Richard Dawkins: Meaning of Life

00:00:00.000 | - Let me ask the last, the silliest,

00:00:04.440 | or maybe the most important question.

00:00:06.520 | What is the meaning of life?

00:00:08.620 | What gives your life fulfillment, purpose, happiness, meaning?

00:00:13.720 | - From a scientific point of view,

00:00:14.840 | the meaning of life is the propagation of DNA,

00:00:17.840 | but that's not what I feel.

00:00:19.400 | That's not the meaning of my life.

00:00:21.960 | So the meaning of my life is something

00:00:24.080 | which is probably different from yours

00:00:25.360 | and different from other people's,

00:00:26.340 | but we each make our own meaning.

00:00:29.220 | So we set up goals.

00:00:33.040 | We want to achieve.

00:00:33.920 | We want to write a book.

00:00:34.760 | We want to do whatever it is we do, write a quartet.

00:00:39.760 | We want to win a football match.

00:00:42.640 | And these are short-term goals,

00:00:46.600 | well, maybe even quite long-term goals,

00:00:48.980 | which are set up by our brains,

00:00:50.480 | which have goal-seeking machinery built into them.

00:00:53.640 | But what we feel, we don't feel motivated

00:00:57.000 | by the desire to pass on our DNA, mostly.

00:00:59.240 | We have other goals, which can be very moving,

00:01:04.920 | very important.

00:01:06.920 | They could even be called spiritual in some cases.

00:01:10.420 | We want to understand the riddle of the universe.

00:01:13.800 | We want to understand consciousness.

00:01:15.360 | We want to understand how the brain works.

00:01:17.500 | These are all noble goals.

00:01:21.040 | Some of them can be noble goals anyway.

00:01:23.620 | And they are a far cry from the fundamental

00:01:27.020 | biological goal, which is the propagation of DNA.

00:01:30.100 | But the machinery that enables us to set up

00:01:32.540 | these higher level goals is originally programmed

00:01:37.540 | into us by natural selection of DNA.

00:01:41.980 | - The propagation of DNA.

00:01:43.380 | But what do you make of this unfortunate fact

00:01:47.660 | that we are mortal?

00:01:49.420 | Do you ponder your own mortality?

00:01:51.700 | Does it make you sad?

00:01:53.460 | Does it?

00:01:54.860 | - I ponder it.

00:01:56.060 | It makes me sad that I shall have to leave

00:01:59.380 | and not see what's going to happen next.

00:02:02.840 | If there's something frightening about mortality,

00:02:08.380 | apart from sort of missing, as I've said,

00:02:11.100 | something more deeply, darkly frightening,

00:02:15.060 | it's the idea of eternity.

00:02:17.340 | But eternity is only frightening if you're there.

00:02:19.540 | Eternity before we were born,

00:02:22.060 | billions of years before we were born,

00:02:23.700 | and we were effectively dead before we were born.

00:02:27.700 | As I think it was Mark Twain said,

00:02:28.940 | "I was dead for billions of years before I was born

00:02:31.820 | "and never suffered the smallest inconvenience."

00:02:34.100 | That's how it's going to be after we leave.

00:02:37.220 | So I think of it as really,

00:02:39.220 | eternity is a frightening prospect.

00:02:41.500 | And so the best way to spend it

00:02:43.500 | is under a general anesthetic, which is what it'll be.

00:02:47.140 | - Beautifully put.

00:02:49.380 | Richard, it was a huge honor to meet you, to talk to you.

00:02:51.700 | Thank you so much for your time.

00:02:52.980 | - Thank you very much.

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