Is Life About Learning A Lesson?

Some seem to think so.

The tricky word here is “life.” In fact, the whole argument depends on this very crucial word. If I were to change the title question to: “Is This Week About Learning A Lesson?" or “Is Grade School About Learning A Lesson?," then I think the obvious answer would be - yes, of course.

But here is this large, ominous, mysterious, and all-encompassing word “life.”

Let’s make a distinction between the actual, original title and the two alternatives I just mentioned. The hope that a person can learn important lessons in a certain week is generally found to have value if, by doing so, one’s experience of the subsequent week would be improved by, at least, not making the same mistakes; thus, they might be happier as a result. And this is what is meant, I think, by a “valuable lesson.”

The hope that a person would learn important lessons in grade school should have something to do with accomplishing in that person a solid foundation of general knowledge and people skills, among other things; thus, they become cosmopolitan and informed. And these characteristics are also thought to come from valuable lessons if by achieving these things a person can lead a more quality life.

What both of these other titles imply, however, is that there is something after this week, and after grade school for which we can reap the benefits of our valuable lessons.

But this is not so available when one attempts to apply value for the anticipation of benefits after life. What benefits would there be to reap then? What is left to gain? If someone at Mr. X’s funeral said “well, he learned a valuable lesson this week,” I would say “no, he obviously didn’t.” The most you might be able to get away with saying is that he learned a lesson, but it wasn’t valuable at all, but this is awkward and probably depends on him having at least a few moments to reflect on the mistake and say “oops.”

Upon frowning on this, it may become obvious where a demarcation must be made clear. If one answers the title question in the positive, then they must have in mind something to be gained after life. If one answers in the negative, then they must be implying that there is nothing to be gained after life. (This is probably in need of some further support, which I could go on to develop, but I am not going to do that. Rather, for now, I think that the idea is clear enough that one’s own experience would be sufficient enough to find these claims agreeable.)

Let’s make general two groups- religious and non-religious. But we should be clear that it is not limited to these groups, but it is only limited, as I am arguing, to the general belief that there is something to be gained after life.

Now, if there is nothing to be gained after life as the atheist may claim, then certainly life cannot, in whole, be about learning a lesson; that is, it cannot be about this for the individual. If, however, one were to believe that one man’s life lesson could benefit another, or even an entire society, then that man’s life lesson would be valuable, but not to him. Still, this is weak. Because we could also go on to say that since all mankind is finite and must at some point become an extinct thing, then the individual’s incapability of benefiting from his own life lesson would soon be carried over to the entirety of society. They, in whole, do not have anything to be gained after the death of mankind. So the problem is carried over to the group from the individual.

Now, if there is something to be gained after life as the religious may say, maybe only then can life, in whole, be about learning a lesson. (Note: the term “religious” can be too vague. I mean to pick on monotheisms and all their sub-branches: Christianity, Judaism, Islam…. Mormonism, Jehova’s Witness…etc. I choose to focus on these because they have the most obvious beliefs that there is an afterlife in some eternal land where the struggles (lessons) of the flesh can be justified by some grand pay-off.)

Now, how likely is it that “life is about learning a lesson” for the religious monotheistic? Well, if you were to probe them even just superficially, I think they would say that yes, indeed, this is at least one aspect of what life is about. Unfortunately, with no respect for consistency, they also claim, as monotheists usually do, that God is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient. And herein lies the rub… as usual.

Firstly, they, like the atheists, have two ways to go about this: either 1) life is about learning a lesson in the individualistic sense, or 2) life is about learning a lesson in the societal, entirety of humanity, sense - the group.

There is strong empirical evidence against the 1) individualistic sense. One needs to go no further than some arbitrary world news channel to learn of the death of one human being that in no way could have responsibly conceptualized and processed the content of a “life lesson.” Maybe this is the death of a newborn, for example, or even this is the death of a toddler, a preteen. Or, possibly this is the death or even just the mere existence (no death involved) of the mentally handicapped. They will not be learning life lessons in the kind of insightful manner we mean when we connect “Life“ in conjunction to “Lesson.” So if it is not true of all people, how can it be said, by a Good God, that only some are chosen to achieve something, and others to be mere consequences of humanity, mere means?

When confronted by the failures of 1) individualism, the Christian may want to use 2) collectivism. However, there is a logical dissonance to the idea that 2) life is about learning a lesson in the societal, entirety of humanity, sense. The shock of the empirical truth just mentioned - those people unfortunate enough to be unable to process the content of a “life lesson”- continue to wreak havoc on this notion as well. At first, it seems to be a first-class defense that may justify the death of babies, invalids, and the like, if something can be achieved later from misfortune. That is, if life is about learning a lesson for all human kind as a group, then, yes, some will serve as examples and points to be learned from, for others to become “witnesses” as they say. Just hope it’s not you. (Of course, if it is you, you will nevertheless still be renewed in heaven, but that means, as suspected, that life was not about a lesson- not for you- you were the lesson.)

This path is failure since, as you may have noticed already, it implies that God needs a means to deliver this lesson. Some people will be used as means for other people’s ends (lessons) and to be the witnesses of those means. So I should ask you, does it make sense to say that an all-powerful God would “need” to use other people as a means to achieve something for some other person? Not to mention, how much sense does it make to say that an all-powerful God - the monotheistic definition- would “need” anything? “Need “implies “lack,” my friends.

So, neither the atheists nor the religious can justifiably establish that a man’s life is about, in whole, learning a lesson.

This argument is now resembling some kind of disjunctive. Remember that at the beginning of this essay I said that it was clearly the case that “this week,” or this “grammar school” could certainly be about learning a lesson since there was an implied after concept to these.

If, then, only things with after concepts can be truly of the essence of a “lesson,” then what does that say about life? I think it says two things. It firstly says the obvious conclusion that I’ve been getting at along- life is not about learning a lesson (not in this whole sense anyway). But more interestingly, it says something else as well. A person, in order to experience the benefits of those lessons that truly are lessons, must try to live life in a kind of “presentism.” I may be stretching the traditional use of this term, but I think it will be ok for now.

What I mean by this presentism, in other words, is that if benefits, pleasure, or happiness are the results of “lessons,” and there is no real lesson about life as a whole but only in segments of life, then one should try to enhance the efficacy of those small present lessons one learns each day, or week, or year, and then take those benefits as the true value generators of life, and furthermore, to enjoy it now, in the present, in the moment, and even help others to do the same.

Do not, this would imply, wait all your life to enjoy ultimate happiness as if the entirety of your life was a means to some phantasmal end….