Thanks for requesting to open this thread again, Kendel!
Well, I’ve understood meaning to be the thing that gives substance, or maybe weight, to being alive, and logic for acting upon anything. It, to me, is the foundation reason for existing—the value in it. That’s what I’ve understood up to this point, at least, though vocabulary for these subjects is always difficult.
It really does go hand-in-hand with purpose, I suppose. It’s more easily understood as the driving force to motivate living. Without it, life is pointless and we sense no real conviction of living or dying (and for some deeply despairing people, any conviction leans toward death).
I wouldn’t say value and purpose are synonymous, but they’re so deeply connected here that I wonder if one must be present for the other to be present as well. So when I try to understand meaning, there’s usually some teleological element that I feel is necessary. Anyone else feel similar?
I’ve also been wrestling with the subjectivity of meaning and trying to understand how individual, personally-defined meaning isn’t arbitrary. Maybe I’m so used to meaning being understood as externally-given and common to all mankind that it’s hard to grasp how subjective meaning can really be meaningful. Any thoughts?
Seamitchell, I just found this draft hanging out on my tablet. I got distracted and forgot to come back to it. Sorry.
I agree that vocabulary for topics like this is a challenge. I don’t have any formal background in philosophy and often find disussions that rely on a lot of technical terms confusing, boring, sometimes (not always) pompous. Most people have thought about these things in whatever terms are available to them and don’t need a license. Neither do you.
I tried to pull out some highlights from your post that I’d like to try to address. I hope other people do as well. I know I’m not the only one who thinks about this, and certainly not the most insightful thinker here.
I think the things you mentioned are normal, and so are the questions.
Purpose and value are terms that come up a lot in discussions of meaning. But they’re tricky. What if we considered them in relation to another person’s meaning. Must other people in our lives serve a purpose to us in order to have meaning? Do they only have meaning because of some value they bring to our relationship?
My mom, at 93, has slowed down a lot. She sees less and less meaning in her life because she sees herself as serving no real purpose any more. Is she right? I certainly don’t think so. But my view of her is not based on a purpose she fulfills or a particular value she brings. I love her, even though she can drive me crazy, because of bonds that were developed before I can remember. To my thinking those count. And while her purpose as a mother and value as a breadwinner have been fulfilled, she doesn’t have less meaning to me. Her meaning to me has changed during the course of our lives, but not deminished. Clearly, she and I have different concepts of “meaning of life.”
Meaning as I’m describing it here is entirely, unapologetically subjective. I am the only one who can ever have this particular understanding of her meaning. My sister’s experience with her is very different and so is the meaning of our mother to her. Experiences lived side by side in the same house for years but very different.
I don’t see such meaning as merely arbitrary, which I take to understand as random, one choice is no better than another. We may randomly encounter individuals in our lives, and those individuals may have all sorts of “meanings” to us, or none at all. A random encounter with a person can lead to a life long friendship. I’ve had many. The meaning and value of those relationships and the individuals in them is entirely subjective and built over time. It is not transferable to anyone else, either.
Interesting to consider the “purpose” of people in a friendship. Must they and the friendship have a purpose beyond the mutual enjoyment of this particular, peculiar, common relationship in order for any of it to have meaning? Generally, I think we see friendships that revolve around a specific purpose as a way to use another person, rather than to build a friendship.
I bring in relationships as an example of how we can try out our concepts related to “Meaning of life” on someone else, rather than getting entirely hung up on our own meaning. But I also bring up relationships because I think that they are essential to experiencing meaning for ourselves. In spite of being a classic introvert, I believe that webs of strong, good relationships are essential to our perception of meaning in our lives, whether I can clearly articulate precisely what I am trying to say with the term “meaning.”
I”m not really sure that the concept of “meaning” is anything any of us can ever pin down, because our sense of meaning or meaningfulness is entirely subjective.
Kendel, what a marvelous essay you have put together. Thank you for that. It takes a great deal of time to pause and sort through the concepts you refer to: experiences (ours and others), friendships that relate to our lives, the attempt at defining “purpose”, enjoyment etc. And all of it gaining toward the goal of defining “meaning of life”. I also note how it integrates into the meaning as finally and succesfully defined by Viktor Frankl as “LOVE”. It is worthy of consideration that ideas such as those you have expressed mesh so well with his, while at the same time offering additional perspective. Thanks!!
@Kendel I agree with Bucky’s comments here. I thought I might have some comments about Seamitchell’s post but there doesn’t seem to be the time. In between driving Lia to appointments and walks every waking moment is going into reading Elif Shank’s There Are Rivers In The Sky. (Two big thumbs up.)