PARADOX of PURPOSE — A Satire
There have been numerous books written in past and many more would be written in future to help a man find his purpose. And it interests me to a curious study of WHY so much effort has been put and will be put to help shape a man find his purpose. No, I will not be talking of How one finds PURPOSE in his life. I am too naïve too even lecture on this aspect of life or to say any aspect of life honestly. However, it does not deter me to undertake a small journey into the depths of our society to understand why do we struggle to find our PURPOSE?
Honestly, it intrigues me to understand exactly when we, homo sapiens, first acknowledged the need to have a purpose in our life. Humanity has seen many ages. In the early age of human life, man was more focused towards surviving one day at a time. He had to evolve and learn different skills to provide food for his family and protect from the unknown. As the age progressed, camps of men got more settled, learned to have a better coordination with one another and started living in small groups. Earlier, men used to hunt alone and now he has evolved onto hunting in a group. Human evolution has been directly proportional to the wheel of time since its inception. And with every stage of evolution, human gene started to become more encoded with information and better intelligence. From living in small groups, humans evolved to living in small states, which would be led and organized by the leaders of the clan who displayed their intelligence and leadership skill to protect the clan from time to time. Humans started to get more organized and with better organization evolved ease of doing. Now, human intellect had grown many folds to conquer over other beings on earth with necessary amenities to hunt and protect the clan. From living or surviving one day at a time, humans evolved to plan for procurement of food for days ahead. The worry of future started sipping through human consciousness. Leaders of the group or state took it upon themselves to make sure, the members of society have ample food reserve for extreme cases. Slowly, states evolved into kingdoms or empires, which would define an area where its residents would live and hunt while expanding its territories with time. It also led to territorial differences for laying claim on resources necessary for SURVIVAL.
An important note which we must consider is, surrounding of man evolved with time but his primal need to hunt remained constant.
Humans have been led into countless battles by their charismatic leaders for the glory of expansion or for the necessity of protection. Slowly, enough was not enough for men. And to satisfy the hunger for hunt, men started hunting each other. Stronger races of men survived and overpowered weaker ones. Among them, the more powerful leader would command the interest of fellow men on his whim. As men started to get organized into society in the lure of ease of doing, they started to surrender their power to stronger men of society to make decisions for them, while subjugating weaker men from oneself under their own banner. Need for food had slowly evolved into desire of power, for it was power, which assured accessibility of resources to survive. An era of colonization endured across the globe, where different colonies would look to expand their territory to the places they never have been before. Greed and lust were the necessary antagonists to propel the war for POWER.
And after fighting and killings of thousands of years, a few good men started seeing the point: Enough is never Enough for Human Race. Having seen the age of darkness and hunger to age of war in the name of land and religion, lust for blood started to settle down with the advent of age of Industry and Technology. In the current era, war is only left to the whims of the ‘selected’ powerful ones while the ‘selector’ commoners are busy trying to pave their way on top. Food and ration are readily made available by the leaders of the tribe to help their case to be on top. And with their basic necessities fulfilled easily, commoners start pondering over the need for purpose to satisfy the need of hunt. But then, it is not very easy to devise tools to satisfy the hunger of purpose. Primal need for hunt has been subjugated into form of rules of society. Hierarchies have been created within to manage and control the chain of evolution. Humans now don’t have to shed their blood for survival but have to merely pay taxes. As a society, we slowly released control to the higher authorities to make decision for our well being and fight our wars. Instead, we started controlling lives of our fellow beings in animal kingdom. And when someone else is fighting our war and gathering or growing our food, what do we do in return? We seek PURPOSE.