Nassir H. Sabah
The short answer to the question in the title is simply to address the most important existential question: what is the purpose and meaning of life?
In my career at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, I taught for more than 35 years courses on neuro-engineering, biomedical engineering, electronics, and electric circuits, have published more than 100 technical publications, mainly in neurophysiology, biophysics, and biomedical instrumentation, and have authored four books on electric circuits, electronics, and neuroscience. The administrative positions I held at the university allowed me to introduce several academic programs that opened new career paths for thousands of young men and women. That was highly gratifying but always left the nagging thought that it was not enough. Our students laboured for four years preparing for their professional careers, but for what purpose in life? Is it to make money, live affluently – a luxurious house, expensive cars, fancy clothing, ostentatious life-style – achieve recognition and fame, enjoy some form of happiness, raise a beautiful family, cherish social bonds of love and friendship, serve one’s community, or what? Most people set their own goals early in life and strive to pursue them, convinced of their worthiness. As a long-time educator, I felt I had to promulgate in simple language the answers that I find most persuasive and satisfying as to the purpose and meaning of life. The natural consequence of this urge was to write the book Spirituality Rekindled: The Quest for Serenity and Self-Fulfillment.
One might ask: should there be a purpose or meaning to our existence in the first place? Are we not just the result of a chance encounter between a sperm cell and an egg cell in a narrow, dark abdominal tube (the Fallopian tube)? Isn’t our destiny simply to be born, live our lives, enjoy what our circumstances allow, achieve what we able to achieve, then end up as lifeless corpses to be disposed of one way or another? Is human life, at the bottom of it, not just a matter of biological continuation of the species? Like human, like dog, or like rat? Does this make sense?
The fact of the matter is, no, this most definitely does not make sense. The result of the encounter between the sperm cell and the egg cell is a wondrous human being endowed with astonishing mental capacities such as: the ability to probe into the mysteries of physical phenomena to make astounding scientific discoveries; the intellectual prowess of imagination, abstract thinking, and logical reasoning; the creativity to produce indescribably beautiful works of art and the sense to appreciate the beauty in these works and in what is around us; the propensity to discern good from evil, what is moral from what is not; the free will to at least try and shape our own lives; a mysterious, fathomless consciousness; the gift to form human bonds of exquisite love and faithful friendship; and last but not least, the spiritual dimension that is uniquely human. Do not the exalted human sensibilities and intellect deserve a more sublime purpose? The answer is emphatically in the affirmative. Denying a more sublime purpose for our existence is tantamount to forsaking our humanness and relegating humans to being merely selfish, cunning, devious, and exploitative higher animals who eventually suffer the same fate of death as lower animals. The mere fact that humans are endowed with attributes that are stupendously beyond those of our closest biological kin, the chimpanzee, means that these attributes are there for a purpose.
In other words, humans were purposefully gifted with these mental attributes. The human brain grew over a span of some two million years, despite its relatively heavy energy demand, at the expense of other high-energy consuming organs of the body, mainly muscle and intestines, and with only meagre returns for a long time, just some primitive tools such as pointed sticks and sharp stone. What was the drive for larger brains for this long time? No one really knows. Humans then developed some new thinking and communication abilities between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago in what has been dubbed the Cognitive Revolution, which led in a short span of some tens of thousands of years to their becoming the undisputed masters of planet Earth and to the sprouting of an amazing diversity of cultures and civilizations. How did all this come about? Allegedly by some ‘chance’ mutation in the brain? Such a ‘non- explanation’ stretches credibility beyond the breaking point.
In summary, the purpose of life is the attainment of eternal bliss in Heaven, which is the greatest reward that one can wish for. The prerequisite in this worldly existence is comprehensive self-development – spiritually, psychologically, morally, and intellectually – which gives meaning to life.
Nassir Sabah is a neuroscientist/biophysicist and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. This article is adapted from his most recent book Spirituality Rekindled: The Quest for Serenity and Self-Fulfillment (2023) published by John Hunt Publishing under the O-Book imprint. He could be reached at his website: nassirsabah.com.
Article published in More to Life – Edition 64
