Does mankind have a purpose?

In my younger days I looked at mankind’s purpose as one loosely tied to the Christian religion. You live a good life, treat your fellow man fairly, and pass morals and values on to your children for the betterment of the future. Then in the end you will experience everlasting peace in heaven.

As I grew older and more skeptical about life, I have come to think a purpose for mankind is simply something we have made up to make us feel good about ourselves, and reason for us to believe there is something more special to humans other than just evolving faster than other animals.

Eventually, science shows us that all life on earth will end. So what purpose is there to be moral human beings other than from keeping survival of the fittest and a law of the jungle mentality from killing each other?

Black Swan wrote: »

Ancient Greek philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were associated with the Milesian School, and were some of the first philosophers to reject theological, dogma, myth, and superstitious explanations for naturally occurring phenomena. Although they were more concerned with cosmology, their early approaches were a precursor to the scientific method and its approaches to the description, explanation, and prediction of natural phenomena. Such an approach may examine the existence of humans and their purpose from that perspective; i.e., one contemporary species of many existing today. So if there is a purpose to life on Earth in its many forms, perhaps this purpose would explain the purpose of human life?

I logged in this morning and took a gander at this thread. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes? Names I haven’t heard in like a gazillion years... since my philosophy classes way back in those forgotten college days. I thought.. how much of an impact do these philosophers have on today’s thought?

So on my morning drive I was thinking about this thread, and U2’s I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For came on the radio. I thought it was kind of ironic as the song somewhat parallels the question of whether mankind has a purpose. Perhaps for the first time I really listened to the lyrics.



Deep stuff!

My mind then went off on another tangent. It does that often, probably as a result of excessive overindulgence in the latter part of the hippie years. (I apologize to taking this on a different tangent Black Swan, and if you think it deserves it’s own thread please create one).

So I got to thinking... Are musicians our modern day philosophers?

Philosophy is characterized as the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Who today, other than rock musicians, get these concepts of thought across to the masses? Is musical artistic statement not today’s modern philosophy? What more than music influences our formative years and often serves a backdoor guide through our journey of life?

Will history consider our generation’s philosophers to be a select group of young musician/poets who deliver their visions of existence and being in song? Hundreds of years from now will college students be learning in class about our generation's life situations and theory, usually portrayed in the form of hope, delivered by the likes of John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Pete Townshend of The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Bono of U2, and Michael Stipes of R.E.M.?