Over 400 years ago, on the rocky shoals of a windswept bay in modern-day Massachusetts, our nation’s forebears set aside a day of Thanksgiving out of gratitude to their God for delivering them from spiritual bondage in the Old World and bringing them to the New.
What motivated these doughty pioneers to embark on such an arduous weeks-long seafaring journey? The Puritans, having laid the foundation for the most powerful and prosperous empire in human history, were undoubtedly noteworthy. But their gallant indomitability was not without historical precedent. Human history is awash with zealots ready to risk it all for utopia.
What explains this human impulse? Is it simply the evolutionary dictates of survival and reproduction? No. If these were humanity’s sole motivators, we’d all just play it safe and stay put, never venturing beyond the comfortable confines of our provincial cocoons.
Something else must be at work here. Something far more profound than mundane biological imperatives. As trifling as it might sound, what’s really driving all this is the belief that the future matters. Contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist of cynicism, people have always sought meaning in the promise of better tomorrow. The notion that people today can meaningfully change the course of history is the root of all eschatology, both secular and theistic. And this conviction is no delusion. Even in the absence of divinity, any armchair philosopher can construct a persuasive argument that life is endowed with inherent purpose.
What you do today will have a butterfly effect on the trajectory of time. As small as we are relative to the size of the universe, the realm we inhabit can be altered immeasurably. It’s easy to be daunted by this reality and resort to the common refrain that the inevitable heat death of the universe will render everything meaningless in the end. But if history has shown us anything, it’s that nothing is certain. We know far too little about the nature of reality to conclude this beyond a shadow of a doubt. And if we screw up the present, many people will never come to exist. No, that would not be a good thing, as Les Knight, founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, argues. The hubris of those who say that all of these people’s lives have no purpose knows no bounds.
Humanity now finds itself on a precarious metaphysical perch. We recently discovered that we live on a moist speck suspended in a sunbeam in a relatively uninteresting part of a possibly infinite universe. We could either balk in the face of existential dread or grab the reins of destiny and attempt to build a better tomorrow. The choice is ours. So this Thanksgiving, as you gather with family members, whether you find solace in divine transcendence or not, know there’s much to be thankful for. Existence is good. Humanity deserves to continue. And life does indeed have a purpose.