In front of my window looking out through my little garden people walk by on the street. They probably have a destination: visiting family or friends, shopping or simply walk. What will their thoughts be? How do they stand in their life’s? Would they think about the meaning of things? Or are they only concerned to survive life? Would they contemplate the existence of themselves and that of the world that surrounds them?
Meaning is something for man to pursue. Man is looking for something and why they’re walking on the face of this earth. Why they are.
Is that thinking about the meaning of things something of the last millennia? Would the primal man, of take away 12,000 years ago, have had those thoughts?
Personally, I think that is a wild assumption, that they were only concerned with survival in the literal sense of the word.
The complexity of the world we live in has increased exponentially. We are in a transition to industry 4.0: the fusion of the physical, digital and biological world. It is the integration of AI, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), 3-D Printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing and other rapidly emerging technologies.
In the course of all these developments, the role of man remains greatly underexposed. We are the creators, the innovators and the drivers, but we lose sight of ourselves during that dynamic process. The meaninglessness of things that will be intertwined with our daily lives in the coming decades makes our lives confusing and also extremely complex and vulnerable.
We try to measure the meaning of our existence by the intensity of use of all these technologies. We lose ourselves in technical infrastructures that will soon dominate our lives to a large extent, but also make us directly dependent on them.
The meaninglessness of things: All those technologies- all that wealth and luxury — would it make sense? This is may be a temporary pleasure. Technologies that give us new satisfaction, without making ourselves realise that these technologies must contribute to greater happiness and meaning. We are building our lives and making ourselves dependent on technologies, while we have to let our luck get in line with acquiring new technologies. Happiness in this, however, is a stretchy concept.
The world surrounding us and the ecological systems in it are further intruding into our thinking that we are heavily dependent on it. While we neglect these systems even further, we need to realize more that the earth has produced us, but neglect our mother, mother earth, by behaving like annoying spoiled children.
As long as we are at the mercy of the meaninglessness of things and wallow in power and wealth, we will encounter ourselves. Perhaps we will see that the meaning of things is hidden in the realization that we are an indivisible part of the ecological system of this earth.
I believe that, in my ignorance and lack of sufficient knowledge, we must subordinate our technologies to our sense of existence. Current and future technologies must be intertwined with the ecological systems of this earth. We must innovate nature in our existence so that, for example, outbreaks of pandemics can be minimized. The increasing density of man with the animals and all those other forms of life on this earth, we will have to be able to merge with the further penetrating technologies in a symbiotic form, without excluding one or the other.
Somewhere in between will be, out of our toolbox with our available technologies, those things embedded, so that that alone will support and enrich that symbiotic life.
Might in there hidden the sense of things?
Before we let the meaninglessness of things continue, we must think carefully about the meaning of things in order to come to an earth, which we can pass on to our children without shame.
