The Purpose of Humanity?
A thought once came to me about utopia: about the role humanity was meant to play in God’s world. I asked myself: Why did God create us this way? Why place us among animals and plants?
I have always sought truth first through logic, yet I perceive the world through emotion. And one universal emotion, it seems to me, is the instinct not to be murdered. So deeply do we hold this truth that entire systems are built around it: laws, armies, police; all designed to preserve life. From this we can deduce something universal: that as humans, across cultures and nations, we agree that murder is wrong.
Yet this truth falters when we look beyond our own species. We grieve for our pets, mourn extinct species, and still, we commit what could be called a genocide upon others. We group them all together: animals; as though a pig and a swan, a lynx and a cow, were all the same. However, across cultures, the contradictions multiply: Hindus revere cows, some in China eat dogs, in Sweden they eat horse. Everywhere, the moral lines are drawn differently, but the paradox remains.
Some science tells us that eating meat is natural, even healthy, and perhaps that is so. Yet I cannot quite reconcile myself to the violence of it. I cannot believe that God placed animals upon this Earth so that we might torture them, confine them, and consume their bodies. We are not built to tear flesh apart. Neither by tooth nor, I suspect, by spirit.
I once had a vision of another world: one where humans lived in harmony with the creatures of the Earth. In it, we cared for them rather than ruled over them. Among animals, chaos has always existed; nature is, in its way, a warzone. But I believe humanity was created to rise above that, to bring peace where there was once only struggle. Perhaps that is our true purpose: to reconcile creation, not dominate it.
If, like me, you believe that we are more than physical beings; that we have souls and consciences that stretch beyond this life, then the act of eating meat becomes more than physical. When we eat an animal, we consume not only its flesh but also its experience: its fear, its pain, its death. We ingest violence. By contrast, when we eat plants, we take in life. In fruit, we receive the most generous gift a plant can give: its colour, sweetness, abundance.
What if our purpose was to restore balance; to bring peace even among animals? Imagine a world where, when a creature dies naturally, humans with their resourcefulness use its body to feed another, and the cycle of life continues without human domination. Life and death belong to God, not to us.
Of course, such a vision sounds naïve, even absurd, in the world we inhabit. The way we live now is not sustainable. The Earth cries out through floods and wildfires, omens of imbalance as ancient as scripture. Sometimes I wonder if the world would have to begin again for such harmony to exist.
And yet, if I were to dream of paradise, it would be this: a world without armies, where families live freely on their own land, growing their own food, lending a hand and when there is excess: sharing with another who is in need. Not to be attained by force or ideology but through choice; through a shared awakening that this is the better way to live.
Today, few care for such ideals. Life no longer prizes morality or virtue. Still, I pray for a better world, and that the path to it may be one of peace in all its forms.
Many modern movements claim to seek peace and justice, yet their means are often violent or coercive, constricting the human soul. True peace cannot be imposed; it must be lived. It must be shown quietly, through example: through kindness, gentleness, and a life aligned with nature. That is the way to flourish.
Aristotle, who wrote extensively on eudaimonía (εὐδαιμονία, often translated as ‘flourishing’) states in the opening of his Nicomachean Ethics that “‘good’ is what all things strive for.” This is true. Good is a broad term, but it conveys something desirable, something all beings seek. Yet we have confused the path to that good, believing we can attain it without regard for others. The pain and suffering in our world exist precisely because we have not yet had the faith, nor the courage, to live by moral principle in the pursuit of what is truly good.