Meaning Without Mendacity
The subject is meaning, by which I do not mean the meanings we give words, but rather the meaning a lot of people declare they are seeking in their lives, the meaning life is supposed to have if – as they say – it is to be judged worth living. Even though meaning (as normally conceived) is largely ineffable, some religious people associate meaning with a gift from God, a fullness life would not have were it not for their devotion to the almighty. To religious people, meaning possesses some of the characteristics of “ultimate value.” Others, people of the New Age persuasion, see meaning as a state of being to be sought by “enlightenment,” and enlightenment is to be obtained by grasping the deeper meanings with which Being itself is supposedly endowed.
And certainly, if by “deeper meaning” we mean knowledge not given immediately by the senses or knowledge not apparent by an exercise of common sense, it must be so that Being does possess a deeper meaning. We do not learn the secrets of, say, quantum mechanics by sitting and watching sunsets; we must seek the deeper meanings of the world if we wish to acquire such knowledge. But then, neither the religious people nor those of the New Age would agree that that’s what they mean by the meaning they seek. Meaning has to be . . . well, something deeper than mere knowledge.
If by the word “obtain” we mean something like “reaching out and taking hold of,” then I am of the opinion that meaning is unobtainable. We may experience something like the Buddhist satori or Christian salvation, but when the rush of emotion passes, we still find ourselves wondering, “Is this it? Is this the meaning I’ve been seeking?” We may of course, answer “yes” and spend the rest of our lives in relative happiness, content with the meaning we have “obtained” from our experience.
But even the most devoted Christian convert or New Age devotee must occasionally examine the joy he or she has “gotten” and wonder how this joy differs from others. If they’re clever with words they may even manage to express the difference in a satisfying manner, but finally – if they’re really into thinking about such things – they may admit that what they were seeking as a meaning in their life was much more than merely “joy.” They were seeking meaning and to them meaning, at the very least, has to be something that produces joy. And that means it is not simply the joy produced. Once we face that realization and come to grips with the difference between the things that give us joy and the experience of joy itself, we may find ourselves in possession of an understanding of meaning that gives us a leg up on our search for it in our lives.
Meaning – in the meaningful sense – is an emotional experience, a feeling of worth, of value, of direction and purpose. It is a particular kind of joy, but it is not associated with an object “out there.” It emerges out of the simplest sort of internal realization, and that awareness is of oneself as a valuable person. By this I do not mean what a New Age therapist might prescribe as an affirmation repeatedly addressed to oneself in the hope that the “inner self” will sooner or later believe it to be true. I mean the reasoned acknowledgement of one’s value as a person in the world.
But again, I do not mean the sort of value we are presumed to have from the simple fact of being born. If that value were real in any sense other than the legal sense, questions of meaning would never arise. Real value emerges out of a person’s honest assessment of him- or herself as a being of positive worth. Let’s look at a few examples to see how that assessment might be made by people who might normally think of themselves as of no value to themselves or anyone else.
Consider the factory worker who has repeatedly been told that he is “only a cog in a wheel-gear,” a replaceable part, an expendable, and who, even if he has paid no attention to those assessments, might feel bored with the job he’s doing. How might this “worker bee” find meaning in his life. Well, lets say he is employed in Adam Smith’s famous pin factory, where we are told – and it’s true – that by working on an assembly line 20 workers can produce 100 times more pins than the same 20 men could produce if they each were working alone. The worker who merely sharpens the points after the pins are assembled, may trick himself into thinking his life is meaningless, but when he begins to think of himself as a member of a team that has made pins available to the world at a price that would never have been possible without him and his team mates, his life takes on more meaning than it had before.
Consider the woman who works “only” as a mother and housekeeper. Because she is not paid wages, or because her work does not seem as much fun or as stimulating as the work of the man in the pin factory, or the banker who provided the financing for the operation, she might feel that her life has no meaning. But this one is too easy. What can possibly be more meaningful than the work of a good mother, not to mention the less obvious fact that the good man, her husband, could not be nearly so productive as a pin factory worker if she were not taking care of the home front. The two of them are also a team, applying separation of labor theory to the family’s needs.
