" John pressed, "It is neither right nor wrong, it seems! You have your own pleasure to worry about-not other people's!"

"But what if hurting other people makes me unhappy?"

"Why would it make you unhappy?"

For several seconds Andy struggled, thinking with all his might. He felt an answer was there­­hiding its face, shyly, somewhere inside him.

"Well," he said, slowly, at last, "maybe because I just like people. And because no one... no one likes to hurt or destroy what they like-if that weren't true I would destroy myself! And so if other people are a means to a pleasurable end for me, then why should I harm them and make myself feel worse?"

John nodded thoughtfully, considering these words.

"This is very interesting," he said. "So what you're saying is that hurting people is not right or wrong in a sense in and of itself­­it just makes you feel worse and therefore you should not do it."

"Yes," Andy firmly replied, warming to his position. "It's the same principle as that behind the door options: I want what I know is better­­better defined as more pleasurable, or at least less painful. That's the standard we must use to define right and wrong I think."

"So you're a hedonist?"

"In a sense it seems so."

"But all this sounds so awfully selfish! You don't abuse your wife, for example, because that would make you feel bad! Don't you care about your wife?"

"Of course I do!" Andy heatedly exclaimed. "That's precisely why it would make me feel so bad to harm her! That's precisely why I would want to protect her! She's not just a means to an end-or rather, she can't be an means unless I also see her as a end. Because, really, I don't simply find my happiness through her­­I find it in her­­in all that she is, even!"

John laughed.

"You're getting a little too deep for me there, Andy," he said. "But I'll take your word for it. And maybe we can discuss love more carefully some other time-maybe after you've been married a while when you can tell me what it's about. Anyway, what I want to hear from you now is a little more about why you won't go around raping and robbing people."

"Well I suppose I feel that to do so would, on the whole, be less (far less I would guess) pleasurable and more painful than not doing it. Those are ugly and terrible things, and so I think that, faced with the choice of raping and pillaging and not raping and pillaging, I would have to choose, as you might say, door Number 2, which is not doing these things. I would rather do those things which I naturally find more pleasurable, while doing those door Number 1 things, I think, would actually cause me pain. So much pain, in fact, that they would probably poison all my other pleasures. So even assuming I gained anything from behaving badly at all, I would, on balance, lose far more than I would gain!"

"But of course you're not saying it's all as obvious as your first three-door choice?"

"No, not at all. I'm not really explaining it very well. It certainly isn't something one can necessarily grasp all at once, but I think there's a great truth lurking in there. One needs, perhaps, a kind of second sight to see it-yet I think it's there nonetheless."

"So what about those individuals, and there are lots of them, who seem to enjoy killing and robbing and the like? They must enjoy these things if they're doing them. And everyone, as we know, enjoys money and other kinds of material profit which such actions can procure."

"But are they really happy? If you gave them the choice of two doors: behind door Number 1 the kind of life they are now leading, and behind door Number 2 the kind of life I would like to lead, one more resembling the idyllic existence here at the cabin (with, of course, the occasional trip into space), do you really think they wouldn't choose my kind of life over theirs? If, that is, they could really know what each was like and had an completely free choice?"

John nodded thoughtfully

"That's an interesting thought," he said.

"But there are grey areas, I think," Andy continued. "Like in the option above where I was forced to live in suffering but could lessen my suffering by harming others. Can I really prove to someone that they would be happier not hurting anyone and suffering in some way than in hurting others and avoiding that suffering?"

"I don't know­­I would hope so. But I seriously doubt those who harm others for their own personal gain are really better off than those who, in the same circumstances, don't. And what I'm about to say is perhaps what you were driving at before. Because by doing such things, though these people gain money or a kind of pleasure perhaps, I think it very likely they are losing other things which are far more valuable­­things necessary to their having any chance for true happiness. For instance, maybe committing murder takes a degree of selfishness and obliviousness to the value and feelings of others that makes experiencing true love­­truly meaningful interconnections with others­­impossible? Or at least far less likely or significant or pleasurable? They might gain some material or sexual external advantage, but they simultaneously would lose something far more valuable internally, because these things are not truly compatible. Maybe cruelty and selfishness are directly proportional to unhappiness? Maybe, in short, you can't brutalize others without brutalizing yourself?"

