It’s a rather arrogant question when you think about it, as if everything that makes up the universe is supposed to have some neat, tidy, rational, and for humans, powerful reason for being. How full of yourself do you need to be to continue asking this question? Squirrels don’t ask it. Rocks don’t ask it. Neither wind, nor musical notes, nor joy, nor sorrow ask it. How much must one’s self esteem be suffering in order to need an answer to such a useless question?
Sam Harris has even rededicated himself to the study of neuroscience to try to better understand why so many of us fill this void with religion. In doing so, he has proposed groundbreaking ideas in the pursuit of ethics, and yet he seems to ignore the fact that Walt Whitman re-phrased the question so we could all understand it, and provided an answer over a century ago.
In his poem O Me! O Life! Whitman puts into words the thoughts of the curious. I use that word because in a philosophical sense, curiosity certainly has its place. The problem as Harris and I see it comes when, in the absence of easy answers, we create systematic mythology and then try to get everyone to live according to it as though an answer exists, or is even necessary. Beyond philosophical consideration, the question serves no purpose. As such, Whitman asks and answers to such a degree that I am fascinated by the fact that we’re still even talking about it.
O Me! O Life!
By Walt Whitman
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
from Leaves of Grass (1892)
Even the non-English majors among us may recognize this poem as it was reintroduced into pop culture by the movie Dead Poets Society. More recently, Robin Williams’s voice repeats the movie character’s lines for a television commercial for iPads.
Harris's (no-longer, may he rest in peace) contemporary, Christopher Hitchens, notes that literature was far more suited to and effective at settling life's toughest questions than religion. His eloquence bears more than paraphrase:
...we (atheists) have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Shiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and -- since there is no other metaphor -- also the soul.
Had Hitch included Whitman in that quote from God is Not Great: How Religion Spoils Everything, I might not have been as compelled to create this 'blog entry, but who knows. It is, after all, Friday the 13th, the day of a "super full moon." I'm not sure what that even means, but it apparently hasn't happened in decades. If there's anything an atheist believes, it's that the powers of the universe are likely beyond our comprehension.
But this is not: The answer is clear, obvious, and only overlooked by fools who cannot see it in front of their faces, and who squander what time they have looking for it. It is this:
That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribue a verse.
Luth
Out