Consider the man who is out of work, taking welfare payments in order to live. Not much more need be said in order to see that he could easily feel his life has no meaning, no value. Can this man possibly find qualities in himself that might permit him to value himself as a person? Can nobility possibly exist in the bread line? Well, of course. The unemployed man knows in his heart when he is not doing all he can to find employment … and consequently, there must exist the man who knows the opposite, that he is exerting every effort to change his circumstances. In this man’s case we may find greater difficulty seeing how he could possibly find meaning in his life, but given that his circumstances are only more noticeable than the banker who could not see into the future and thus made more bad loans than he might have, or the entrepreneur who has miscalculated the market and gone bankrupt, harming all those he had employed, and we see that there are elements of nobility that may or may not express themselves in all of us when misfortune comes our way. The man in the bread line may hold his head meaningfully high when he knows he is doing his best to improve his circumstances.
None of these cases may actually come to pass. The factory worker, the housewife, and the unemployed man may all curse their circumstances and bemoan the lack of meaning in their lives, and when they do take that easier road, they will all be telling the absolute truth: their lives will have no meaning. Oh, they may each of them turn to some alternative source of joy – the church (as a social club), alcohol, daytime television – but unless those alternatives somehow convince them of their value as human beings, their lives will continue to seem meaningless. We may not know how to define it, but we know real value when we see it.
Something else may also happen with these people. They may indeed recognize themselves as valuable human beings, making pins, raising children, seeking work, and they may all, while living their meaningful lives, seek also to find greater meaning. They may seek to improve their education, to volunteer meaningful assistance to their community (through their church, perhaps), or they may merely set an example to others of how, even in dire straits, a person can still express noble qualities.
It should be easy enough to see that when we are already leading meaningful lives, we find ourselves energized. When we are leading meaningful lives, and know it, we see all around us the mirrored effects of meaningfulness working in the world. We see life becoming a living thing, in no way resembling the zombie-like existence of the man who feels victimized by “things.”
Joy, you see, is never an input to the human psyche. It’s what the psyche produces when it is in the presence of beauty or of greatness … and what can be a greater presence than the recognition of one’s self as a valuable and meaningful person … a thing of beauty that shall be a joy forever.
And certainly, if by “deeper meaning” we mean knowledge not given immediately by the senses or knowledge not apparent by an exercise of common sense, it must be so that Being does possess a deeper meaning. We do not learn the secrets of, say, quantum mechanics by sitting and watching sunsets; we must seek the deeper meanings of the world if we wish to acquire such knowledge. But then, neither the religious people nor those of the New Age would agree that that’s what they mean by the meaning they seek. Meaning has to be . . . well, something deeper than mere knowledge.
If by the word “obtain” we mean something like “reaching out and taking hold of,” then I am of the opinion that meaning is unobtainable. We may experience something like the Buddhist satori or Christian salvation, but when the rush of emotion passes, we still find ourselves wondering, “Is this it? Is this the meaning I’ve been seeking?” We may of course, answer “yes” and spend the rest of our lives in relative happiness, content with the meaning we have “obtained” from our experience.
But even the most devoted Christian convert or New Age devotee must occasionally examine the joy he or she has “gotten” and wonder how this joy differs from others. If they’re clever with words they may even manage to express the difference in a satisfying manner, but finally – if they’re really into thinking about such things – they may admit that what they were seeking as a meaning in their life was much more than merely “joy.” They were seeking meaning and to them meaning, at the very least, has to be something that produces joy. And that means it is not simply the joy produced. Once we face that realization and come to grips with the difference between the things that give us joy and the experience of joy itself, we may find ourselves in possession of an understanding of meaning that gives us a leg up on our search for it in our lives.
Meaning – in the meaningful sense – is an emotional experience, a feeling of worth, of value, of direction and purpose. It is a particular kind of joy, but it is not associated with an object “out there.” It emerges out of the simplest sort of internal realization, and that awareness is of oneself as a valuable person. By this I do not mean what a New Age therapist might prescribe as an affirmation repeatedly addressed to oneself in the hope that the “inner self” will sooner or later believe it to be true. I mean the reasoned acknowledgement of one’s value as a person in the world.
But again, I do not mean the sort of value we are presumed to have from the simple fact of being born. If that value were real in any sense other than the legal sense, questions of meaning would never arise. Real value emerges out of a person’s honest assessment of him- or herself as a being of positive worth. Let’s look at a few examples to see how that assessment might be made by people who might normally think of themselves as of no value to themselves or anyone else.
