An Atheist’s Meaning of Life

Q:

Yuan: Professor Wei, I’ve recently been reading your “The Enchanting Illusion,” and I have a few questions about the chapter on Death: 1. What the human eye can see is limited, but just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, right? 2. Is it possible that the laws of the world after death are different from the laws of our world? 3. If everything becomes nothing after death, then what is the meaning of being born?

A:

Hello:

I’m an atheist. As an atheist, I won’t answer your first two questions, because I believe that the so-called “world after death” does not exist. I only want to talk about your third question: “If everything becomes nothing after death, then what is the meaning of being alive?”

In fact, atheists are often asked about “the meaning of life” by religious believers.

People with religious faith believe that another world exists, so life can draw on that other world and extend into all kinds of meaning—doing good in this life so you’ll enjoy blessings after death, for example.

But if, like atheists, you believe that everything is reset to zero after death, where is the meaning of being alive?

Unfortunately, the conclusion I’ve reached through my own thinking is, on the whole, a pessimistic one. Maybe all atheists ultimately arrive at the same destination when thinking about this question.

A few days ago, Professor Li Yinhe published an essay commemorating Wang Xiaobo, Forty Years Later, Li Yinhe Writes Back to Wang Xiaobo: I Loved You, and I Still Love You. It also touched on this question.

Here are Professor Li Yinhe’s exact words:

“I often think about the unsolvable question of the meaning of life. After turning it over and over in my mind, the answer is surprisingly this: from a macroscopic perspective, life cannot possibly have meaning, but from a microscopic perspective, we can assign meaning to it ourselves.”

I couldn’t agree more.

From a macroscopic perspective, everything each of us pursues is destined to become nothing at the moment of our death. A dead person’s estate has meaning only for the living, and none for the dead. Once self-awareness dissolves at the moment of death, everything we held dear while alive loses its meaning at that same moment.

Over the past year or so, both my parents fell ill and passed away. My father died in 17, and my mother passed away on 2019年1月17日. Although I wrote in my mother’s eulogy, “In another world, she will surely continue to repay those who were kind to her,” I knew in my heart that this sentence was only meant to comfort the living.

So, “from a macroscopic perspective, life cannot possibly have meaning.”

But life “can be given meaning from a microscopic perspective.” Professor Li Yinhe’s essay says:

“While you were alive, Xiaobo, you and I discussed this question. You wrote at the time: ‘I will grow old and I will die, but I’m not afraid. Before something disappears, we must first let it exist.’ You put it so well. Death is everyone’s destination, but before we die, we should make our existence rich and colorful.”

Professor Xiaobo put it so well.

An atheist’s macroscopic view may be far more pessimistic than that of a religious believer, because at bottom, atheists do not believe that life has meaning. But the paradox is that atheists can become some of the people who love life most intensely. They understand that everything has meaning only while they are alive. The only thing worth doing is pleasing the self who exists here and now. Everything I do will cease to exist after I die, so besides working to make this life rich and colorful, what else can I do? The meaning of life may be hidden in the journey of pursuing “richness and color.”

In Satoshi Kon’s animated film Millennium Actress, the heroine Chiyoko spends her entire life pursuing the first love she met only once. At the final moment of her life, Chiyoko says: “This time I’ll definitely meet that person… What will happen? Maybe it doesn’t matter either way, because what I truly loved was the journey of chasing him.”

“What I truly loved was the journey of chasing him.” That is an atheist’s meaning of life.

References:

Forty Years Later, Li Yinhe Writes Back to Wang Xiaobo: I Loved You, and I Still Love You

Note

• This article in the “New Insights in Psychology” series was a short popular-science essay/ramble written at the time to accompany the related content of Zhichao Wei: New Insights in Psychology. It was published on the now-closed platform Fantuan, and the original link no longer exists.