At the risk of making myself a utilitarian, I would say that the meaning of life is closely related to the purpose of life. It is surprising to me that forum devoted to the discussion of evolution has failed to discuss the Survival of the Fittest as the purpose/meaning of life.
Afterall Darwin claimed that that the struggle for existence is the moving force behind all relationships.
Even so this is understandable because the statement that the purpose of life is to live is a tautology and is therefore meaningless. Also, we take Dawkins seriously when he tells us not to mix philosophy with science even though he does so from page one of the Selfish Gene.
Therefore, I will go with Phil jpm and relationships, but not just any relationships, but love, which is the best and fullest relationship. Love can and does lead reproduction, which should please evolutionists, but it must be noted that Jesus Christ did not have any offspring, so He was not “fit.”
We are to love everyone, even the unloving and selfish, because everyone’s life has purpose and meaning, but this does not mean that we treat or love them the same way.
I don’t fault you for that. I still like Piper but I think Smith is more excellent in regard to our purpose and meaning. He ventured down the post-modern road and came out on the other side better for it.
Let me dig up some quotes from the chapter I’ve been talking about.
‘Trope’ frequently has a negative connotation, so perhaps I was mistaken in inferring that you thought life did have some kind of ultimate meaning apart God.
Oh, and thanks for the insight about Google. ChatGPT has some usefulness too, if you haven’t tried it. (It has some usefulness whether you’ve tried it or not. ; - )
If Kendel had referenced the trope I probably would not have thought that unbelievers lives do have some degree of meaning due to common grace and this discussion would have been much less interesting.
A few “Meaning” threads (see here, and here) have been on my mind for quite some time, and @NickolaosPappas’s was the most recent. Finally, I ran across a book review at work for What do we Mean, When We Talk About Meaning, which focuses on the need to define the question we keep talking about.
When we really focus on answering the question and seeing how other’s approach it, as we are seeing here, the question is interpreted variously. “Meaning” indicates a number of concepts: “given purpose,” “ultimate significance,” “productivity,” “value,” “importance,” “meaningfulness,” “essense,” “reason to go on living.” Most of these concepts can be seen as ultimate/eternal/universal or as temporal/mortal, as we are. As ultimates, they assume things outside of us or beyond our control: an assigned value, a given purpose, a designated significance, etc. But most of these concepts can also be understood as features or elements of mortal human life without reference to ultimates. Often our desire for universal “meaning” seems to overshadow our ability to appreciate the temporal/mortal.
Additionally, focusing on various “meaning” concepts as ultimates implies our ability to effect permanent change in an eternal universe as if we were gods. I wonder, if by focusing so much on what we can imagine rather than what we can do or be, we aren’t stacking the deck of meaning against ourselves.
Of course I’m biased by my faith that there is a God who loves us and cares for us and sees us as significant. I can comfortably ignore the ultimates, assuming those are covered. However, I don’t think having ultimates solved in this or any other way is all that important – at least today as I write.
Looking for different terms for the question, I’m considering something like: What is my sense of place or belonging in the world? It’s a smaller, more human-sized question that still allows for me and others to have significance in the world we inhabit. It recognizes my limitations as a living being and focuses on a realistic grasp of my existence.
In viewing life through the question of my sense of place in the world, I see that sense comprised of many threads of experience, that include things like: relationships, values, contribution, dependence, abilities/disabilities, and more. I think a web or fabric comprised of these threads of experience is an apt metaphor.
I’m looking forward to more interactions on this topic. It’s been great to think about this together so far. I have so many posts to catch up on reading now! It’s wonderful.
And finally, some of the fruits of The-Change-Induced-ADD:
In retrospect, I was also talking about any life having ultimate meaning apart from God. Because God, all life has meaning – his purposes pervade and prevail, not that we comprehend them all, hardly!
First quote from Smith’s Enjoying God by Enjoying Creation, and it’s one that I absolutely love:
“So Augustine introduces an important distinction (you can see this across his entire corpus, but especially in book 1 of Teaching Christianity): what God desires and designs for his creatures is a “right order of love,” which simply means that we are created and called to be creatures who ultimately love the Triune God, and thus find our identity and delight in that rightly ordered love. For Augustine, we are what we love. In fact, we can’t stop loving: even fallen, sinful humanity is still propelled to love; but as sinners, we love the wrong things in the wrong way.”
Nick, thanks for coming to this discussion. Your recent post, “Should we Aspire for a Better World?” was one of the drivers behind my interest in developing this thread.
This is a really important question.
Just to clarify, do you see the question “What is the meaning of life?” as synonymous with “What is the purpose of a person’s life?” or are you addressing your question to those who do (without holding that view yourself)? Or something else?
Part of the problem we are addressing in this thread is what the question actually is that we mean to ask. Not necessarily an easy thing to nail down.
Ah… I see it now… I think… It is the first sentence which throws me. Which thought is “shockingly nihilistic?” That is what makes it hard to understand. I guess you mean the thought behind this evangelical methodology – it never occurred to me this would be described with the word “nihilistic.”
Yes, you understand. Sorry I was unclear.
The apologetic assumption you mentioned — that assumes that life has no meaning without a relationship with God — strikes me as nihilistic.
It has other problems as well.
