Our Own Gods

In The Meaning of Life, Richard Taylor postulates that heaven may be found on earth, inside each individual, and that hell, which he defines as an “endless pointlessness” (170), may be avoided by fully embracing our desires and wholly committing to our endeavors. This paper will attempt to piece together Taylor’s argument through his extensive use of the myth of Sisyphus, briefly show that Thomas Nagel might agree with Taylor’s premise but not in his optimism, and conclude by demonstrating that wholeheartedly embracing our desires is a means to becoming our own gods.

Before we even arrive at the conclusion that we are our own gods, we must first explore Taylor’s definition of what constitutes a meaningless and meaningful life. Taylor uses a few different methods to show what a meaningless life may look like, utilizing the myth of Sisyphus as an entry point. Sisyphus, to briefly recap, was condemned to roll a stone repeatedly up a hill for eternity. As Taylor states, Sisyphus’s task is a “pointless toil […] that is absolutely never redeemed” (167). In Taylor’s eyes, the meaningless of life is represented by the simple fact that nothing comes from Sisyphus’s condemnation. The value of the myth is to highlight the fruitless act—not the repetition or physical hardship itself. Those aspects are unimportant. Meaningfulness comes from the “significant culmination” (170) of a task that fulfills an objective. If a task does not result in something, such as a temple or financial remuneration, it has no objective meaning. It is not worthwhile and, therefore, worthless. Thus, looking at Sisyphus’s task through this lens, one can agree that Sisyphus’s “existence itself is without meaning” (Taylor 168). Even if the terms of Sisyphus’s punishment are modified—replacing the large boulder with a small pebble, leveling out the height of the hill, or adding another person to share the burden—the purposelessness of his task remains the same. Sisyphus’s labors still amount to nothing; there is no end goal and objective worth.

Life, all life, is identical to Sisyphus in its repetitive nature and ultimate lack of objective meaning. Taylor asks us to consider glow worms, which are born, live briefly, reproduce, and die, all within the confines of a dark cave. They do not accomplish anything other than this cycle. If we zoom out and look at the lives of humans, stripping away an individual’s goals and desires, our process is essentially the same. We are born, spend some indeterminate number of years flailing around on this planet, and then we die, only to have the cycle repeat itself with subsequent generations. Even after an individual’s goals and desires are achieved, the results fade from memory or fade from the natural world; either way, the results no longer have an impact on us or the world. We may believe that carrying out our goals and desires is of import, but, in truth, they matter only to ourselves or those in our closely-knit circle.

Furthermore, what of tasks that have results lasting millennia, such as the “sand-swept pyramids” (Taylor 172)? Their meaning and significance fade each year, becoming nothing but a spectacle to wonder at. When we humans grasp that our lives are as pointless as the lives of Sisyphus and blind glow worms, we have a hard time reconciling the endless toiling without lasting achievements. To deal with the horrible realization that life objectively does not matter and that there is no end goal, man comes up with ways to reject it in the form of religion, creating “a heaven that does not crumble [and] declaring a significance to life of which our eyes provide no hint whatsoever” (Taylor 172).

Thomas Nagel would agree with Taylor in the life-is-meaningless assessment and that what we do matters naught—not now and certainly not in two hundred years. In his own The Meaning of Life, Nagel presupposes that our lives matter not a whit if we are to look at life as a whole. Viewing life “from the outside, it wouldn’t matter if you had never existed. And after you have gone out of existence, it won’t matter that you did exist” (Nagel 5). Nagel would argue that no matter what our individual needs or desires are, it still does not explain the point of our lives. He does seem to say that if we view life as preparation for “fulfilling the purpose of God [and] seeing Him in eternity” (6) in order to give our life meaning, we find ourselves in an escalating pattern of “Why?” questions that can never be answered. One cannot have a thing give life meaning without being able to explain how that thing is meaningful in its own right. Even though God and religion may comfort people, they cannot give our life objective meaning.

