Excellence and the Value of Life

As I plow through my perpetual quarterlife existential crisis, the concept of aspiring to excellence as a life's goal bombards me.  Maybe it's my recent obsession with America's Got Talent that's got my passion-pursuant juices flowing, but it also hearkens back to my days of philosophical study and the Greek philosophy of human excellence.

What does it mean to be excellent?  Inherent in the word is a stratification of worth, rendering those who rise above superior and those who fall short inferior.  I have a difficult time swallowing this concept as I struggle through evaluating the worth of an arbitrary human life.  I would like to think that every single human life has some redeemable factor which makes it inherently valuable apart from one's actions.  This desire for inherent human worth likely derives from my hope that the existence of the universe is dependent on my own existence, and following that logic, would have to apply to every single human being.

This damned human metacognition: it's what separates us from all the other creatures on Earth, as far as I am aware.  You know, it makes me laugh to hear about all the "scientific facts" we have about animal psychology, as if we can even understand human psychology.  The day I can step into someone else's mind and inextricably perceive his or her thoughts, feelings, and personal reason, then I'll put some stock in attempting to understand the minds of others.  Of course, this will never happen and we forever remain trapped within our own consciousness, unable to ever fully connect with another person on a rational plane.  As effective as linguistic expression can be, it is ultimately an impure form of expression.  Words are merely the accepted standardized quantification of feelings and perceptions that allow some type of human progress.  What does it even mean to progress?  What is the point of progress?

So I remain with the dilemma of the value of life.  The concept of excellence suggests its opposite - a failure of some kind.  Excellence places greater value on those lives that possess it than those who do not.  Oh, ethics: how you confound my life.  This ability to be meta-aware of my own existence serves only to stymie me, especially when no obvious and universal purpose for life exists.  Maybe this dilemma stems from my insatiable need for direction.

I recently took a survey at work to determine my learning style.  According to this measure, I am nearly equal parts rigid and fantastical; I need assistance in building a foundation and from there I can branch into the realm of the absurd.  Perhaps this exploration of excellence is me striving for some concrete answer about what the value of life truly is.  I search for answers with the assumption that they exist.  

I crave knowledge.  This rational mind seeks to be satiated with factoids.  As Camus writes, our rational minds can incessantly search for and receive "scientific" facts; however, these small revelations never ultimately compound a single truth.  The more "truth" I obtain, the less truth I possess.  Maybe there is no universal truth.  In fact, it must be impossible.  Is it because we are too primitive to be privy to the universe's secrets or are there simply no secrets to unveil?

Oh, Camus, you are clicking in my mind as I pour out my reason.  You discuss humanity's insatiable need for universe to be "orderly" when the way in which the world works is incongruous with the way in which my mind works.  Here the egocentricity of humanity is highlighted; I project the way in which my mind works as the way the world must work.  Wow.  It is impossible for me to attempt to understand the universe while being trapped by my own human reason.  Camus, the world is "absurd" to us.  It is a truly fruitless endeavor to attempt to comprehend an incomprehensible existence.  

So what is there to do in the absence of enlightenment? That is an exercise for another day.

Eternally oblivious,

M.E.