Thanks for that road map back down memory lane. It may be as I grow longer in tooth that everything will seem new again. As I fade into senescent forgetfulness I shall have to make watching this video a standard feature in my ‘eternal’ Groundhog Day.
I’m not sure if I ever finished watching that video at the time but what a gold mine. I have to agree with @mitchellmckain, Foucault comes off as petty in an emotional way. He balks at the audacity of hypothesizing a ‘human nature’ but has blind allegiance to the unthinking rightness of proletariat power regardless of effects. By now we should all realize just how base, ignorant and dangerous are the inclinations of the uneducated who resent their station in life (think incels or white nationalists) … especially in the hands of those who would stoke that resentment and channel to their own ends. The indignation that laces so many of Foucault’s comments and those of his groupies when they open it up to the audience borders on conspiracy thinking, entirely irrational. Rationality is not all powerful but it sure beats descent into madness.
The meaning of life is someone’s purpose. These two are one and the same in my opinion,and it’s different from everyone’s else’s .
I’m very fond of Nitsche in this one.
Life is suffering. That’s my view and that’s life from me. I’ve been suffering from quite some time to be honest. It has no ultimate meaning. But if I have some goal to achieve (or a purpose) then this is what matters and what’s keeps me going.
But from the other hand things don’t turn out always as we like to. So although I do agree people do need to have some purpose I also believe that with all that evil and randomness in this world the purpose might never been fulfilled.
Hense my question.
Another great question would have been.
Is this purpose or goal coming from God? Since it comes from our consciousness.
Another one would be.
If God has a purpose for us all(as a lot of Christians say) why some never reach it?
I think you and I see this similarly. I wonder if we (maybe we Modern) humans tend to be IDers at heart after all, even if that design process doesn’t include a god/God of some sort. Are we intellectually too big for our existential breeches?
Are some of the questions we ask absurd, rather than the lack of a satisfying answer indicating that our lives are absurd?
Sometimes I feel like asking about ultimate meaning is like asking what magenta sounds like, or askng my parents to explain how the other one thought.
This tickled me:
These folks are not disillusioned goth teens getting all morose and forlorn with the black pants and the dark eye paints.
I taught a few of these kids and their more upbeat “grunge” peers back in the ‘90s. It’s a shame the more philosophical kids found so little space in their social world, where they could work out their questions and concerns. Many of them were already attempting to forge meaningful paths in their lives, where so much that surrounded them was vapid.
I do like that he works to define his terms somewhat.
Meaning is the WHY that subsumes every why. But while meaning is a bigger purpose, that is not all that it is. It is also a connection with something ultimate and non-contingent. Purpose is local and contingent.
I’m not convinced of his conclusions.
Sisyphus is the poster-child for meaninglessness at least in recent Western thought. And we can easily allow his story to become the interpretive lens for our own. In doing that, the lens is also a filter, though. What are the obvious differences between us and Sisyphus that we forget to see, when we apply this lens/filter?
Primarily Sisyphus’s eternal existence does have a meaning determined by the gods. Sisyphus’s eternal existence was devised to be a punishment. that was the meaning of his eternal life. That is its plan and purpose.
Particularly, if we see no ultimate meaning assigned to our lives our purpose for our existence, we should recognize that they cannot then carry the meaning or purpose of Sisyphus’s.
Once we get through this gate, we can contrast the deliberately established components (and lack of components) that are part of Sisyphus’s existence.
This is a good point. I think it’s important, though, to keep in mind that the value those things will differ, depending on one’s ability to respond to, or invest effort, etc. Jay and I have both brought up our concerns regarding questions of meaning and persons with disabilities (an enormous umbrella category). This can greatly impact what any individual values, how one invests effort, responds to, etc.
The greater challenge is understanding the reverse. How do we see the value of a person, whose ability to invest effort, respond, etc. is different or limited from “average.”
I’m confident, Mitchell, that you haven’t forgotten these things. We can’t fit everything into these posts (the way I appear to be attempt at the moment), but it’s not on everyone’s mind. So I bring it up here.
THis is an interesting way to talk about it. I don’t think I’ve heard meaning talked about as a function of process.
I was still hoping you’d flesh out this question more, but I don’t see that you have.
Answering as broadly as the question seems to be cast at face value: there are many offers of infinite joy given by many religions. Some are more dubious than others. Some, depending on one’s gender, are only limited to half the population. Some of those offers are self-indulgent, others less so.
Roger, this really is the idea, isn’t it? But what kind of meaning in life is there, then, for people in lesser relationships, or whose loving relationships have desolved (I’m thinking particularly of older people who over decades have lost those relationship threads through various forms of atrition.)? Are their lives meanngless?
If you get a chance to read around this thread, I’d be interested in your take on the various ideas other people have proposed. Some are similar to yours, but there’s a good deal of variation even among those.
Your additional questions are worth considering. Thanks for including them. I hope to come back to one or two later today.
If I may be so bold the meaning of meaning is irrelevant when we cannot stop loving.
Piper and Lewis understood this propensity to love as did Augustine and Smith.
“Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations…but not God. He was an idea—even a good one—and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight.” Piper
This relates perfectly to unbelievers and meaning. While they have no object of ultimate delight in Jesus they still have various objects of delight in the world and not all of those delights are necessarily sinful in themself.
I’m probably revealing my ignorance of html, but I got it figured. ; - )
the meaning of meaning is irrelevant when we cannot stop loving.