Basement Chronicles

Built to Specification

"Save us from sleep and what we are"

Why are we here?

A loaded question. Often it is screamed. At the sky. While its raining. As the screamer is dropping to their knees, shaking their fists at the sky. And then the camera pans out from the close-up and accelerates skyward, keeping its focus on the kneeling querier.

Fade to black...and scene.

So what's the answer? What is our purpose? Our reason for existence? Our task to perform? Our goal to accomplish?

Who knows?

I know I don't. And I think I'm stuck in the same befuddled state that everybody else is. Science can't identify a pattern to our existence. Religion can't find an immediate purpose for God's will. And philosophers are still arguing about where 'here' is. Or if your 'here' is my 'here', or if there even is a 'here'.

And even if I did know the answer who says I'd understand it? And by what authority am I assigned this? Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?

So yeah, definitely a loaded question. One that I feel is insurmountable simply because we're asking it in the wrong way.

Instead I wonder what we were designed for. What are our specifications? Modifications? Limitations?

I have to laugh when I think that my 'initial design' was to live in trees, eat fruit, and die at age 30. Looking at it that way it almost doesn't make sense. How did a bunch of hairless apes grow into the dominant species on the planet? We have no claws, no instincts, an excruciatingly long gestation period, and a poor sense of sight, smell, and hearing. Compared to other primates, we are weak, having maybe half the strength of a chimpanzee not even half our size. We aren't even very fast, our knees face the wrong way, and our feet no more than deformed hands incapable of grasping anything of interest. So, what, we traveled in packs? Used advanced hunting strategies? Set up territories and boundaries? A pack of wolves seems better equipped than a pack of today's average humans, watching Jerry Springer and getting free samples from McDonalds.

Maybe it was because we could learn. If we survived long enough, we could identify the patterns of our predators, and beat them at their own game. Problem solving. Barbed spears. Slings. Arrows. And some outrageous fortune in between.

That I can begin to understand. I'm not an anthropologist by any means, but I can imagine living in fear of being eaten every day of your life would be quite the inspiration. A muse, of sorts.

What intrigues me isn't our ability to solve a puzzle, but some of the other interesting aspects to the human psyche. Emotion, in particlar.

Why would we have something like this? Or perhaps, why do we still have this?

I can understand the need for emotions. Often they are a better motivator than, say, convincing yourself to do something. Emotion is instantaneous. Its damn near irresistible. And you can't simply ignore it. Take fear for example. We have reason to fear plenty of things. Disease, bodily harm, change. We don't have to think about it, we just fear them. The same goes for irrational fears. Fear of heights, fear of water, fear of insects. Things that can't logically hurt you, given most situations, but we fear them anyways.

But why boredom? Why guilt? Why love? What purpose do they serve?

But more importantly, why do we all feel them?

The entirety of humanity, all fully equipped with emotions. And most of them universal in the situations which invoke them. We are happy to be with friends. Sad to lose them. Bored at our inaction. Sorry for our mistakes.

Why does our design include these feelings?

From a functional standpoint, they could serve multiple purposes. They could be the ultimate deciding factor when faced with a logical impossibility. They might exist to link our higher consciousness to bodily functions, allowing our emotions to control important survival systems. They might exist simply to give us something to relate to in each other.

But maybe emotions are what gives us purpose, a direction in our otherwise complicated and misdirected lives. We seek certain things, and avoid others, an incessant compulsion to satisfy our emotional programming.

It is not always that we are ruled by our emotions. Most people can control them, wield them, even supress them when necessary.

Is that why we've gotten this far? Because we can control our impulses? We can exercise free will?

Maybe.

Perhaps that is our design. Our purpose. To escape our emotions, our impulses. To become something more.

To satisfy our design.