Consider the factory worker who has repeatedly been told that he is “only a cog in a wheel-gear,” a replaceable part, an expendable, and who, even if he has paid no attention to those assessments, might feel bored with the job he’s doing. How might this “worker bee” find meaning in his life. Well, lets say he is employed in Adam Smith’s famous pin factory, where we are told – and it’s true – that by working on an assembly line 20 workers can produce 100 times more pins than the same 20 men could produce if they each were working alone. The worker who merely sharpens the points after the pins are assembled, may trick himself into thinking his life is meaningless, but when he begins to think of himself as a member of a team that has made pins available to the world at a price that would never have been possible without him and his team mates, his life takes on more meaning than it had before.
Consider the woman who works “only” as a mother and housekeeper. Because she is not paid wages, or because her work does not seem as much fun or as stimulating as the work of the man in the pin factory, or the banker who provided the financing for the operation, she might feel that her life has no meaning. But this one is too easy. What can possibly be more meaningful than the work of a good mother, not to mention the less obvious fact that the good man, her husband, could not be nearly so productive as a pin factory worker if she were not taking care of the home front. The two of them are also a team, applying separation of labor theory to the family’s needs.
Consider the man who is out of work, taking welfare payments in order to live. Not much more need be said in order to see that he could easily feel his life has no meaning, no value. Can this man possibly find qualities in himself that might permit him to value himself as a person? Can nobility possibly exist in the bread line? Well, of course. The unemployed man knows in his heart when he is not doing all he can to find employment … and consequently, there must exist the man who knows the opposite, that he is exerting every effort to change his circumstances. In this man’s case we may find greater difficulty seeing how he could possibly find meaning in his life, but given that his circumstances are only more noticeable than the banker who could not see into the future and thus made more bad loans than he might have, or the entrepreneur who has miscalculated the market and gone bankrupt, harming all those he had employed, and we see that there are elements of nobility that may or may not express themselves in all of us when misfortune comes our way. The man in the bread line may hold his head meaningfully high when he knows he is doing his best to improve his circumstances.
None of these cases may actually come to pass. The factory worker, the housewife, and the unemployed man may all curse their circumstances and bemoan the lack of meaning in their lives, and when they do take that easier road, they will all be telling the absolute truth: their lives will have no meaning. Oh, they may each of them turn to some alternative source of joy – the church (as a social club), alcohol, daytime television – but unless those alternatives somehow convince them of their value as human beings, their lives will continue to seem meaningless. We may not know how to define it, but we know real value when we see it.
Something else may also happen with these people. They may indeed recognize themselves as valuable human beings, making pins, raising children, seeking work, and they may all, while living their meaningful lives, seek also to find greater meaning. They may seek to improve their education, to volunteer meaningful assistance to their community (through their church, perhaps), or they may merely set an example to others of how, even in dire straits, a person can still express noble qualities.
It should be easy enough to see that when we are already leading meaningful lives, we find ourselves energized. When we are leading meaningful lives, and know it, we see all around us the mirrored effects of meaningfulness working in the world. We see life becoming a living thing, in no way resembling the zombie-like existence of the man who feels victimized by “things.”
Joy, you see, is never an input to the human psyche. It’s what the psyche produces when it is in the presence of beauty or of greatness … and what can be a greater presence than the recognition of one’s self as a valuable and meaningful person … a thing of beauty that shall be a joy forever.
posted by Benedict S. at 1:41 PM
3 Comments:
What's the meaning of all this? I don't think seeking meaning in life is mysterious or, on the other hand, as pat as you make it in your analogies of the frustrated factory worker or homebound housewife.
Seeking meaning is simply a part of the human condition, a path of the brain in defining existence, and frustrations are a fact of life, not necessarily tied to the seeking of deep meaning. There are times when the most optimistic of us are discouraged, times when we turn to religion or books or booze just to ease the pain or the inability to control outcomes. We surrender to something, and we wait for answers.
The brain eventually kicks in and gives us something that seems like an answer -- you could call it meaning -- but it only works until the next crisis when something else or the same thing must be applied.
Whether the apochrophal lowly factory worker is actually seeking deep meaning or not is debatable. I think you're endowing him or her with something that isn't there and doesn't need to be. He wants his creature comforts, he wants "happiness," he wants a clear path, but what does he care about meaning.
Someone once suggested that what he wants is an opiate; there are plenty of those about too.
Well, I tried.
Anybody care to take up the defense of the point of view of the mouse/blogmeister? Or is there anybody who finds fair hope in my point of view? Or is there indeed anybody out there?
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