The Teleological Mind

[Summerlander]

Some people assume that the universe has a purpose. Understandably, this sentiment tends to come from an aversion to nihilism. On a cosmic scale, you will not find purpose, only expansion due to Hubble's law of inflation. You will only find evidence for chaos in an environment that is, for the most part, hostile to life as we know it. Space is full of powerful and destructive forces, explosions and radiation galore.

At the microscopic level, we also find clashing particles and waves that often cancel each other out. In fact, the subatomic realm doesn't make much sense to the human mind.

In other words, objective observations inform us that we do not live in a teleological universe. But does this mean that purpose doesn't exist in the universe? Not quite. If we look at lifeforms, we can tell that they strive to survive, generally having the purpose to live long enough to procreate and pass on their genes. And without being anthropocentric, we can tell that people create meaning and purpose, which, if aligned with their interests and wellbeing, will bode well for them because, pragmatically, what is meaningful to them is true enough.

The word 'God’ is too broad a term to define anything concrete, by the way. If you are hoping to find evidence of a creator of the universe, forget it. There is no reason why anybody should sustain a belief in such a being. If, on the other hand, you imagine an unattainable ideal as a source of inspiration to at least better yourself incrementally across time, and that manifestly works for you in making you virtuous (not just morally), then what sits at the top of that hierarchy of values is your personal god, as it were, who is true enough for you and absolutely real in your imagination—it is God for you and you believe Him because if you didn't there would be no effort towards progress and no ability to orient yourself properly in the world.

In order to withstand the hardships of life, people need aims so that at least their journey will have meaning even if the goal is not ultimately met. We carry a lot more information in our minds than we are aware of so each and every one of us has great potential. We don't know what we are capable of until we try something new and venture into the unknown. Artists are mediators between the unknown world of the unconscious and the certainties of the conscious world. The ill mind doesn't act out what it dreams, which is reflective of the unconscious, but it does act out what it does not dream which are norms imposed upon us. Dire consequences are more likely to occur when the shadow archetype remains ignored, repressed or unaddressed for a long time. It is the healthy mind which integrates all its contradictions, becoming aware of the shadow aspect of ourselves and heeding our conscience.

Without the idea of God, humanity will painfully fluctuate between nihilism and extreme ideologies arising from an indelible religious substrate characteristic of human nature. Nietzsche saw that the metaphorical 'death of God' was catastrophic prior to WWII and he believed humanity needed to devise values afresh as a replacement where we model ourselves to the ideal of a Superman (Übermensch). But what the German philosopher saw as a solution was misconstrued by the Nazis, who devised a hideous ideology where the head of state is dangerously deemed to be a godlike figure unanswerable to anyone or any one law. Jung was both an admirer and critic of Nietzsche, seeing the problem as something deeper from the psychoanalytical perspective which he had initially learned from Freud—where the unconscious exerts a powerful influence on people as we are internally comprised of living sub-personalities making us act out the way we do and often with regret.