42/6,000,000,000=0.000000007

Once again using the inimitable Douglas Adams as a source of puns and in-jokes, the above represents my personal portion of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, supposing it all gets portioned out among human denizens of earth only. Speciesist of me, I know.

Plus only the current generation. And no one born afterwards....

Umm.... So the first question is, how do I distract all of you from my shitty, haphazard math?

And the second question is, if 0.000000007 is my share of the answer, then what is my question?

For those of who you are not steeped in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, let me fill in the backstory (giant spoilers ahead. Continue at your own risk): according to that series, see, aliens built a supercomputer to figure out the meaning of life, the universe and everything. The answer the computer comes back with after x eons have passed is "42." "What? That's it?" The alien scientists complain. "Well, you didn't ask me for the question," says the computer; so the aliens, who happen to be little white lab mice pretending to be dumb animals in lab experiments to get their own way, build a really gigantic supercomputer called Earth in order to figure out what the question is. The planet is then blown up by a Vogon construction crew putting in a new intergalactic bypass just moments before the question was to be revealed.

So technically, you know, 0.000000007 of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, is mine; and so are the questions leading to it. And yours too, of course. You have your own 0.000000007.

Victor Frankl argued that people are meaning-seeking animals, who can be happy in just about any circumstance so long as they believe that it means something. He believed this after watching who lived and who died in concentration camps during WWII. Psychologists today are making similar conclusions with more scientific rigour and fewer anecdotes: People with a strong religious faith are happier than those without, and this can be explained in part by the belief of the religious folks' that there is a God who has a purpose or plan for their lives, for instance. I am not at a stage where I am able to convince myself that there is a benevolent, omnipotent God out there who has a plan for my life, and I'm not particularly interested in contorting myself into that shape, either. Still. I know I'm happier when I think I'm here for something, for some reason larger than accident and random chance. Even though I know that accident and random chance is the actual, literal, logical, rock-bottom truth, it makes me miserable and I hate it.

I've decided I'm going to make up my own meaning. It's just going to be my own 0.000000007, so not very much and not very important, but all mine nonetheless. And I've decided that the supercomputer had it right: 0.000000007 is just my answer, it's not my questions.

(I hope to god you all know this doesn't actually have anything to do with Douglas Adams. Right? Right. Good.)

What are the questions that my 0.000000007 is an answer to? Figuring that out feels kind of like writing a novel. You have this hazy idea of where you're starting and where you might end up, maybe, and a few flashes of scenes along the way, and the more you write it the clearer it looks although sometimes you have to go back and start the whole thing over or rewrite three chapters you thought were finished, and most of it looks murky and dark and you keep barking your shins on furniture you can't see, so you sort of flail along with an arm held out in front of you, probing for what comes next, whether it's hard or yielding, smooth or rough, high or low, warm or cold. Sometimes you see exactly what's going on but most of the time you're thinking, "I don't get it," or "What just happened here?" or "Aren't you dead?" or "I really thought that was a sofa." Or, "Goddammit, this is the neighbour's house!"

I have no idea what my questions are. It'll probably take me the rest of my life to figure it out, hopefully before the equivalent of a Vogon construction fleet demolishes me for a bypass. Right now I figure it's something like "How can I make a good family for myself and Frances?" and "What makes people and societies change for the better?" and "How do you get people to fall in love with a place?" But my subroutine has only run about halfway through, knock on wood, so gods only know what that'll look like by the end.

It's such a nice, small number, too. 0.000000007. Who could be threatened by that? We each get our own tiny, tiny little bit; and mine doesn't have to bother yours, and yours doesn't have to bother mine, and it's ok if we contradict. It's not The Meaning. It's not The Meaning of Everything. It's not The Plan. It's just a few questions that add up to a very small answer, but they're my questions and my answer. I find it strangely comforting to think that the meaning of my life may just be to come up with a whole bunch of questions, the answer to which all combined is me.

What are the questions that you are an answer to?

Posted by Andrea at July 16, 2008 9:16 AM under Me

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