Meaninglessness: an introduction

Sometimes I find it easy to slip into the gentle swirl of meaninglessness. At this writing, I’m sitting at a Chipotle Mexican grill restaurant in the center of Colorado. I like Chipotle a lot – their food is good, and, according to their advertising and menus, they seem to be trying to be environmentally responsible (though they still admittedly kill chickens, cows and pigs).

So I eat here probably two or three times a month. But occasionally, in the middle of my meal, I’ll find myself slipping into an existential question - why am I eating? I mean, beyond the immediate biological needs – I’m hungry – or the possible psychological needs – I need to comfort myself, and this food comforts me. What is the purpose behind my eating?

To cut to the chase, why is it important for me to be alive and continue eating? What am I contributing to the world? Why am I here? What is my purpose?

And so, from a simple meal stop, I’m pretty quickly rotating around this whirlpool of existentialism. What’s my purpose? What are the other customers’ purposes? What about the employees?

It’s easy to get distracted by our day-to-day activities. The employees are here, well, because someone needs to make my burrito when I come in, and clean up the table after I’ve had my little existential crisis. In many respects, that’s pretty reasonable and satisfying. Our jobs give us a sense of purpose, at least for a little while.

But I think we all fall into this whirlpool occasionally – when the job, our activities, sometimes even our relationships and beliefs seem to pale and lose meaning. Sometimes it’s just a quiet moment in time, and we quickly re-embrace our world of meaning. Sometimes something disrupts our lives: a death, a traumatic experience. Something can happen that suddenly shifts our understanding of the world, and the world doesn’t make sense to us any longer. We can’t fit what happens into our old view of the world.

I believe that we’re getting to the point where we have so much information coming into our senses – information overload, or perhaps, information overexposure. I believe we increasingly experience these existential crises, though we might not be aware that we’re having them. Typically these are mini-crises, things that we might not even think of as crises - a piece of news, witnessing something disturbing. I think that each of our worlds, and our meaning of the world, is disrupted so often that it’s increasingly difficult to continue to make sense of the world.

When we reach a point where our meaning has become skewed and tattered, we look for something, anything, outside of us to help us make sense of it.

But our construct of the world cannot necessarily be mended by the same source of the destruction of our world. In other words, we cannot entirely rely on the world to create meaning for us, when that world was the initial source of our loss of meaning.

Which leaves us – where? For many of us, it leaves us confused, empty, deeply hurt, angry, scared and resentful. It leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed and raw - at wit's end. The world makes less and less sense. And it’s increasingly difficult to look for and find meaning.

Yet this is where our core thirst lies. We so desperately WANT the world to make sense. But – if you’re like me – there does not seem to be a single unifying perspective out there that will make sense of it all. Or at least, that will make satisfying sense. To me, satisfying sense and meaning incorporates all parts of us – our thoughts, our emotions, our spirituality, our bodily sense. Parts of the world make sense – but what is the deeper connection? The deeper meaning?

I think some religions attempt to provide the meaning – but it’s the satisfying sense that is often lacking for me. (I’m not quite sure how deeply to dive into religion here – I suspect that we will need to – but I’m not going to take that dive just yet.)

At some point, during this line of thinking, I arrive at a state where my meaning starts to erode more radically – as if the blinders are falling off - and I think, “What IS all this? What exactly is going on here?”

Which is the perfect place to be as we delve into this more deeply. I realize I'm talking in absolutes here - talking about a "single unifying perspective", something that will tie every loose end together and provide all the answers. While this is something I think we truly yearn for, I am becoming more and more convinced that the solution - or at least the solution for most - will be less than comprehensive, and, to be honest, that's going to be quite fine. As we dive in, I hope to ease you into the whirlpool with me – and then I hope, too, that we can begin to navigate this river, or ocean, or wherever it is we decide we are, together.

Comments

[Tina]

Are you kidding? "angst-ridden" is my middle name. Keep up the good work!

[Scott Brown]

Tina, probably overdue, but hang in there - not all entries will be as seemingly angst-ridden as this one is :)

[Tina]

Scott, I can't tell if you're overdue for a hoppy beer or if you've already had too many...

[Scott Brown]

Well, let's see where we go from here! We're off to a good start :) And of course I'll read and comment on your blog.

[Erica O]

Hold up - I want to clarify that I do actually cultivate chaos as well as contentment. Seriously, I do. And cultivating chaos is good for me because when things aren't stirred up, everything settles to the bottom letting the middle and top become clear...and then it all stagnates and is full of goopy green glop until not even little fishes and frogs can survive! Chaos is nature's cleanser because it forces that which likes to settle and stagnate to re-sort and organize. And mostly, it's just fun to be a rabble rouser.

I don't think your writing comes across as preachy, don't worry. And I suspect you already know I'm not going to adopt your views unless I feel like it and even then, I would put my own decorations upon whatever I took.

I can't even say I don't sometimes think about these big questions, myself. However, I always come back to the "It doesn't really matter" answer. I mean, I guess it would be nice to know if there were some grand design in motion and we're all playing our parts and there's a reason behind everything...but would knowing that change anything? Aside from putting to rest a bit of curiousity? Could you do anything with that knowledge? Like, if you knew why the world exists and is the way it is and why you are part of it at this point in time and the whole point of your existence in this time and space, how would that change the way you live your life? Would you be any happier? I guess there's probably no way to answer that unless you suddenly become both clairvoyant and omniscient.

