Do humans have a unique purpose?
The Bible wrestles with this question. In the first creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:4), God first states the intention to create humans in God’s “image” and “likeness”, in order that they “rule” the earth and the animals (1:26). After God creates humanity (it is unclear if adam – the Hebrew word used here – is a man and a woman or a single being that is both male and female), God then charges his creation to multiply and “master and rule” the earth (1:28). The verbs are frustratingly vague; we might expect greater clarity for being created in God’s image and likeness. Mastering and ruling apparently does not mean “eating.” The text immediately clarifies that humans eat only fruit and seeds. All other breathing creatures would eat the plants themselves (1:29). We are to multiply, master, and rule, but that hardly presents a set of actionable guidelines for living.
The biblical text immediately returns to this problem in the second creation story (Genesis 2:4-24), but with only slightly better results. In this account, Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to “till it and tend it” (2:15). He is God’s gardener! God then created the animals (a contradiction with the first creation account) and brought them to Adam to see if one of them could serve as a companion. In the process, Adam named them, although that seems to have been at his own initiative. When Adam found no companion among the animals, God finally created Eve. Her purpose was to keep Adam company.
So Adam was destined to serve as God’s groundskeeper and Eve to keep Adam company, but as we all know that went downhill fast. Having violated God’s primal commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of God and Evil, the couple was expelled from the Garden. As a parting shot, God gave Eve pain in childbirth and Adam a life of agricultural toil.
Worst of all, though, God sent them out into the world with no purpose. Provided only with skins for clothes, they leave the Garden alone, with few skills and, alienated from God, no larger meaning to their lives. It is no wonder that they failed at their first and most important role, as parents.
The Bible more or less gives up trying to assign a greater purpose or meaning to humankind as a whole. It does, though, assign singular purposes to groups of people. God says that should the Israelites keep to their covenant, they will be “to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The precise meaning of this promise is unclear (especially since there always continued to exist real, distinct priests) but the general idea is that Israel’s purpose is connected to service to God. Service to God is also a key purpose assigned by the New Testament. “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God,” Paul writes (1 Corinthians 10:31). Christians should imitate Jesus (imitatio dei) by serving others as well. In the end, service to others becomes a service to God.
These texts highlight a set of intriguing tensions. Do we have a purpose as human beings connected to all other human beings, or only as a member of a smaller collective? Why does God create human beings to serve, when they are so imperfect?
An evolutionary lens can help to clarify this dynamic. As individuals, humans are vulnerable. We have few natural defenses; are not particularly well-adapted physically to gathering any particular kind of food; and our reproductive cycles are relatively slow. We operate best in groups. It is our ability to form and act in increasingly large groups that allows us to thrive as a species and as individuals, which is why we have an innate sociality. Whereas members of other species are most often united by kinship, humans have developed a unique ability to unite also around ideas and ideologies, whether it is the perception of a shared history or devotion to a deity. This allows us to take collective action in huge numbers.
It is here, though, that we see the same tension reflected in the Bible. Can our innate ability to act in concert with each other lead us to act collectively as an entire species? The idea that we can all unite, and the power that that would bring us, is as old as the story of the Tower of Babel and as recent as the Paris Climate Agreement. Yet it is here that evolution puts on the brakes. The point of organizing in large groups is to better compete against other large groups of humans for limited resources and reproductive success. Collective action on the scale of the species defeats that goal, as it would necessarily require us to pool and share our resources. There is a soft limit to our ability to bond.
We are wired to seek purpose so that we may join with some other humans as part of a collective. Like many psychological biases or instincts, this is a plastic adaptation. Whether through nature or nurture, people have different drives toward seeking a purpose. For some, the desire moves toward seeking a common ground with the entire human species – any number of universalist utopian visions result from this. Others, minded more toward a life of individual pleasure, might experience little drive toward a life of purpose or meaning. Most of us fall in between.
Our strength is also our weakness. The same psychological adaptation that makes us receptive to ideas that unite us can be manipulated. Tyrants have known this since antiquity. A well-packaged, coherent ideology, no matter how abhorrent, will always find followers.
This helps to explain why we are becoming so polarized. Where there is little or no purpose readily available, we will often seek to fill the vacuum. We are programmed to do so. Humans are also naturally cognitively lazy. People will thus tend to navigate to easily accessible and understandable, “off the shelf,” ideologies. Binary thinking most easily fills this need. “We” are good; they are bad. The idea – encapsulated and promoted in much of our media, that aligns with one group or the other – is easy to latch on to unites a community.
On the other hand, we are beset by forces that seek to block us from finding meaning. Left without meaning, we turn to the next easiest thing: shopping. A shiny new acquisition gives us a nice dopamine hit or a temporary status boost. It fills a hole. The more empty we feel the more we seek to buy. There is as much money to be made in emptiness as there is in ideology.
So how do we navigate between the rock of divisive and polarizing ideologies and the hard place of emptiness? There are many pundits who suggest major societal or policy changes to address this problem. I hope that they find the right ones and that the right people listen.
In the meantime, though, we need to live our lives as individuals aware of our need for meaning and how we are addressing it. If we do not make conscious choices we will make unconscious ones, drawn to the easiest solution. This is our nature.