Living a purpose-driven life

No one can ever know — really — what’s in another person’s heart. No one. Not even the priests, pastors and mullahs — the so-called shepherds of the flock.

I know clerics, who purport to be the messengers of God on earth, want you to think they know what’s in your heart, but they don’t.

More on this later. In this third, and last column in a series on life and mortality, I probe why and how we as mere mortals need to live a purpose-driven life.

But to do so, we may want to suspend belief in the afterlife. That way, we live a life not incentivised by crass greed and selfishness about reward in the life yonder, if there’s one. 

I think of the human brain, the most important part of your anatomy, as a compartment of four co-equal cubicles. These four partitions are foundations of knowledge or ignorance. 

Cubicle A of the brain is what we may call the “global commons” or the chamber which contains what you know and what everyone else knows about you. In other words, Cubicle A is the village square. Nothing to write home about because we all know what’s there. 

Cubicle B contains only what others know about you but you don’t know about yourself. For example, we’ve seen the actual back of your head, which you’ve never seen. You’ve only seen a picture of it or its reflection in a mirror.

Cubicle C is home to what you know about yourself, but others don’t. This is your secret “sin” chamber. Let’s say you committed cold-blooded murder in a dark alley 20 years ago without any witnesses and you’ve carried this evil secret in your bosom all those years.

Or let’s say you secretly loathe, despise, or hate your lover or spouse, but for whatever reason, you are stuck together and can’t tell him, or her. 

Cubicle D is a “black hole”. In it, there’s nothing, or rather, there’s only nothingness. It’s a blank slate, unfertilised and uncultivated. Cubicle D is the largest chamber in a human’s brain. In it lie the secrets of self-discovery and self-actualisation. It’s a gold mine.

The door to realising your potential is to shrink B against others and expand it for yourself. In other words, to increase self-knowledge that’s not available to others. That will exponentially increase C against A and B. 

Inner sanctum 

C is your inner sanctum and the bigger it is, the more developed a person you are going to be. It’s the vista of self-awareness. But the key to this theory is to shrink D — which is the largest chamber in all of us — and transfer what you mine there to C.

D may constitute as much as 80 per cent or more in some people. Such people can be said to be bereft of knowledge, or self-awareness. Many people die without ever shrinking D. We know physical life, or human existence, on earth is limited. Most spiritualities accept this limitation of the human body. It’s to say the human body has an innate self-destruct button. 

Human anatomy is programmed to fatally fail at some point, and last no longer than 122 years. I know scientists at Harvard Medical School have found a button to reverse ageing and return mice to their youth.

They think that will also be true of humans. Until then, let’s prepare to exit the planet before we are 122. This means that we are simply travelling through the earth with a definite exit clause. What, then, is our purpose here? Should we have a purpose here on earth?

My answer is an unequivocal yes. I know humans are self-interested beings and that self-advancement and preservation are an integral part of human instinct. But those primordial urges are base and primitive. Beyond feeding ourselves, what else should we do here on earth? What’s our larger purpose? 

The answer lies only in a higher human intelligence that lifts us from the valley of personal greed and self-aggrandisement.

If we think, as we do, that as humans we are the centre of the moral universe, then we must live on a higher moral plateau. That means we must reconfigure the four squares of the brain to re-engineer a more knowledgeable human, one who limits moral dwarfism and navel-gazing.

Finally, we know we are despoiling the planet and very soon the earth may become uninhabitable. I see the survival of the fittest as the next frontier of human existence unless we save what we have, and think beyond our narrow interests. The reason for having a brain is to use it.

Our citizenship on the planet carries with it morally lofty obligations. We must go beyond just being our brother’s keeper, or waiting for spiritual guidance from established religions. We need to know more about ourselves so we can be less gullible, more purposeful, and purpose-driven. Before bed tonight, ask how you’ve advanced your self-knowledge today. 

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.