Pretty much, I'm just throwing my opinion back at you to see if it does anything to your opinion. It's sort of like chemistry - if you add this acid to that acid, what happens? - and much like you want to see where your thoughts go on the topic, I want to see what happens to your thoughts when they collide with other thoughts. Fusion? Fission? Nothing?
And I wanted to call you a well-off white male with plenty of time on your hands because "charming dork" was getting old.

When I start blogging, will you read and comment?

P.S. I hope I get a spirograph as my icon again! That was fairly nifty.

[Scott Brown]

Erica, yes, +10 points to you! I appreciate your comments, and I really like how fired up you got by my post! I look forward to your comments on what's coming up :)

My response is that you don't *have* to be convinced that finding meaning is the goal. I don't know if it's "the goal" either, but I find the topic of meaning, and how we make meaning and/or are given meaning, interesting and worth writing about, if for no other reason than to work out my own thoughts on it.

I realize I am high up enough on Maslow's hierarchy currently in order to have the time to think and write about it (and, in fact, blog about it, yet another level up), and I'm grateful daily for that. I'm grateful that I have friends like you who care enough to read, and to respond when they are moved to do so. This helps keeps me grounded.

I think your approach of cultivating contentment or happiness or joy in the moment is a pretty good one (though of course you don't need me to think so :). From my perspective - and as I'll probably write about sometime in here - that approach in itself is a way of making meaning. Why is cultivating joy and happiness more important than, say, cultivating chaos? What is the meaning of one activity over the other? Maybe that brings us back to Maslow.

I'm not asking anyone to adopt my views, and I hope my writing doesn't come across like that. I'm exploring these ideas, and I thought others might find the exploration interesting as well.

[Erica O]

#1) Because you referenced this post on Facebook, I am going to assume that you did so knowing that the nosy members in your cadre of stalkers could become interested and pop over here for a read.
#1a) You know I'm on your friends feed and could be considered a nosy member in your cadre of stalkers, ergo, you knew there was a chance I'd come over here and read.
#1b) Knowing that I could come over here and read, and knowing the type of nosy person I am, you should have been able to deduce that there was a possibility of me commenting.
Translation: You set yourself up for me commenting on your blog.

#2) I am currently listening to Don't Know Much About American History by Kenneth C. Davis (he has written a ton of these books) because I need to brush up on my American history (it's not working, by the way. I find it all so interesting and I WANT to know this stuff, but it just doesn't stay in my head).

#1) + #2) = #3)My thoughts.
So, it seems that throughout (American) history, the people who ruminate upon such questions as "Why do I exist?" have generally been well-to-do white males with plenty of free time on their hands. As slavery was abolished and women were suffraged and Native Americans stopped being slaughtered and other minorities were allowed to have ideas, thoughts, and opinions, some of them also began to ponder their roles in this universe.
The common link here seems to be time and money (isn’t that always the link?). Because they had enough money, they had enough time and could therefore wonder about such things. People who are struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis do not seem to worry about this sort of thing nearly so often because their time, and therefore thinking power, is mostly focused on...well, surviving. I suppose this might not be quite as true with people who are battling illness and disease since they would often have time to sit and think, but I don't actually know how that works because I have never spent large amounts of time suffering from an illness or disease. Three weeks has been my top and I spent most of it sleeping.
At any rate, to move ahead - maybe this line of thought, this need for meaning, is a biological function of those fortunate enough to have the time to think about it. Maybe it's a way to ease the guilt of having more than others - if you (the general you, not specific) have an important function in the universe, it's ok if you're not struggling to make it to the next day or the next hour. If the world is all connected, then you are sharing in the misery of those who are less fortunate and they are sharing in your fortune (though I'm guessing they don't know it). Or perhaps it's part of Maslow's hierarchy. You're at the top and you need something to occupy your time and you don't have to go plow your land or wrangle cows or wonder about whether or not you will be able to find food and shelter for the evening, so you have to exercise your intellect and other mind powers by creating things to unravel, untangle, fix, etc.

#4) I am currently of the opinion that it doesn't really matter whether or not the world has meaning. I think humans generally feel the need to impose such concepts onto their environments because we're used to being in control. Perhaps it’s a holdover from our Australopithecene days in which we were figuring out how to control our surroundings in order to survive (I don't actually know if that's what Lucy and her ilk were doing. I wasn't there. I just like mentioning Australopithecenes). Perhaps it's part of being a predator; the more we control, the more success we'll have at bagging our prey, whatever it may be.
As you can see, I am totally out of control right now, so I don't need meaning or a reason to exist. I'm embracing chaos, it would seem. No, no. I'm not. Not really. But I still think it doesn't matter. I think you (again, general) can live every day carpeing that diem. I'm not convinced that finding meaning is the goal; I think cultivating contentment or happiness or joy (or whatever other good emotion/state of being you prefer) in the moment for as many moments in as many days as possible will probably lead you right to your purpose, your meaning, your end-goal. Sort of the whole Walking-Your-Path-Takes-You-To-Where-You-Want-To-Be-Even-If-You-Don't-Know-Where-That-Is sorta thing.

#5) But if you're really worried about it, or would like to test my not-really-thought-much-about theories, you are more than welcome to give me all your money and go work as an indentured servant and let us know what happens!

P.S.: I think my reply is longer than your post! +10 points to me.