Spinoza: The Need for Purpose is Just Ego
No purpose and no meaning is our passport to freedom, but nothing frightens us more.
Therefore, just as Nature does not exist for an end, so it does not act for an end; just as there is no beginning or end to its existing, so there is no beginning or end to its acting. What is termed a "final cause" is nothing but human appetite insofar as it is considered as the starting point or primary cause of something. The Ethics, Spinoza
Spinoza is one of the "hard men" of philosophy. It is hardly surprising he was thrown out of the Amsterdam Jewish community when we look at the messages he was giving out. For Spinoza, God and Nature are the same things, and what is more, it is quite clear from the quote above that Spinoza does not see a world driven by some sort of purpose, or working toward an end.
The whole notion of purpose, or a final cause as the philosophers might call it, is a man-made thing. People complain that their life has no purpose or meaning, believing that purpose and meaning are somehow woven into the fabric of existence. Not so according to Spinoza. The world does not exist for an end, and neither does it act for an end. We do not exist for an end either, and we are just a very small part of a very large unfolding, purposeless, existence.
This tendency to attribute everything that happens in life with a purpose is to anthropomorphize and believe that the rest of the world is motivated by some final cause or purpose. The bottom line is that the world is going nowhere and does not unfold with some predetermined purpose. If the world was driven by purpose it would imply that there was some awareness of a preferred state that it was striving toward. But since the world is all there is how could it possibly be motivated by something that it is not.
The modern habit of falling into despair unless a person can conjure up some kind of purpose is nothing more than egoism. Indeed there have been numerous books telling people that God has a purpose for them; as if God or Nature busied itself with catering to our egoistic need to be important. Numerous philosophers and sages reveal that meaninglessness and purposelessness are the greatest of all blessings on our existence.
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one. Emil Cioran.
We are as free as birds serving no preordained purpose or meaning, and nothing frightens us more than this total freedom.