Eat. Breathe. Reproduce.

I know it isn't a particularly strange approach to the meaning of life. The theory of evolution has been suggesting this as the "meaning" since, well, since it was invented. We're here to eat, to breathe, to reproduce. We're here to propagate the species.

But I wonder - and this is what bothers me most about the theory of evolution - is that really it? I can live without a grand, cosmic plan, that doesn't bother me. I have no issue with a life in which we create our own meaning. Trouble is, are we really? Isn't there a grand meaning, one we didn't sign up for but got nonetheless? If the meaning of life is to maintain and create life, doesn't that make it all just a grand pyramid scheme in which we're forced to participate? "Sell our product to three of your friends, so that they can sell our product to nine more people, so that they, in turn, can sell our product to..." - "Create at least one new person, so that it can create at least one new person, so that it, in turn..."

Sure, we can try to screw the Grand Plan and just our own thing - we can declare, "I don't want children", and we can even kill or castrate ourselves, thus messing up the entire plan. But can we ever really escape? How do we know that our actions, intended to subvert the Grand Plan, aren't really serving it, by removing unsuitable elements from the gene pool? It may seem paranoid, even insane, to worry about the principle "Eat. Breathe. Reproduce." ruling our lives, but it bothers me. It bothers me because it seems so cruel, so ultimately tragic, that all the beautiful things in life should evolve as completely trivial side effects to a machine that was designed and optimized to eat, shit, and fuck.

"But why should that be a problem?" you ask, "Why can't we just enjoy the side effects, now that we have them?" - well, we can. And that is, after all, what I spend most of my time doing, so I don't have any particular problem with it, at least not one I can easily describe. But somehow, on some level, it feels wrong. It makes me feel like I'm a man who believes himself to see fairies and dragons where really there's only the cold, hard walls of his cell in the asylum. No doubt that man is happy, living an adventurous, exciting life inside his head - but he can't help but doubt, wonder, pick at some thoughts that shouldn't be picked at, secretly suspecting that whatever he believes, the cell is actually real, and the dragons actually aren't.