The Human Predicament 3 – The Damning Problem of Human Life

We wake up in the morning, brush our teeth, take our bath, take our breakfast, dress up and go out struggling for one thing or another- money, food, wealth etc. We struggle the whole day and come back home in the evening to sleep. The following morning, we wake up to go through the routine again, brush our teeth, take our bath, take our breakfast, dress up and we are out again, struggling till evening.

This goes on till we die, and it is all over. What have we achieved in the end? What in the final analysis are we going to do with all the money, all the wealth we spend our life struggling to acquire? 

We shall leave them behind when we die and go to the grave?

The Problem of Evil in Human Life

The most disturbing problem that makes human life appear meaningless is the problem of evil. This is the problem that has plagued human life from its very beginning and has disturbed the human mind from time immemorial. It has become an insoluble problem, a puzzle and in fact, a mystery to the human mind.

It is natural evil for instance that leads one to ask whether human life has any meaning at all, or any purpose. A visit for example to a home for mentally retarded children or physically handicapped children, disabled people, paralytics, terminally sick people in great pain, or a mortuary, prompts one to ask whether human life has any meaning at all. This was what led Job to curse the day he was born. He wished he had died as soon as he was born.

The absurdity of human existence and the futility of all human struggles dawns on one also at funerals or interment. As the coffin is lowered into the grave it dawns on one that it is all over for the deceased, that this is the final end of all his struggles, all his endeavours, all his wealth, and that the very same fate awaits us all.

Death

Death is the worst evil that happens to man, an evil that makes human life appear purposeless and meaningless.  Sartre concludes that ‘If we have to die, then our life has no meaning’ the strongest instinct in both in both men and animals is the instinct of self-preservation or self-perpetuation.

It is the instinct to avoid death, the instinct to continue living. Yet death is the surest thing that will happen to us. If there is only one thing that is unmistakably certain, which no skeptic has ever doubted or can ever doubt, is that death is inevitable. It is certain that we shall all die because we were all condemned to death even before we were born.

‘As soon as a man is born,’ says Heidegger, ‘he is old enough to die’. Some people are not even born before they die, they die in the womb before they are born. Some die just as they as born, some die a few minutes after they are born, some a few hours, others a few days, some are few months, others a few years. Some live to ripe old age. Death can come and does come at any time in a person’s life, at any age, from ante-natal state, to infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood to old age.

Read Part one Here – A Keen Reflection on Human Life

Read Part two Here – The frenzied nature of man

Credit: Inusah Awuni – MPhil, MA, BA (Lecturer – AUCC & DUC)

Email: agolgoti@yahoo.com