Looking for Meaning? Consider Death.

It's the most natural thing in the world to ask "what is the meaning of life". A question for the philosophers, of course. But more importantly, a question for every single human being. We all have to answer it, one way or another. If we think we can live our lives without an answer, we're deluding ourselves — we have in fact adopted an answer, we just refuse to put it into words.

Ecclesiastes is a wonderful book that addresses the question "what is the meaning of life" head-on.

I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. [1:13]

I've spent quite a bit of time thinking through Ecclesiastes over the last month, so I'm now indulging myself in writing an overview (this post). Of course, you'd do much better by reading it for yourself, but hopefully this post could be helpful as an easy way into the contents.

Let's skip straight to the answer offered by Ecclesiastes, which is hard to miss — the search for the meaning of life under the sun leads only to vanity (vapour).

I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. [1:14]

This seems depressing. Instead of solid meaning, we find empty vapour. There's nothing solid we can orient our life towards. No worthwhile ends for our means.

Faced with this depressing conclusion, we could choose to dismiss it since we do not like it. That would be a mistake. We should dismiss it only if it's untrue. A delusion of meaning is no kindness, it is dangerous folly. So let's dive a bit deeper, looking first at the conclusion: vapour, then at the argument: consider death before finally asking where does this leave us?

A healthy distrust (of me)

In order to make this post legible and somewhat clear (I hope), I'm going to have to do some things that pain me. I'll make sweeping statements that over-simplify the depths of Ecclesiastes. I'll pull short quotations without providing their surrounding context to reinforce my points. I'll state what I understand to be the key ideas without outlining alternatives and justifying my thoughts.

All of these things can be very dangerous — so dangerous that I have often wondered if it's wise to write on this topic at all. I'm reassured by two things. First is that if I can help highlight even one small thing that is useful from Ecclesiastes, that might be of great benefit to the reader. Second is that if this can motivate my reader to read Ecclesiastes for themselves, they would do far better still.

In a similar vein, the solution to all of the dangers and problems that I have introduced is to read Ecclesiastes for yourself. Don't trust me; but if you find some spark of interest, please do read, re-read and digest Ecclesiastes for yourself. Maybe I was right about some things. Maybe I was wrong about others. But in any case, I am very confident that the book is of enormous value to its reader.

All is Vapour

The author's conclusion is clear. "All is vanity [hebel]" [1:2, 1:14, 2:17, 11:8, 12:8]. That is to say that nothing under the sun can provide ultimate meaning and purpose to our lives.

The point is that if you try to hang something as heavy as meaning on any good thing, any life goal, any activity, anything at all on this earth, this fails, since things done under the sun are a transient and insubstantial vapour (note that vapour is perhaps a slightly more helpful translation of hebel). It's not that everything is the same, or that everything is bad, but it is that nothing is substantial enough to give meaning to life. That's the headline, now let's go word-by-word:

All is vapour. I need to emphasise how big this claim is. In the course of life, we're offered many options for life goals that are excellent and noble and seem solid-as-you-like; here are some candidates:

• Leave the world just a little better for your presence in it.
• Provide for & raise happy, kind children.
• Make a mark upon the world, something to be remembered by.
• Experience as much as possible of what the world has to offer.

All of these are like vapour, says the author: they ultimately turn up empty and aren't solid enough to build a life's purpose upon. Strikingly, given that it was hundreds of years BC, the author addresses many of the contemporary goals directly or very closely — when it comes to the meaning of life, not much has changed in three millennia!

Specific vanities in Ecclesiastes

• Everything under the sun [1:2, 1:14, 2:17, 11:8, 12:8]
• No gain through toil [1:3, 2:18, 2:23, 3:9, 4:8]
• Envy (leads nowhere) [4:4]
• Novelty (nothing new) [1:10, 3:14-15]
• Memories fade [1:11, 4:16, 9:15]
• Wisdom is vexation [1:18, 8:17]
• Pleasure is no gain [2:10-11, 6:7]
• Riches are no gain [5:13-14, 6:2-3]
• Respect is no gain [8:10]
• There is injustice [8:14, 10:6]

Consider Death

The strong conclusion "all is vapour" needs a strong justification. While the precise arguments of Ecclesiastes are different for each of the "all"s that are considered, there is a common thread underlying them: consider death.

Actually, it seems a bit unfair to say that the answer is "consider death", when the question "what is the meaning of life" is often asked under the assumption of death. Since I will die, my life and volition is a finite resource — how might I best use it? Death is behind the very question. But Ecclesiastes will argue that death is at the very core of the answer: you cannot ignore death when proposing a meaning to life.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. [7:2]

The basic argument is this: you live now, working or pursuing pleasure. Then you die, and lose all agency over your purposes. Over time, thanks to entropy or stupidity, your works will be spoilt and your purposes frustrated. So your purposes are vain & empty, unable to stand the test of time.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. [1:3-4]

As a flow diagram, I think it works like this:

+--------------------------+     +----------------------+           +---------------------+
| Alive                    |     | Dead                 |           | World continues     |
| You have agency          | --> | No agency            | --time--> | Deeds forgotten     |
| Working towards purposes |     | Your legacy crumbles |           | Purposes frustrated |
+--------------------------+     +----------------------+           +---------------------+

Perhaps it should be slightly more than "consider death", rather, "consider death & time/entropy/change". Death means we only have agency for a time, while living. If we are to seek for a purpose in our life, we have to squeeze it all into this time. But we cannot ignore the fact that it is finite. Our agency will end. Then, we have to deal with the question of what comes after. If we wanted to leave behind a house and a family name, our children might be foolish and lose everything we worked for. If we wanted to make the world a better place with some invention, this invention will be folded into normality, our name will be forgotten, and the invention won't really be able to address the timeless deep needs and problems with humanity anyway.

