(This was my Philosophy project this semester. I’m going to take what my teacher wrote on it and try to improve upon it, or at least incorporate what he talked about in his comments. I wanted to post the original and then the second edition when I get it written:)
Gerard: You know, Mike, I understand you're smart, you've always had a knack for Lit and Philosophy and all the critical thinking stuff, but don't you think you come off as stuck - up to those of us just trying to live life?
Michael: Stuck - up? For being proud of my intellect? But you know, Gerard, you bring up an interesting ponderance, namely "Why are we here?"
Gerard: In my kitchen?
Michael: No, no, I mean, why are we as individuals here, what is the reason each individual exists, individually?
Gerard: Well, I never really thought of it too much, but I would reckon it'd be to live good Christian lives.
Michael: What is entailed in a 'Good Christian Life' my friend?
Gerard: Well you know, doing right by your family, your neighbors, and even to strangers if you can. Doing good, productive work; making, growing or building something, ya know? Never being too mean, or judgmental or hateful towards other people.
Michael: That all seems simple enough, be as good and as productive a person as you can be, you're saying?
Gerard: That would be right.
Michael: Well, let me put this to you, my friend. Imagine for me, if you will, a woman about the age of thirty. She has three kids, two jobs, one bathroom and countless bills, so much so that she turns to the government and the community for extra assistance. Now, her jobs are both service industry, catering to other people and not making anything, are you saying she isn't fulfilling her purpose in life?
Gerard: Well, I don't know if she should've went off and had all them kids anyway, Mike, it's just doesn't make any sense, especially if there ain't going to be no daddys to stick around. But, she is doing right by her family, I'd have to say, even if she isn't being productive.
Michael: But those children will more then likely grow up in poverty, and in the process of them growing up in poverty, she's not just being a nuisance to the community and the government in the short term, but rather in the long term.
Gerard: Well, I never thought of it that way, Mike.
Michael: So did she divert from her purpose in life? From living the 'Good Christian Life'?
Gerard: Well I wouldn't chastise her, but I ain't gonna ask her to be my preacher anytime soon.
Michael: What if I told you that these children were triplets conceived by rape that she decided to carry to term.
Gerard: Well, I'm not so sure. I'd reckon you could say that'd make her a good person, self-sacrificing like that.
Michael: Has she fulfilled her purpose in life?
Gerard: I'd have to say yes, she did something selfless and good.
Michael: But it was reckless. She brought three children into an already over populated planet. We don't have enough room to produce enough food to feed the seven billion people we have now.
Gerard: Are you saying she should have aborted them?
Michael: Well, if we are here to be productive, as you have said, I think so. It seems destructive, or counterintuitive, to do otherwise, especially since she's condemning them to a life of poverty. And I emphasize she, because we're looking at her, and not them or the chance that they may, as it is said, 'Pull themselves up by their bootstraps."
Gerard: I guess it makes sense Mike, maybe we aren't here to live good Christian lives. Why do you think we're here?
Michael: To live.
Gerard: To live? Well Mike, I'm simple, but come on, that's over simplifying it.
Michael: I meant like to live, hedonistically.
Gerard: You mean to over - indulge, how can that be why we're here?
Michael: We create and destroy by nature, so neither can be why we are here, can they? One does not seem to out weigh the other, a woman gives birth to a child and a man murders a stranger at a convenient store.
Gerard: What about farmers?
Michael: For every farmer there is an agribusiness that pollutes and poisons our foods with hormones, preservatives and pesticides, which leads us faster and faster toward death.
Gerard: What about manufacturing plants?
Michael: Like the ones in the orient where men, women and children are over worked and underpaid in sweatshops? While the rest of the world can't get decent paying jobs because the multi-national corporations want to increase their profit margin?
Gerard: So, as a race, we create as much as we destroy?
Micheal: And as individuals! We drive cars, smoke cigarettes, forget to recycle, litter! All signs of our hedonism. Why are we here? To indulge in hedonism at whatever extreme we desire until we kill ourselves or someone else.
"Those that dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that all was vanity, but the dreamers of the day, are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams and make them real."
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