Can the ultimate meaning of life be relevant? Is it possible that, for example, witchcraft, or Islam, or Christianity, are true for those who believe and not true for those who do not believe? Or must there be one reality for all, either true or false?
There are broadly two approaches to the understanding of ultimate meaning of life. One is that of the view of constructivists who believe “multiple, relative realities and truths” (Mathews 2008: Lecture Notes Nov19). This view conflicts with fundamentalists who believe in “a single reality that is true for all human beings” (Mathews 2008: Lecture Notes Nov19). Under the interpretation of the constructivists, we make up our own reality and the “meaning of life becomes no more than consumer preference” (Mathews 2008: Lecture Notes Nov19). On the other hand, if there is only one version of reality as believed by the fundamentalists, given the varieties of religions in the world today, a lot of people then might have got their realities, thus meaning of life wrong.
The first question we need to examine is: ‘is there a reality that is above human interpretation’? Is there a reality that is above all cultural inference? Science, especially classical physics, might seem to be the answer, after all, science is the basis of our decision-making in many aspects of our lives today: we decide to go to the doctor when we fall sick, we stick to a certain diet believing it is better for our health, we use telecommunication equipments to talk to our friends or families who are far away. Most of everything we see and touch on a daily basis is the result of scientific advancement over the last two centuries. The television, the personal computers, the list goes on. If all of these scientific inventions work, scientists must have figured out something about the reality. It could be, after all, the ultimate meaning of life is for human race to discover the wonder of our natural world and through this discovery, finding the ultimate meaning of life. However, there are two aspects that science does not provide us the answer of what is the ultimate meaning of life. First, science has so far provides only explanations on observable facts, but not significance of these observable facts. Providing a significance of the world we live in today links the reality to the ultimate meaning of life. Science, fails to provide the significance, is the first obstacle of it providing an ultimate meaning of life to all of us. Secondly, it is also worth to mention that, in the most advanced scientific research on quantum mechanics, observers’ choices of apparatus or measurement changes the experiment result. It might also be the case that those laws of science we discover on planet Earth may not be applicable throughout the universe. Concepts of time and space, the basis of much of the classical physics, are not absolute as pointed out by the relativity theory by Einstein! On this account, science fails to provide a consistent explanation of reality, not to mention about base upon which we could understand and form the meaning of life.
If science fails to provide an objective version of reality, then reality is very much left to individual interpretation. It is this interpretation that people use to make sense of the world, and through this interpretation, people link their own personal significance to the ultimate meaning of life. When interpretation of reality is left to individual choices, the context within which the person draws his/her own cultural reference to understand the ultimate meaning of life determines the likelihood he/she chooses a certain cultural framework as a basis of how he/she understands the world and the ultimate meaning of life. For instance, a for person born in Saudi Arabia is more likely to have the single version of truth as prescribed in Koran as his/her ultimate meaning of life than another person born in Hong Kong whom might be influenced by a secular government, a missionary school and a traditional Chinese family, and his/her version of reality and ultimate meaning of life could be anything from atheists, Christianity or traditional Chinese values. One’s choice of ultimate meaning of life is a ‘product of culturally and personally shaped fate’ (Mathews 1996: 207). Whilst we are not sure of which version of ultimate meaning of life is the ultimate truth, if an individual is able to choose the ultimate meaning of life from an array of others presented to him/her, the version chosen, to that individual, is truer than the other.
The phenomena of globalization, however, pose a challenge to different systems of values that were embedded and developed within local cultural context. The spread of mass media which transmitted images of different ways of lives and beliefs across the globe, forced many communities to confront value that is very different or totally different from their own. Diaspora communities face similar challenge when their values brought from home is not aligned with the values of their host country. When the single version of reality is threatened by the multi-array of values present around these traditional communities, extreme fundamentalists who try desperately to hold on to their version of reality, and their ultimate meaning of life went out attacking their perceived enemies. While the uncertainty of the ultimate meaning of life looms large, the insistence of one single version of reality is in fact, harming the human race, which in itself, could hardly be the ultimate meaning of life for all.
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