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

[Kendel]

@NickolaosPappas

They abused their power and then negelcted me to the point that im what im today.

Yeah. You know first hand the power we have to damage each other. There is risk in relationships. It’s true.

@NickolaosPappas

Whenever i see someone getting too dependant on me from the beginging i break it off explaining to them how bad it is .

When you say “dependent” here, do you mean specifically needing something from you? Like affirmation, money, companionship, etc? Or do you mean something more like “emotionally close”? I don’t think they’re the same thing. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying.

@NickolaosPappas

id be disgusted with myself if i have influence the person to take some other action that the one he would have.

There is a point, where adults are responsible to make their own decisions about how to use or not use the advice they seek from other people. If they’re asking advice, and you give it, they can take it or leave it.

@NickolaosPappas

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.

These are really good points. I don’t think that’s what I’m suggesting, but I sure see how you could think that’s what I mean.

Part of the difference is our framing of the question. You use the term “purpose”, and I use the fuzzier, subjective term “sense of place”. “Purpose” doesn’t work for me. But it does for many people, maybe most. I think it is self-defeating, though. It depends on something from outside of us, and it is evaluative. While I’m a Christian, and I think the purpose that you are talking about, can be found in a relationship with Jesus, that purpose is not entirely clear in the day to day. And I understand that people with no relationship with God see their lives as having meaning, even without purpose from God.

The fuzzier, subjective idea I’m talking about “sense of place in the world,” indicates the way we feel about fitting into our worlds. It rejects evaluative factors that go along with the idea of purpose (Good purpose? How well we accomplish our purpose, etc.) And while we are never free of culture, language, and other formative influences (including relationships), or that these things establish our value somehow, they do affect how we feel about our place in our world. Some of them are things we can control, like working to be free of bad relationships, or improving relationships with people we feel hopeful about, or building new connections and relationships.

I’m not claiming to have this all figured out. It’s how I’m thinking right now.

[heymike3]

No I haven’t… but there are still beautiful things in the world. I liked how Robert Malone would quote this passage about how beauty is what will save us. Beauty in Christ, as there is no greater beauty.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@heymike3

We can’t ever really stop loving!

We certainly can’t stop loving something! When it’s the wrong thing(s) I believe it’s called idolatry.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Terry_Sampson

From the authority on “meaning”

Hey, that’s heartwarming.

[Kendel]

Roger,
I honestly don’t know where I called you “Intelligent Design.”
I mentioned it up in post 116 in response to Marta:

@Kendel

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?

In this post I was being somewhat ironic, intending to point out that seeking purpose assigned from God as our only way to find meaning in our lives is much like IDers’ view of all living things. Every reference I’ve made to ID in this thread was in reference to the idea I put forth in post 116.

I attempted to explain this in post 153:

@Kendel

@Relates

Intelligent Design

I brought in the idea of Intelligent Design, because I see the urge to understand Meaning in ultimate terms as similar to the urge to intuit a maker from the orderliness of what exists.
I am not promoting Intelligent Design. I am goading those who reject it to consider whether they apply the logic of ID to their search for Meaning.

I’m sorry you felt I was playing bait and switch. That was not my intent.

[heymike3]

@Kendel

This week I’m a bit more focused on other “Meaning of Life” news in my front yard:

I’m sorry you are going through this. And I don’t mean to minimize the grief it has caused. Neither does it minimize the work of God in the world. That was a super article written from a mature theological perspective. I hope when you’re ready you can have a look at it. Craig Keener also expresses a great point of view on it. Highly recommended!

What is Revival—and is it Happening at Asbury?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

But at least some of us suspect it’s providential.

Who would do that!?

His review of the history of revivals is enlightening, including artificial ones (I saw the attempts in the 50s and 60s, and I guess you still see it in some churches, denominations and on TV). From the CT article though,

In previous revivals, there has always been fruit that has blessed both the church and society. For instance, even secular historians acknowledge that the Second Great Awakening was pivotal to bringing about the end of slavery in our country.