The Ultimate Leveller

Apart from being somewhat depressing, I find a certain reassurance and beauty in the equality of all of this. No person escapes death. Both the entrepreneur worth \$700 billion and the homeless person with \$10 of earthly possessions face the same reality of death. They face the same frustration that nothing they can do will endure after they've gone. Neither has any advantage in leading a meaningful life. Ecclesiastes makes this quite clear:

There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother's womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. This also is a grievous evil: just as he came, so shall he go, and what gain is there to him who toils for the wind? Moreover, all his days he eats in darkness in much vexation and sickness and anger. [5:13-17]

Riches in this world are not simply earned but are granted. The circumstances of our birth, the relevance of our personal abilities and the opportunities offered during our lives are not under our control, yet they have an enormous impact on our wealth. Wealth is a real responsibility for those who have it, for a time. But it confers no advantage towards living a meaningful life — and that seems good.

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. [9:11]

Nothing New... Really?

I work in machine learning research, a job that I greatly enjoy. In our field, we thrive on fast-paced novelty — papers from 2 years ago are considered old, sometimes "classical results" 🙃. The field had a breakthrough moment in 2012, built on computers (1940s) running on electricity (1800s) and making extensive use of differential calculus (1600s). As I write this post, how can I say with a straight face that I agree with a book from hundreds of years BC that says:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. [1:9-10]

This seems on the face of it like outdated nonsense. Apart from my example in deep learning, there's artificial fertilisers, atomic power and weapons, telecommunications, flight, democracy, abolitionism, theories in quantum mechanics, evolution, relativity. It feels new and exciting to be part of a fast-paced technology-infused world! Perhaps the author was just ignorant — they held a reasonable belief at the time, but history proved them wrong(?)

No, it isn't outdated nonsense. Let me explain my understanding of this, while I accept there might be multiple views that are compatible with the text. The novelty I see through human history can be roughly split into two types: discoveries and inventions. Discoveries are new ways of understanding the natural world, while inventions are new ways of harnessing the natural world to achieve our ends. It's easy to see that discoveries do not contradict the Ecclesiastes conclusion "nothing new under the sun": quantum mechanics didn't require our understanding it to keep working — it was there all along, working as it did before we built our theory, and continuing to work as we advance our understanding. Discoveries are simply new knowledge for us, they are not new events in nature.

Inventions certainly seem new. The face of the earth has been changed by the agricultural revolution, by fertilisers, and by the industrial revolution. But they fall short in two regards: first, they are not truly novel but rather recombinations of existing material and second that they do not change the most important aspects of human existence.

On the first, all of humanity's inventions through time have been a second-order novelty, a clever reuse of existing building blocks. We dig up metals and minerals forged in stars and geological processes. We use chemical processes to construct carbon threads then weave and bond them to make carbon fibre. We imitate the flight of birds, not quite as elegantly but rather beating the air into submission, to achieve heavier-than-air flight. We don't create new stuff, we just move it around a bit to create machines and tools.

Second, nothing is new in a way that matters deeply to human existence. The nearest evidence for this is how amazingly relevant and contemporary the wisdom of Ecclesiastes feels. Apart from some old-fashioned references it genuinely feels as if it could have been on the Times Best Seller list last year. My work is like the work of Ecclesiastes — not in form, but in substance. As in those days, we are born, we work, we reproduce, we seek pleasure and we die. Life expectancy improvements have increased the duration, but the fundamentals are unchanged.

No one's work between Ecclesiastes and now has made a substantive impact on meaning and purpose. So in that sense, "there is nothing new under the sun". Well, let's revise that quickly and instead say almost no-one's work...

Where does this leave us?

We'll start with where Ecclesiastes leaves us, before zooming out to see how it fits into the broader Bible narrative.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them". [12:1]

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. [12:13-14]

Ecclesiastes characteristically ends with a reminder that we're going to grow old and die, using this as a reminder to remember your Creator today, now. The core argument of the book is that your work is empty, meaningless, since it will fade away. This stands in contrast to God's work, which is eternal, solid. So the appropriate response after considering the emptiness of my own work and pleasure "under the sun" is to think about God, the one who is over the sun. This God, whose work is real and solid, has given us commandments to follow and promised judgement on earthly deeds. What He says is solid and worthwhile, so we're compelled to listen and obey.

But, since we have the rest of the Bible to read, we know more about God's plan for the world than the preacher in Ecclesiastes did. After Jesus came, lived, died and rose, Paul's letter to the Ephesians says:

To me [Paul], though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. [Ephesians 3:8-12]

These verses are an insight into God's eternal purpose and plan, which is to use Christians (the church) to display his wisdom in the heavens. This is fundamentally different from anything we saw in Ecclesiastes — we can be part of God's work: God's eternal, meaningful, solid work! His plan for the earth, for all of history, for His own Son's life and work, was to win a group of people for Himself, buying them back from the death their rebellion deserved, thus displaying his mercy, power and wisdom. We can be part of that!

This is why I love Ecclesiastes. It's real. It tears down our delusions of grandeur about ourselves and the meaning of our own work and lives. We'll die and the results of our work will fade. As it dismantles our attempts to find meaning on earth, it points us to the God whose work is meaningful and solid. And wonderfully, almost incredibly, this God brings us into His work. Wow!