What Do You Mean When You Talk About Meaning (of Life, That is)?

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

@Kendel

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?

I guess we will all find out sooner or later unless we are part of the earliest harvest. I was just reviewing some resources shared on the Pithy quotes thread and read this again in an article @jpm shared from which I’ve found many memorable books.

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow(Counterpoint, 2000)

“I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.”

And another set of quotes shared by @Randy with my bolding for first Nick, then Kendel:

Another of my favorite books is “The Chosen,” by Chaim Potok.

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”

[NickolaosPappas (Nick)]

Really though provoking and generally true.

Ive had people in the past which i was genuine depended upon for my happiness.They abused their power and then negelcted me to the point that im what im today.They played a significant role in my psyche.

So i kinda agree that we have power over many relationships.

However thats the part i realized on my own and from the past year i do not hold any accountabily.
Whenever i see someone getting too dependant on me from the beginging i break it off explaining to them how bad it is .

And if anyone ask for advice i never give them one.Thats an external influence and id be disgusted with myself if i have influence the person to take some other action that the one he would have.

Although i struggle with my mental state and find it hard to find personall meaning in this one and a half year that i have no long lasting relationships with people i found something that i never thought it would existed.
A form of happiness.Happiness in the sense that my actions are not dependent on anyone and my psyche is also not dependent on anyone.

A stranger would curse me off the street ?Who cares.

My “friend” group that i hang out will drop me off their plans?Dont give a dam

This kind of loniless has its pros and cons.

Returing home from uni or work and thinking “dam i wish i had a companion so i can watch a movie and lay down” is really heartbreaking at times and it drives you insane.

From the other hand having the completele FREEDOM to absolutely do anything that doesnt impact your relationships(because you dont have any)is sensational.

So if relationships are the meaning of life i kinda gree with yoU
This is another form of external validation.But i refuse to believe someones purpose is validation from a relationship.

I also hate the idea that im unable to change things or change my lifes purpose if it has any.

[heymike3]

@NickolaosPappas

Sadly many of us didnt get "saved: by God .Makes you wonder,

Not yet. For me the biggest eye opener was coming across someone who really believed it. He answered my questions as best he could. Introduced me to Mere Christianity and somewhere along the way while listening to Christian radio in my car on a rainy day at beach I asked Jesus to come into my heart… I also did this as a 9 yo at a Billy Graham crusade. I also remember that vaguely and even found the video of that crusade on YouTube… that was something listening to that as a 45 yo wondering what my 9 yo self heard in the message.

[NickolaosPappas (Nick)]

Everyone has a different expereince i guess.For some God maybe didnt want to enter into someones heart

[heymike3]

I firmly believe that that’s impossible if you want him to

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Kendel

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?

Who are we to say that others are in lesser relationships?

You cast the question in abstract terms that cannot be answered. My father died of dementia a few years ago at age 99. He was preceded by less than a year by his wife, my mother, who died as the result of the physical results a stroke some 24 years earlier. They both lived in the nursing home.

Did their lives lose meaning and purpose? Yes, since both of them ended their lives before necessary, she by ending medication needed for breathing and he by refusing to eat. Death can be a release. Humans are not mean to live forever. Stop thinking like Darwin.

People in nursing homes are no longer “productive members of society,” but if we are loving people who appreciate what others have done for us in the past and in the present. we will care for them. If we do not have real loving relationships then our lives are meaningless, no matter how productive we may be.

The problem with Intelligent Design is not the design, The problem is that it is based on a dualistic understanding of Reality, ID’ers are not content with having reality based on a scientific design. It has to be a divine design. They are not aware that all truth and knowledge comes from God.

[heymike3]

@Relates

reality based on a scientific design

methodological naturalism much?

[marta]

@Kendel

Are some of the questions we ask absurd, rather than the lack of a satisfying answer indicating that our lives are absurd?

Since I don’t believe life to be absurd, I would answer this question with ‘yes’.