…visiting scholar Hong Leow… prayed and fasted

I am not who I should be.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

His article is in The Roys Report (maybe originally?).

And another about Asbury at the Sam Storms “Enjoying God” site,
TWO PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE ASBURY AWAKENING

(And in case this be deemed off-topic, Enjoying God is all about meaning.)

[Kendel]

@Dale

Doesn’t meaning entail some kind of telos

It doesn’t to me, as I’ve explained a few times in this thread. You’re welcome to disagree.

Your

@Dale

Therefore despair.

…
I have no words fit for this forum to characterize the insensitivity. Jesus wept, in tears and rage, knowing what he was going to do in the next few minutes.
Jesus despaired before ultimate suffering that none of us can comprehend, knowing how it would come out in the end.

Jesus understands. He doesn’t minimize.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Kendel

criticizing other people’s answers

@Kendel

He doesn’t minimize.

Who would do that.
 

@Kendel

in tears and rage

I never saw rage before. I still don’t.

[heymike3]

@Kendel

Jesus understands. He doesn’t minimize.

For the joy set before him he endured the cross. He didn’t minimize the outpouring of the Spirit or how his sacrifice was required to initiate the New Covenant to establish his Church and to guard his bride in a way that Adam failed to guard his.

[Kendel]

Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani

[heymike3]

No kidding… in that moment he experienced for the first time absolute loneliness… he became sin and the Father mocked him.

[NickolaosPappas (Nick)]

@Kendel

When you say “dependent” here, do you mean specifically needing something from you? Like affirmation, money, companionship, etc? Or do you mean something more like “emotionally close”? I don’t think they’re the same thing. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying.

The second one

@Kendel

There is a point, where adults are responsible to make their own decisions about how to use or not use the advice they seek from other people. If they’re asking advice, and you give it, they can take it or leave it

Peer pressure is very strong. And let me tell you I’ve met people well over their 30 that act more immature than my cousin who’s in 3 grade. No joke.

@Kendel

The fuzzier, subjective idea I’m talking about “sense of place in the world,” indicates the way we feel about fitting into our worlds. It rejects evaluative factors that go along with the idea of purpose (Good purpose? How well we accomplish our purpose, etc.) And while we are never free of culture, language, and other formative influences (including relationships), or that these things establish our value somehow, they do affect how we feel about our place in our world. Some of them are things we can control, like working to be free of bad relationships, or improving relationships with people we feel hopeful about, or building new connections and relationships

Good thoughts actually. Very insightful. Nothing to add here nor disagree with.

@Kendel

I’m not claiming to have this all figured out. It’s how I’m thinking right now

Of course. I’ve changed my mind multiple times. But I do think it’s a bad habit to do that occasionally. So watch out🙃

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Kendel

In this post I was being somewhat ironic, intending to point out that seeking purpose assigned from God as our only way to find meaning in our lives is much like IDers’ view of all living things. Every reference I’ve made to ID in this thread was in reference to the idea I put forth in post 116.

OK, then do you consider yourself a modern man who lives in a universe not created by God, because I consider myself a modern person who thinks differently. Why do you think that because I live in a God created universe that I am an ID’er? Why can’t Christians believe that God works though scientific or natural processes that God created?

[Kendel]

@MarkD

@Kendel

But what kind of meaning in life is there, then, for people in lesser relationships, or whose loving relationships have dissolved (I’m thinking particularly of older people who over decades have lost those relationship threads through various forms of attrition.)? Are their lives meaningless?

I guess we will all find out sooner or later unless we are part of the earliest harvest.

(I’ve been wanting to come back to this since you first posted it, and have been distracted by many things. MANY things. )

This reality comes more clearly into my view all the time. I’m sure it will continue to focus up for some time. Talking about how we each see meaning in various ways, forces me to consider the implications of what I’ve set out as “my current view.”

