Defining the Meaning of Life: Death, Volition, and God
Steven’s Story
Steven R. Levy was born and bred in Los Angeles. He was an only child, raised by two loving parents. Steven’s mother was one of five and his father one of three, so Steven grew up with lots of cousins and a very close-knit extended family. In fact, Steven’s family and nearly all of his extended aunts and uncles lived in the same neighborhood, meaning that he was free to play and hang out with his cousins whenever he wanted.
“My childhood was very comfortable, very loving. I felt secure in my relationships. Growing up, I could roam around the neighborhood and every fourth or fifth house there was a relative I could stop by and say hello to.”
In high school, Steven experienced the normal coming-of-age angst everyone experiences during this time — figuring yourself out, navigating social life as a teenager, etc. He was primarily focused, however, on getting decent grades so he could go to college.
After graduating high school, Steven entered USC as a biochemistry major, aspiring to be a dentist after he got his degree. One of the requirements for pre-dental students was a philosophy class, which everyone regarded as completely arbitrary and subjective. Steven’s peers often said there was no telling what your grade is going to be because it depended on what your professor had for dinner. Upon taking the course the summer of his sophomore year, however, Steven’s perspective completely changed.
“My eyes just opened. The chemistry, physics, and biology were fine but I thought, This is really cool stuff! I went back my junior year, changed my major to philosophy and pursued that ever since. The class was something I went into kicking and screaming, but ended up being eternally grateful for.”
After Steven took philosophy classes for a year at USC, he quickly learned that UCLA provided a better philosophy program and transferred before his senior year. He had made up his mind that teaching philosophy was what he wanted to pursue, and he never looked back. Everything seemed to fall into place for Steven — he completed his Bachelor’s in philosophy in 1968, and stayed for another six years to obtain his Ph.D. Though he had discovered his passion, Steven’s change in academic trajectory initially faced opposition from his parents.
“My family was very upset when I announced that I was going to be studying philosophy instead of dentistry. ‘How will you ever make a living off that?! What are you going to do with that!’ They were against it at first but ultimately came to support me and my decision.”
After hopping between various schools to teach philosophy for some time after getting his Ph.D., Steven struggled finding jobs. Most of the teaching positions available for the field were in small towns in the middle of nowhere. With a wife and child to raise, Steven was faced with a heavy decision — did he want to uproot his family and move to a random town just so he could teach?
“I had made the decision to leave philosophy and go into the computer software industry. It wasn’t an easy choice to make; I was very unhappy. But if you just grumble about what you don’t like — a lesson I learned from my father when I was very young — you’re going to be a really unhappy person your whole life. If you can find something in just about anything to amuse you or to capture your fancy, life is going to be a lot more pleasant for you. I decided I was going to find a way to enjoy it, and I did.”
After nearly 30 years in the computer industry and two daughters graduated from college, Steven was able to find his way back into teaching at CSULA. One day during the several years he taught there, he attended a colloquium featuring David Kaplan, an old colleague and very dear friend. David was Steven’s philosophy professor at UCLA, who he always looked up to. Steven TA’d for David several times during the later part of his philosophy studies at UCLA, so the two had a close friendship. At the colloquium, Steven said hello to David, unsure if he’d remember him since it had been nearly three decades since they last saw each other. To Steven’s pleasant surprise, David recognized him immediately and was delighted to see his old friend. The two spent the rest of the evening catching up on the other’s life events from the past 30 years, and a few days later Steven was contacted by the Philosophy Department at UCLA. He was offered his dream job of teaching at the school.
Steven has been a philosophy lecturer at UCLA for over 13 years, and still teaches today.
Steven’s Meaning of Life
“I really think that the meaning of life or what it should be and what it is for me is my relationship with other people and how we interact. When I say that, I’m not making a grand statement except that I think our society in general spends a lot of time paying homage to this ill-defined god they have when that homage ought to be shared with others.
What really crystallized these thoughts more than anything happened ten years ago when my mother died. She was in the hospital and it wasn’t a surprise — she was 96 years old. She happened to be in the hospital on the holiest day in the year of the Jewish religion — when people go to synagogues all over the world and spend the day fasting in deep thought. By birth, I’m Jewish, but I’m not terribly religious. While others were celebrating the holy day, I was sitting in the hospital with my unconscious mother.
What I discovered when studying civilizations is that the meaning of life for most people seems to revolve around a higher being — a god that’s sort of the uncaused cause. Probably the most important or best argument there is for the existence of some sort of godlike thing is very scientifically based — we believe that everything that happens has a cause. “So the uncaused cause must have been god!” people say.
If everything has a physical cause, then it can be explained by chemistry, physics, or some other science. If that’s true, then every movement I make has a physical cause. Something transpired in my brain to make me do this or do that. So if I put my hand up, something fired in my brain to make me do that. If we get right down to it, then the inescapable conclusion is that everything I’m saying right now is predetermined because there are causes. It has to happen, the conclusion states. I couldn’t have sat an inch to the left or right on my chair right now. I had to sit exactly where I am, the thought is. But we don’t believe that!
I believe that I can be an uncaused cause, that I can do things that I want to do just out of volition. That’s a power people have traditionally reserved for god. But I’ve come to the realization that I am god. That sounds grand, but it’s not all that extraordinary. You’re god, and everyone else is too. We all have freewill; we all have the godlike power to make changes to the world to do things. We don’t have infinite power like the typical religions say god has — we might not be omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent — but we have godlike powers.
During our experience as children growing up there are certain relationships we develop with people that are somewhat godlike — our parents. Our parents have complete control over us and they’re terribly important to us. We tend to worship what they do and how they treat us. Everybody is important to somebody in that way.
People and civilizations give reverence to whatever god they worship — they fear god, they love god, they want to treat god with the highest regard. Well to me, since god is really all of us individually, that’s how we should treat other people. I should give you the same reverence that people who go to church or temples give their god. I should give that reverence to everyone that I encounter and they should give it back to everyone they encounter.
When my mother died and it fell to me to give the eulogy, I said, ‘I did not go to the synagogue on Yom Kippur.’ I talked about how I thought each one of us is god, and how my mother had godlike properties. I said, ‘I didn’t go to the synagogue on this day; I was sitting alone in a hospital room with god. Because whenever we are spending time with anyone, we are spending it with god.’”
