What Is The Secret Of Life?

What is the secret of life? Would finding the answer be a good thing, or an utter anti-climax? Would knowing that ultimate philosophical truth negate the need to explore the rest of the universe?

As I sit here, listening to 'The Last Starfighter' commentary, and being generally lackadaisical, it seems fitting to consider such grand questions. What would it mean to actually answer that most primal question? Captain Kirk said it best when he said we needed our pain, and we do, but we also need our doubts and open questions to give us something to work towards. Could answering the Question be damaging or simply lead to bigger Questions? What bigger question could there be?

It seems like madness to talk about working towards a philosophical goal when the world is mired in the dirtiest of political eras, where no-one takes reponsibility for anything, and the environment is being driven into the ground zero of global warming while the ocean acidifies and we all face a slow armageddon. Will we ever reach enlightenment? Hopefully, one day, yes. What does all of this have to do with custard and how the revisions to the 'joined up' version of 'Wordspace' are going? I have no idea.

Thankfully, the utterly unanswerable nature of the question makes the whole topic academic at best. What kind of answer would be satisfying, anyway? Would it be better to know that life in this universe is the result of someone on a higher plane accidentally knocking over their test tube, or that we were supposed to grow peanuts as part of some intergalacting trading plan? Were we plunged into consciousness so that one day the aliens of Zeta Zeta II would have 'Star Trek' to watch on Friday nights? The largest questions have the most profoundly dull answers, and it's the journey to reach them that is more important.

What would be an even bigger question than the secret of life? That's an interesting idea to mull over. Leave suggestions at the bottom of the page, and we'll turn them into apple crumbles as a gesture of the madness of the cosmos.

My, 'The Last Starfighter' is a great example of pre-blockbuster film making. I'll have to write about that one day. It's got to be more interesting than existentialism, and how best to rewrite the rapidly inflating 'Wordspace'. Yes, an already lengthy set of episodes is becoming lengthier in the merging. Welcome to the Quirky Muffin, where concise things get longer, and longer, and longer...

O.