@Kendel

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 (…) where so much that surrounded them was vapid

I definitely was a kid like that. And now I’m an adult like that too. Most of us in here probably are. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, right?
Not that I’m surrounded by stupid, vapid low-brow people It’s just doesn’t seem like a common interest, and intelligence and/or religiosity doesn’t seem to have correlation either, although certain level of intellect is required.

@Kendel

Sisyphus is the poster-child for meaninglessness at least in recent Western thought

Slightly confused here. Because further down you say

@Kendel

Sisyphus’s eternal existence does have a meanin

Well, whichever it is, I think both would have implications.

So if Sisyphus’ existence doesn’t have a meaning…

…and yet it’s eternal, then this debunks the famous low level apologetic (if it can even be called that) that believer’s life is meaningful because it’s eternal, as opposed to that of an atheist. Obviously I don’t agree with this, why should something have intrinsic meaning just because it’s infinite.

But if his existence is meaningful…

…that’s a kick in the teeth to proponents of “life is meaningful”. Why? Because it’s obvious that they see it as a positive. After all if somebody says “My life has lost meaning” you know it’s bad news, and good news when you hear the opposite. But here Sisyphus has meaning, but it doesn’t make his existence good in any way, infact this meaning is certainly negative.

@Kendel

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?

This struck a chord with me. My immediate thought was about people with ‘neuro diversity challenges’ (phrase I’ve heard recently on TV).
It’s often a lot harder for anyone in this group to even form relationships in the 1st place and more challenging to maintain. But on the flip side some claim to cope better with being alone, they may not have same needs to be with people as those who are ‘neurologically standard’.
As to people whose loved ones have passed away, I think that beautiful quote shared by @MarkD sums it up a lot better than I ever could. if you missed it, it’s here again:

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow(Counterpoint, 2000)

“I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.”

And of course from Christian perspective, that love doesn’t just evaporate, we’re hoping to be reunited after death.

So no, I don’t believe that in both these cases people’s lives suddenly become meaningless (even though I don’t believe life is meaningful in the 1st place ) but their existence however can become unbearable, I can easily imagine that.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@heymike3

the meaning of meaning is irrelevant when we cannot stop loving.

Interesting point, not that we shouldn’t talk about it now because certainly none of us has reached that condition yet!

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Kendel

The more threads a person has that connect them to their world, the greater potential for a stable sense of place.

There is a danger in that for the non-Christian. Comfort and contentment and self-satisfaction with their place in this life insulate and blind them from what is supremely (may I say ‘ultimately’?) valuable and satisfying and then, if well-off (I guess that was implicit) and well-heeled, plan to build bigger barns on their last night while cartoonishly characterizing ‘the hereafter’ as merely a party.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Kendel

(think old people at church)

I hear that loud and clear!

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@heymike3

@Relates

ID’ers are not content with having reality based on a scientific design. It has to be a divine design. They are not aware that all truth and knowledge comes from God.

methodological naturalism much?

Science is about Nature. Nothing wrong about that, but Nature did not create itself. God did. Nature cannot think. Nature cannot design. God does think and God did design evolution to create the world we have today.

There is an article in today’s paper about mass extinctions that indicates evolution for the most part took place at times when almost all of the plant and animal life on earth became extinct and evolution had the task of repopulating the earth with new forms adapted to the new ecology of the earth. So much for the survival of the fittest!

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@heymike3

I also did this as a 9 yo

I accepted my parents’ testimony and others’ early on, as well as my own sinfulness (still evident to all) and raised my hand at more than one alter call. (I would characterize my parents’ theology as baptistic or revivalist. I know they understood and had experienced God’s provision and providence – Mom once said they were ‘deep-water Presbyterians’. ; - )

So I don’t know when I ‘officially’ made a ‘decision’ or a ‘choice’. Some fundamentalists would doubt or deny that I even was a Christian since I cannot point to date and time. I don’t know how to characterize it, but saying that either I mildly regret or am mildly disappointed that I don’t have a ‘first love’ experience to look back upon are both too strong (maybe just a little envy of those who do?). Some of those can just be emotional highs from charismatic speakers, and easy-believism with shallow depth, even no substance at all.

