Purpose

By Samuel Denney

We’re all sentient. Hopefully. Still, we’re an infant species. We’re still animals. We’re just smart animals that imprison other animals for human enjoyment. We butcher poor animals in hardly ideal living conditions. Can we take a moment to acknowledge where our food comes from? Our meat is basically born and raised in concentration camps. It’s the first, last, and only place they’ll ever know. Pigs that have only been alive for a few months get their testicles cut off.It’s one of the most horrific things I’ve seen in my life. There isn’t any medication being used, the workers just take a knife and cut the very thing that creates life right out of them, scoop them out, and then they grab the next pig and repeat. And that’s one of the reasons why I don’t eat meat. I’m not protesting or anything by not eating meat, and I’m not trying to “live a healthy life” and make spinach smoothies every morning. I’m very healthy, in case you were wondering. But I can’t bring myself to enjoy food that lives a life of pain. I don’t even call that life. I’m not vegetarian. In fact, you could consider me a pescatarian if you want. But that would kinda be a lie because I’ll eat meat other than fish if I know exactly where it came from. My cousin owns a farm where he raises cows, and I’ll eat what he gives us because I know that they lived a happy life, not forced to stand in a rusty iron-cement cell that isn’t even the right size for the occupant.

If you think we’re past slavery, I’m just gonna come out and say that’s a blatant lie. What we are doing to the animals that stock our shelves is slavery, but apparently that’s acceptable because they’re not human. Until someone finds a more effective system to provide meat for us, this will be how we live for a very long time.

Pretty proud achievement for us, yes?

As you can see, we’re just monsters. We marvel at monumental achievements that propel us into the future, and yet we don’t look behind the scenes. That’s how the world works. And when you think about it, we don’t have a purpose. Just about everything we do is automated. Breathing, reading, comprehension, walking, balance, eating, and in some cases, even thinking. That’s because once we learn a skill and can do it fluently, it becomes part of muscle memory. We do all of these without having to think about it, not requiring individual and unique thought. We can do all of these without thinking about it.

Go back to September 5, 1977. That was the day Voyager I took to the stars.

If Voyager I were to be launched today, would the message on that gold disc be any different? The one that carries our legacy (pre-1977) out there is pretty amazing, but times change, and so do we. If it were up to me, the message would probably look something like this:

I would probably start from the beginning, starting at the big bang. I would then get to the events leading to the construction of our solar system, our earth, and how life evolved for the next 4.54 billion years. Then I would eventually get to where we are today, giving all of the good and bad. I would probably end it with a plea for help- asking if anyone were to find it, to learn about us, so that we will never be forgotten. And to give us some closure as to why we may be here, because we are primitive, and we have no idea why we’re here. We’re alone, and we don’t want to be. I say this because the future is unwritten, and we could easily eradicate every living thing on this earth in a few minutes. Or, we could live to become prosperous and possibly make first contact with whatever finds our message.

Science is the great unknown. It’s fascinated the minds of many throughout our history. There’s so much we don’t know, and so much to explore. If our focus as a whole (the whole being Earth’s occupants) were to be redirected towards science, we could solve so many of our problems. Just this morning, I watched a video that was about how CRISPR is now open to testing in America. This is a major leap forward, opening up for public use. If it’s used responsibly, there’s so much good that could be done with it. Maybe years from now, enough people will realize this. We can eradicate sickness, disease, and many other things no one wants to live with. Maybe we could even put war behind us. What if we completely redefined the definition of war? The current definition of war is this:

war
a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.

What if it became this?

war
War was a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.

So many definitions, not just war, could become past-tense if we don’t screw things up. So far, we know that we’re on the only planet that has life on it. Life is a beautiful thing, and we only get one of them. It’s the one thing that should be the valued the most. The world would be a better place if that were the case.

We would completely change who we are if we came together for something that is incredibly unifying. We could even learn why we’re here one day. We know how evolution created us, but we don’t know why. There has to be a reason. If we happened, this event could have very easily happened somewhere else. It’s strange to say our planet is the only one that has life on it. What even were the chances of life happening? I’d say less than .000001% of a chance. And yet, people focus on making their lives as miserable as possible. And don’t get me wrong, it does happen. It happens to everyone. All you need to do is keep going.

Science is something just about everyone can understand. If we put the morals of things like CRISPR aside, it could be used to create a race of beautiful, intelligent, and caring people. For how primitive we are, we have the power to create an entire new breed of life. I’ll skip the details of why it may be wrong, since so many others have written about it, and just about everyone is aware of why it can be considered wrong.

There’s people with disabilities that are able to understand science better than a lot people. Those people could even be responsible for the next big scientific breakthrough, all because they decided to do something that just made sense to them.

Since I have ADHD and ADD, I can be pretty dumb sometimes. I’m not saying that in a way that sounds all depressing. I’m a wrestler, and plenty of wrestlers have both of those disorders. I have yet to meet a wrestler who is embarrassed by to have them. We embrace them. I’ll admit that I’m really dumb because it’s true. I’m happy to admit that. And that’s because there’s plenty of benefits that come with having a brain like mine. There’s things that just make sense to me, and that makes it incredibly easy to do that thing. Like learning the piano, other instruments, wrestling, or sports in general. I love physical activity, and I love science. I absolutely suck at math, and couldn’t tell you how to make a parabola for the life of me. Unless I take roughly four hours a day to understand it. By acknowledging all of this, I’m one step closer to finding my purpose, and perhaps the purpose of us all. There’s plenty of people like me out there, and we all have something in common. We’re all imperfect. And when I say that I don’t mean people with these disorders. I’m talking about every being alive.

The same things that make me incredibly dumb in certain areas make me incredibly capable in others. And for that, I’m grateful.