"But then why do they do such things-if it doesn't make them happier?"

"Maybe they only think it makes them happier. After all, people can be addicted to drugs, and the taking of those drugs can appear to make them happier, even though surely it is almost always­­if not always­­the case that they are really unhappy, and that their use of drugs will ultimately only contribute to that unhappiness. This would mean that they are not so much becoming happier as they are medicating or suppressing, for a time, their pain. Maybe drug addiction and evil actions are the signs and signatures of unhappiness, not expressions or sources of joy?"

Andy nodded approvingly.

"You speak well, John," he said.

"I therefore suspect," continued John, "that what we call evil actions are a kind of last resort for people who have no hope for real happiness or who are in some other way frustrated or ignorant. Perhaps it seems more preferable to them to harm others than merely to suffer by themselves in silence. Maybe, if you have no hope, no love, no knowledge or experience of what is truly good­­if you're trapped in a lightless cell full of biting insects so to speak­­extreme selfishness and indifference to others is the only leg you have left upon which to stand. Maybe this is all that keeps you from total despair-or even suicide."

"Yes­­I think we're on to something," Andy said approvingly. "But surely our theory needs a lot more work."

"Of course," John smiled. "But don't we all?"

"To sum up then," said John, "although it seems the whole question is rather complicated to say the least, we can say that there definitely is a kind of 'meaning' in the sense that we human beings have a nature which naturally desires certain things and fears certain other things, and that this is in fact the case independently of any cosmic meaning or lack of cosmic meaning. It seems that our own human meaning, if I can call it that, is sufficient­­not ideal, of course, by any means, but sufficient nonetheless. It is enough, in other words, to potentially provide us with a compass with which we can begin to navigate the course of our lives. And I for one (if you don't mind me getting a little evangelical here), think it is the duty of ones such as you and I to consider the question of a possible 'best direction' very deeply, paradoxes, grey areas, confusions and all, and to try to bring to others the good news about the things that truly make human beings happy. Not, of course, that we've figured it all out! But I do think we're off to a fine start. We've at least succeeded in establishing the existence of better and worse kinds of lives. Now we 'only' need to refine our theory further, and bring these better types of lives into sharper, cleaner focus. Surely there are many elements which constitute the greatest happiness, though two of the most important­­as we probably can agree on here tonight­­must be love and knowledge. And you know what? I think I have a third. Because knowledge, I strongly believe, is meant to be shared, and maybe it should be shared out of a sense of something at least akin to love. And so it could be exactly this kind of thing­­this spreading of good news, this sharing of things one has found to be useful and good with others­­that is itself one of those great pleasures which we would all be wise to seek. But I suppose this will all have to wait for later, because we have obviously bitten off more than we can chew. And besides­­what timing!­­I hear our companions stumbling up the road, calling out our names. And so let's rise and greet them. But first, let us agree to work together for the cause of human happiness!"

And so saying John stood, pulling Andy up along with him by his arm, and they both smiled broadly at each other, laughing, and vigorously shook hands to seal their pact. Then they turned and immediately ran back down the road to meet their host of friends, who were staggering and screaming and losing their way in the forest. And soon they all were running, tripping, yelling, and laughing through the woods together, which no longer seemed so dark. For their eyes eventually had adjusted to the gloom that at first seemed so impenetrable, while the moon, having risen high above them, cast down her silver rays through the blue boughs of the trees, and freely splashed her light upon the cool dark earth as well as on the faces of the joyous friends. And the companions ran and laughed and played through the forest for what seemed to them a long time, until finally, exhausted, they returned to the decomposing cabin above the lake. And here, one by one, they fell asleep. And they slept together in silence.

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