Who cares for a meaning of life?

Not many people would disagree that it is at least to some degree important to live life well. After all, we have only one life to live (or at least we must assume we have) and it's generally considered to be too short. It's also often considered to be harsh and unfair (life's a bitch until you marry one) so while we are here we ought to make the best of it.

But how?

This is a question which is not always easy to answer, but has a direct effect on how we (intend to) live our lives. Most people, at some point in their life, are thinking about or looking for a meaning of life. We look for it to feel more at home with ourselves, to give us the idea that our toiling through the years is not futile. Some find a meaning of life through religion, and adhering to it's dogma. Needless to say, I will not concern myself here with how to give a meaning to life by following religious dogma as the title of this blog is 'Life without God' after all.

In general terms, we could say that we can give meaning to life by caring for things. How much we care about these things creates a framework of standards and goals by which we design and manage our lives. Everything we care about, and the order in which we care about some things more than other things, gives an answer to the question of how to live. Such concerns fall in the domain of practical reasoning: deliberating about what to do and to evaluate what has been done in the past. These deliberations often concern themselves with morality, which will not be discussed at this point as it is not always the most important thing in our lives to be morally just. It is for us as a person more important what we want and desire, although in a perfect world only the desires that are morally right will move us into action.

Most desires are created subconsciously, by our biology (desire to eat) or the media (desire to buy something) or by other people around us (desire to have the same as another person). But we can also consciously form desires ourselves which concern these primary desires. These 2nd class desires govern to which extent the primary desires move us into action, and are based on moral and motives. We can want to want or not want to want. If we feel a primary desire is not morally right we may choose to not be moved into action by that desire. For example we can have a sexual desire but our motives for that desire may be unmoral, or in conflict with other desires (e.g. religion), so we can want to not be moved into action by this desire. Sometimes this 2nd class desire is too strong and make us fulfill the initial desire. I may find my wife in bed with a lover and feel a desire to throw them out of the window from the 10th floor for example. This desire is motivated by jealousy and morally wrong, as it would kill them. If I give in to this jealousy I may be considered to act against my will and also against moral standards of society.
The opposite can also happen, e.g. we can have a desire to pray and actually want this desire to move us into action because we feel that fulfilling this desire is morally right. If somebody fulfils a desire that he wants to fulfil, he comes as close to freedom as he possibly can. To fulfill the desires we want to fulfil is also an important aspect in living our lives well.

Another important aspect, as mentioned previously, is to care about things. desire and caring about are connected, as caring about is in a way a complex mode of desire. but simply desiring something doesn't mean we care about it. Some desires are not important to us and we give up on a desire because it could be unworthy or harmful. Sometimes we do something not because we care about it, but because we care even less about other things. If we do something to kill time, we may not in the least care about it, but just do it to kill the time with it.
What we care about often has an intrinsic value. writing a book for example, or owning a sports-car, or courageous acts of warfare to serve our country. Such things may be regarded and desired for it's intrinsic value: as a final end not as a means to something else. but such objects of intrinsic value may fail to attract us, we may not care about it, cause it doesn't have enough intrinsic value to us personally to make us care about it. For example we may find the life of a monk or a nun intrinsically valuable but still wouldn't aspire such a lifestyle ourselves.

To care about something we need not only to desire it, we need to desire it over a longer time. And even that is not enough: we must be fully committed to the desire, and the desire shouldn't be in conflict with our will. In fact, we must be so committed to it, that should the desire weaken, we liven it up ourselves. we must want to sustain the desire, identify with it and accept it as addressing what we want.
Imagine we don't care about anything. Our lives would be empty and meaningless. Like I mentioned before, caring about things gives a meaning to our lives, and as a consequence it gives our live added quality. And to us as a person it often gives character, as what we care for often characterizes who we are.

Moreover, the fact that we care about some things and not about others gives us a certain structure and individuality.

This leads us to the next larger-than-life question: what justifies caring about one thing more than others? And therefore living in one way and not the other? This leads us into a circle. To evaluate a way of living, we must know by which criteria to evaluate the importance of things in our life. We need to know what counts in favor of living one way rather than the other, and what counts against. we must know how certain actions lead us towards our goals that we set ourselves. The set of actions that we take towards our goal constitutes how we live.
But to establish the way to live which leads most effectively towards the goal, we must first establish the goal. Simply said: if we manage and design our lives daily life, we should do so with a certain goal in mind. But the very goal we try to achieve may force us to manage our life in a different way. This symbolises the constant changing of our lifestyle throughout our life. We cannot afford to be stuck in this circle though, as we will never reach our goals. We must at some point find a balance in life that keeps us heading straight towards our goals instead of toiling in a circle.

So for the answering of the question of how we should live we must first answer what we already do care about. As everyone cares about something or the other in our lives, everyone has a starting point in the deliberation of how one should live. But just knowing the current state of our preferences and importance of the things that make up our lives is not enough. We also need a clarity of vision and a robust confidence to go after our goals in order to achieve them.

In designing and running our lives, we must thus ask ourselves:
- what we want
- what we want more than other things
- what we consider to be intrinsically valuable
- what we pursue as a final end
- what we care about

This concept is the same for believers and non-believers alike, except that the believers have a framework ready-built by their religion about what they should care about, which the non-believers lack. That is not to say the non-believers lack any framework, they just lack the religious framework. Which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they have a replacing framework. The religious framework answers the question "how to live like a good christian" (or Muslim or Jew or whatever) but for Atheists there is not such a given framework. If there would be, Atheism might be considered a religion itself, but the term life-style would be more appropriate. Atheists might find themselves re-inventing the wheel over and over again, but if the existing wheel doesn't fit on the axle, it's the only way to go.