We know a lot about the effect of severed relationships on people, and of loneliness, particularly in older people. My family has experienced the disturbing privilege of living for an extended time at the hospital and observing very sick kids whose parents couldn’t be with them very much. We saw loneliness combined with fragility and recognized resignation, maybe despair, certainly a failure to thrive. And I’ve seen the same in nursing homes, when my grampa was still alive.

Thinking through what I think (that controversial act of Values Clarification we were condemned for doing in school in the '70s), my claim of the importance of relationships in people’s sense of fitting into the world, does require some action, doesn’t it? Recognizing and saying things like

@Kendel

If my suggestion describes reality, it also suggests both power and responsibility in the way we build and handle relationships.

doesn’t get the job done.

I can only be responsible for my side of the upkeep of the relationships I’m in (MMV depending), and even those can feel overwhelming. I have to “prioritize”. Some priorities are easier to figure out than others. And a few relationships, really, I can’t manage any more. Period. Those people will not be abandoned without me. Good. They don’t deserve abandonment. I just can’t be a person of significance any more in their lives.

But your quote from Berry is a reminder to me that people who are saying that litany of names have a worth that is harder to feel, when they are forgotten by the living. Cross-generational relationships are important.

[Kendel]

Roger,
Thanks for your reply.
I’m a postmodern, Christian woman.
I believe that God is somehow involved in or created what is. I have no idea how. And in that, I do see an aspect of meaning that comes from God. I don’t think that is the only part of what makes life meaningful. And I don’t think that one need be a Christian or even a theist to experience meaning in life.

Kendel

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Kendel

And I don’t think that one need be a Christian or even a theist to experience meaning in life.

If God is Love, and we can love because God loved us first by giving us life and purpose through our parents and others, and love gives meaning to life, then of course we need not believe in God to find meaning, that is love in life,

It has nothing to do with ID, only the character of life as love and relationships created by God.

[heymike3]

@Kendel

@Dale

Doesn’t meaning entail some kind of telos

It doesn’t to me, as I’ve explained a few times in this thread

Please highlight that as I don’t recall seeing your response to what I said about how it either defines you, or you define it.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

I’ve been thinking about the necessity of deciding for ourselves what we mean by meaning in life. It really does require a personal investment of deciding what it means and how best to describe it from within our experience. Protestations that terms are not well enough defined miss the point. This in my reading in TMWT last night takes pains to elaborate why that should be.

PRECISION VS ACCURACY

Earlier I made a distinction between precision, which literally means cutting something off too soon, and accuracy, the literal meaning of which is to exhibit due care towards the subject of concern. Rationality, the left hemisphere’s version of reason, demands we be precise, otherwise (so it believes) meaning will escape. Thus philosophy has taken to mimicking science. Yet meaning is not increased – more often diminished – by the process, and all that is achieved is a lack of flexibility. There is a kind and a degree of reaching after precision, clarity and rigour which is misplaced, because its subject becomes more and more tenuous as this process continues. It ends in a kind of increasingly unrewarding pedantry, reminiscent of an anorexic’s attempt to split a pea rather than swallow it. The attempt is to over-clarify an area that intrinsically does not permit it. ‘It is the mark of an educated man’, wrote Aristotle, ‘to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits’.

Human affairs are a case in point. Knowledge of something that is by its nature not precise will itself have to be imprecise, if it is to be accurate. Aristotle again: ‘For when the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite … the decree is adapted to the facts.’ In the same vein, Whitehead writes:

There is a conventional view of experience, never admitted when explicitly challenged, but persistently lurking in the tacit presuppositions. This view conceives conscious experience as a clear-cut knowledge of clear-cut items with clear-cut connections with each other. This is the conception of a trim, tidy, finite experience uniformly illuminated. No notion could be further from the truth.

We all recognize the value of pinning things down where possible where expedience is desirable. But do we also recognize the need not to pin things down in human affairs when doing so would so badly distort what we are talking about? @Kendel, I think you’ve done a good job of articulating what can be to be helpful while pointing to the need to each take it from there as best we can. An assemblage of someone else’s meaningful words will not always mean anything for someone else.