But I have long enjoyed and been encouraged by others’ accounts of God’s intervening love in their lives (we are instructed to remember and recount them), and have many in my own life, so I have been more than compensated.

[Bucky_Wood]

@Kendel

I don’t think the question makes much sense framed that way and really sets us up for for failure in understanding our existence in any useful way.

So often one’s answer, that feels evasive or non-contextual to the listener, is perfectly relevant to the speaker. This may be because he has answered what, in his mind, is the true question without repeating and/or articulating it. As you put it, “just wait until you try it”. JPM hears the question differently than some (relationships), as it leaves out a common theme of “love”. SkovandOfMitaze hears it as a question of productivity, placing consciousness, comfort, and insights behind. Knor (Kai) sees it as a distinction of humans from other life-forms, assuming we are the special purpose of God’s work. Heymike3 sees the dogma(s) unique and specific to related faiths, which might foment harsh and immediate disagreements among those in attendance. And Jay313 (Jay Johnson) is the perfect example of what I am saying…he takes issue with every answer because he thinks they have addressed the wrong question.

So to avoid these conundrums, asking the question actually required asking a dozen or so different questions, often unrelated to each other. And you have listed many of them very well.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Dale

@heymike3

the meaning of meaning is irrelevant when we cannot stop loving.

Interesting point, not that we shouldn’t talk about it now because certainly none of us has reached that condition…!

A question children ask, “Are we there yet?” Nope. Other questions they don’t need to ask

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@Kendel

@mitchellmckain

We find significance and value in life for ourselves and the most we can say is that the different answers people come up with are not equal because there is a difference in how much they engage us like how a pet rock, a plant, a pet animal and a child are not equal. How much they respond to the efforts we invest does matter.

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.

Actually, I couldn’t understand what you were talking about.

But then something recently shed some light for me on this…

I have been watching a TV show on Netflix “Extra-ordinary Attorney Woo.” It is about an attorney in Korea with high functioning savant autism. In episode 3 they have a case where the client has autism and to aid her efforts in communicating with the client she asks her own father for advice. He tells the story of how raising her alone (mother gone) was very lonely because she showed no interest in him. For me, this made it clear that the real experts are more likely to be parents struggling to raise (and teach) them rather those who actually have autism. After all communication is not a strength for those who have autism.

It is not that this really helped me understand what you were trying to say. I still don’t understand. But it does provide an example on which to reflect. Maybe the point was similar to my own reflection here… just to have us think about these things rather than to say anything in particular???

I suppose I have another related anecdote. I never could understand parents who say things like “it is a shame they have to grow up.” It is growing up that always seemed (in my mind) to be the whole point of having children. Recently being forced to take care of the cat left by my mother when she passed away, I came to feel that a pet was like a child that never grows up. In my imagination only, I think about telling these parents that they should have just had a pet instead.

Perhaps this just shows there is a lot of things I don’t understand about other people. And perhaps the autism spectrum disorder is a spectrum that extends beyond autism to a range of people like me with less social skills who never showed all that much interest in making friends (compared to other people anyway).

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

@mitchellmckain

I never could understand parents who say things like “it is a shame they have to grow up.”

Indeed, as when they do not it is tragic. Of course, what parents really mean is they take such joy in their children at the moment, that they wish that moment would last. Children being children, that moment will soon be gone and you will be ready for them to move out.
To the post, I know several parents with special needs kids, and they find meaning in their care and their victories. It is difficult as I have known a few near the end of life, doing their best to insure their child will be taken care of after they are gone.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Google image search is useful sometimes:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contradiction/

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

And it’s cool when they grow up and become your friends as adults (not so much otherwise).

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@jpm

It is difficult as I have known a few near the end of life, doing their best to insure their child will be taken care of after they are gone.

That is tough, and fortunate are those who find communities or institutions that can give that assurance – Nebraska has one called Mid-Nebraska Individual Services that does, and does a fairly good job. I don’t know its history, but I’m pretty sure it arose or at least grew significantly after part of one of the state ‘mental health’ institutions was closed.