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Adrienne Chen
Frances McCue
HON 205A
20 October 2014
Destiny, a Falsehood
It is not uncommon for us as human beings to wonder at our callings in life. That
ubiquitous, and yet ever-so-elusive clich of finding ones true purpose is marketed to us
constantly in the barrage of movies, television shows, news reports, and myriad other media
outlets. Especially in a collegiate context, the underlying mindset to find your major, fulfill
degree requirements, and ultimately contribute to society as a whole is palpable. The influence of
these social imperatives is deep-seated and potent. But outside these social expectations, I pose
that such purpose as we interpret it today is not an intrinsic quality of life and rather, it is my
belief that life itself is inherently without purpose.
Life, as I will be referring to it, is to be understood as human existence. To expand, by
existence I mean the basic state of being alive, as opposed to the details and nitty-gritty of
consciously living. It is not the thinking, moving aspect but instead the barest definition, stripped
of everything but the fact. As for its inherent qualities, I merely mean the irremovable
characteristics, by which their removal would invalidate the original idea. And it is through this
understanding that I mean to demonstrate how purpose does not fulfill it.
Purpose in itself is a simple concept. By definition, purpose is the reason that things are
done, or created. It is possible, then, to distinguish between what we might call our biological

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purpose and the purpose that is constructed through existing within societal bounds. On the
biological end, we can say that our purpose is merely to survive through the procuring and
subsequent consumption of food, and to reproduce. However, if we take purpose as it is related
to living in modern society, which we may define as how we achieve our biological purpose
within the overarching governance of societys rules, then I argue that human existence at the
most basic does not require it. Moreover, I would go so far as to say that purpose as we
understand it now is a purely societal construct. As society has evolved to necessitate the
productivity of its inhabitants, it is not so far a stretch to correlate this need with the creation of a
perceived compulsion to find purpose within the system. We are indoctrinated from the
commencement of our schooling: education is the pathway to a good job, and subsequently a
good life. We are taught that our purpose is to reach the full extents of our potential. Within all
of this, this meaning these expectations that society has for its budding citizens, the inference
to be made is that all of these potentials are to be harnessed in a way that will benefit society. By
providing us with an imperative, a clear endgame, it is made simple for us to conform and, in
conforming, allow society to profit. Thus, I would point out that purpose is merely a strategy put
in place to guarantee the survival of the society, rather than some inescapable, innate directive
that comes packaged with our existence as a pre-condition.
Now imagine for a moment the instance of a human birth. It would be fair to say that the
vast majority of us were brought into this world without prior exposure to any kind of stimuli,
setting aside awareness of the womb. Only until we exit this relative isolation and are exposed to
external influences do we begin to develop conscious awareness of our surroundings, and learn
how to interact with them as we experience them further. Consider, however, in this brief slice of
time that exists before awareness and after existence, the state of this newly-born baby. There are

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no preconceptions, no biases or prejudices to speak of yet. The observable fact of this babys
birth creates no implications for the new life that has been conceived, especially since this
hypothetical baby, and every other like it, lacks the mental faculties to consciously choose to do
anything. This babys lack of cognizance of the obligations it has been born into does not detract
from the fact of its existence, nor is it impossible to understand said fact without the societal
trappings that would seek to define it. Societys superimposition of existing expectations and
constructs on a being that isnt compliant in the system, even if just by virtue of a physical
inability to do so, most clearly illustrates how purpose is a socially-constructed artifice.
If it is understood that purpose is indeed a construct of society, and that life in itself as it
is at its genesis, even when created within the context of said society, is not altogether entwined
with society, then my argument may be realized. As we make the distinction between life, and
the creation thereof, from the act of living within society, it is possible to conclude that
understanding life as a state of being is not fundamentally dependent upon having a purpose, a
construct only necessitated by living a life within a social context.
On the other hand, it is possible to argue that life is inseparable from a societal context.
Isolated civilizations all over the world, from the Ancient Egyptians to the Incas, have developed
in similar fashion to one another despite having no knowledge of each other. It is precisely this
resemblance, in spite of a discernible link between these societies that we must ask: how can the
collective lives and development of one society so mirror another if they do not share some
common purpose?
Supposing that these societies were, in fact, separate and independent from knowledge of
the others in such a way that their individual developments were not influenced by the others, it
should then follow that some overlying factor led to their similarities. These similarities, then,

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cannot be traced to parallel environments, as the variance in geography alone can attest to. What
else, then, do these societies share? The most noticeable one would point to is simply people.
Civilizations are made up of groups of people living in coexistence, a characteristic shared no
matter the location. And if the collective efforts of all these people result in such similar
outcomes, surely they must be working towards a singular ideal. The aggregate product of all
these lives, in such differing environments no less, resembling each other so closely couldnt be
mere coincidence. Accepting that it cannot be coincidence, then the possibility that all lives that
exist in a societal context serve to help their societies reach a universal final stage of
development. From this point of view, then, we can say that the overall purpose of life is to
achieve this, and that to remove the context of life is to ignore the very foundation of its
meaning.
Taking into consideration the implications that social context has for the purpose of life
and their supposed linkage, I would then further reason that there are many different viewpoints
that can be found on what the true purpose of life is. With the concept being so allencompassing, so malleable and open to interpretation, we begin to see the fundamental conflicts
that arise when social contexts are taken into account. In a typical, modern-day, Western society,
a random person off the street might believe that life is about finding someone to raise a family
and build a home with. A businesswoman crossing the same street might believe that life is about
reaching the top of her field and achieving recognition in her chosen position as CFO. Her CEO
might believe that life is about making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. A sick
man in the hospital down the block might believe that there is no point to life at all. My point
here is that at the individual level, the countless variations of personal motivations, with some
that exist in harmony and with others at odds, lead to the preclusion of the possibility of a

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singular purpose. These purposes cannot all be true in simultaneity, which would lead me to
believe that none of them are, and that the lack of any conclusive consensus on the subject really
just points to the lack of any one true purpose altogether. Again, we see that purpose is
something we create for ourselves rather than a condition preset within our collective being.
Thus, while it proves simple to point out how life, in terms of its basic form outside any
context, social or otherwise, is without any innate objective, doing so when considering life
within those contexts is slightly more difficult. If one accepts the principle that a multitude of
varying interpretations of a concept precludes there being a true interpretation at all, and that
such variation is actually representative of the acquired nature of purpose, then my claim that life
is without purpose holds fast, even in context.