The Meaning of Life and the Gods of the Three Peoples

As I finish up a long-form article about what "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything" means to our highly educated moderns, I find the need to reduce it all to a maxim, a maxim that reflects the different world views of the Three Peoples and their different gods.

So, the meaning of life, for People of the Subordinate Self, comes down to the will of the gods. Whatever the gods are deciding up on Mt. Olympus or as the spirits in the trees, everything on this Earth comes down to the capricious Will of the god in question. And, as we see in The Iliad, the gods tend not to agree among themselves. So God's Will may be the result of a dust-up in the halls of the immortals.

But for the People of the Responsible Self things are different. Because here the monotheistic God is not a capricious member of a court of the gods, but a perfect Creator of the world who has constructed a perfect set of divine laws to guide humans in the right path. Do you see the difference? Now life is not just a question of suffering under God's Will, but a question of understanding divine law and acting on it. Now life is not the Chaos of the will of the gods, but the Order of divine law.

As usual, the interesting situation is the People of the Creative Self. Because the idea now is that there is no God's Will, no divine law. No, things are not that simple. Now it is up to humans to figure it out for themselves. Notice that now we do not have God setting forth his laws but scientists discovering scientific laws; philosophers discovering the limits of reason; psychologists discovering the boundaries between genius and madness; artists stumbling into the music of the spheres. Life is no longer a question of just living God's law but the rather more challenging question of figuring out just what law will promote the welfare of mankind and -- here's a puzzler -- whether the welfare and mankind would be best served by no law at all!

Of course that is where things get complicated. Because it is clear that after you have figured it out for yourself you are faced with two options. Do you proclaim your discovery from the mountain top and demand that the whole world gets with the program? Or do you just live life according to your new wisdom, and tell people what you found out? Do you live your new meaning of life even if it means that the whole world gangs up against you as a heretic and a hater?

This is the difference between the Egoist Hero and the Sacrificial Hero. Your Marx is an Egoist Hero. Listen to me, pal, he says. I just solved the problem of the ages, that the capitalists are going to "immiserate" the workers, and the only way to stop it is to give power to chaps like me so we can stop the capitalists in their tracks and save the workers from evil exploitation.

So when Satan takes the Egoist Hero up into an exceeding high mountain and shows him the kingdoms of the world, and says "all these things will I give thee," he says, "Yeah! Revolution, Baby!"

But the Sacrificial Hero is different. He travels into the echoing caverns of the unconscious and slays the personal demons he finds there, and becomes a sadder and a wiser engine.

When he emerges from his Hero's journey he does not go up into the heavenly precincts of Sils-Maria or fancy Magic Mountain resorts, but simply lives his life, illuminated by the wisdom he has discovered on the boundary between Order and Chaos, and illuminating all around him with the light of his hard-won knowledge.

So, what does it all mean? It looks like we are reduced to the following aphorism:

How to find the meaning of life. For Subordinates, follow the gods' will; for Responsibles, follow God's divine law; for Creatives, figure it out for yourself and leave the rest of the world alone.

But maybe tomorrow I will have a better idea.