Taylor and Nagel agree that meaning cannot be found in God and so Taylor attempts to find meaning in Sisyphus’s life by asking what the results are if we give him a purpose to his task. After eons of endless toil, if Sisyphus achieves building a glorious temple from all the rocks he has rolled to the top of the hill, there is a purpose and objective value to his life. Unfortunately, this still does not change the meaningless of his life. With his mission accomplished, Sisyphus is now forever bored. What is he to do with his time? What justification arises for his existence after successful completion of the task? Instead of the horror of an endless, pointless enterprise, Sisyphus experiences the horror of an endless, pointless lack of enterprise. “Meaningless is essentially endless pointlessness” (Taylor 170); it is hell on earth and hell within us.

A shift in perspective is necessary to find a way out of this agony by looking at the subjective interpretation of Sisyphus’s task. Taylor questions if the gods gave Sisyphus a desire to roll his stone up the hill, his life would “now [be] filled with mission and meaning, and he seems to himself to have been given an entry to heaven” (169). This change in perception is only through Sisyphus’s eyes, and heaven is no longer an external ethereal realm. The conditions he is under remain the same: roll a boulder to the crest of a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and start the process again, ad nauseam. But now, with his shifted perspective, the act is pure ecstasy to Sisyphus; it becomes his heaven on earth. He is enthralled and invigorated with rolling the boulder repeatedly. The eternal hell Sisyphus was condemned to—endless toil without purpose—metamorphosizes into fulfilling his one desire. This time, there is no need to lament the repetitive nature of his task or the lack of accomplishment.

This same viewpoint may be helpful in our interpretation of our own lives. Humans can interpret our world and find our place in it. We have a very real capacity to shift our perspective. If we adjust our thinking from one of repetitive toil and hell on earth and instead consider that our lives matter because what we do matters to us—that we can live life according to our innate desires, striving for goals of our choosing—then we have indeed found heaven on earth. Like Sisyphus, we experience ecstasy. When our lives are no longer in pursuit of some mystical end state, we are at last free to endeavor here on earth to make what we want of life, pushing our own boulder up a hill of our own making. Choosing to value our lives in the act of doing, we wrench God’s purview from Him and become our own gods.

Taylor shows that if ancient people could come back now to see archaeologists unearth the remnants of their efforts and lives, they would understand that what gave their life meaning was not in the things they produced or bought. Their wood houses are insect fodder, the fireplace nothing but scorched stones on the ground. What gave their life meaning was attained in the act of creating and amassing their bits and bobbles of a life. Meaning came from their achieving, born of from their moment-to-moment activities. It was the means that mattered all along. “[T]he day was sufficient to itself, and so was the life” (Taylor 174). Every life must be viewed, regardless of species or duration, from within and not from the outside. The meaningfulness of life can only be found in the subjective. This shift in perspective is what Taylor means when he states, “[t]his is the nearest we may hope to get to heaven” (174).

Nagel does not seem to share in Taylor’s optimism, but he does state that “[i]f there’s any point at all to what we do, we have to find it within our own lives” (Nagel 5). Where Nagel and Taylor diverge is in the scope of a meaningful life. Taylor argues that life matters because you make it matter by fully inhabiting your desires, striving for your goals, and loving the people in your life. Nagel takes the view that “life as a whole is meaningless,” but that is perfectly okay if you “allow justifications [for your life] to come to an end inside your life” (Nagel 7). This view, though, leaves many wanting because it takes away the seriousness of our lives, maybe even the validity. We may not find solace in this outlook and perhaps end up losing interest in pursuing our goals if those goals do not matter outside of us. Nagel admits to the absurdity of life and proffers that “perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous” (7). Unfortunately, this does not offer respite to those who are looking for a deeper value to their lives.

This is where Taylor shines, though. He gives us the framework with which to live a life of meaning, to find that deeper value, by wresting away what once was only the domain of the gods. He gives us permission to take back the power that we placed in their hands for millennia. We become our own gods by embracing who we are and what we want to achieve, and that is enough to give purpose and value to our lives, thereby living a meaningful life.

Works Cited

Nagel, Thomas. “The Meaning of Life” Canvas, uploaded by M. Derya Honca, 15 July 2022, https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/15265656/download?download\_frd=1.

Taylor, Richard. “The Meaning of Life” Canvas, uploaded by M. Derya Honca, 15 July 2022, https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/15265812/download?download\_frd=1.