In a previous blog post I threatened to inflict my opinions on Big, Serious and Complicated topics onto the blogosphere. And I thought that I would start the ball rolling with a post on “Meaning”.
The questions that I think we face as individuals or as communities are:
1. Is it important that life, and human life in particular, has meaning?
2. What would constitute meaning in this context?
And it is my opinion that our answers to these questions underpins most of our views on topics as far ranging as “what consitutes cheating in a online Scrabble game?” and “what is the best way to deal with the whole global warming thing – is it even my problem?”. It especially affects whether we see issues as being “black or white” (and hence uncomplicated?), “Shades of grey between blocks of black and white” complicated?), or “shades of grey with no black or white endpoints” (so complicated it is almost better to ignore it and do something else?).
My comments on question 1
Life does not have to have meaning.
Life is meaningless in itself – for it to have it meaning we need to “do effort” to either give it meaning or search for a meaning that satisfies us (which may boil down to the same thing).
A no answer to this question may free many people to be happy and guilt-free.
For a lot of people the idea of life not having meaning is not something that they would be prepared to consider.
A sense that life is meaningless without concomitant happiness might lead some people to self-annihilation in one form or another.
I would prefer that life, and my life in particular, had meaning, but am coming to believe that happiness is more easily achievable (in the same sense that love is more achievable than fairness).
My comments on question 2
There are too many answers to this question!
I cannot even make up my mind about whether meaning is the “motivator” or the “action”.
E.g. 1
God loves me. (Motivator)
I will devote my life to comforting the sick. (Action)
E.g. 2
I am worried about global warming. (Motivator)
I will devote my life to improving the efficiency of solar panels. (Action)
My opinion is that Action is an important part of a meaningful life, but the Motivator needs to be strong enough for us to overcome the necessary “activation energy” (there we are – I have used a scientific term, therefore this is a scientific blog!). A problem, of course, is that this meaning-driven action can take the form of flying into buildings or forcible redistribution of land.
(The “me” in the two examples, is not really me – in case you were wondering. I work at Nature Protocols, and while this is fun, I would have difficulty arguing that doing this constitutes meaning in any Big Serious sense of the word.)
1. Yes.
2. Only if you make it so, by achieving something of lasting value.
Do you have a feeling for why it is important that it has meaning?
I would definitely prefer that it did, but am not sure why I am so attached to the idea.
How lasting would it need to be? There are obvious things that have lasting value: the Mozart piano sonatas for example. But what proportion of human beings achieve anything of “lasting value”?? Or is it “good enough” that as a group we achieve something – like space travel.
Erk. My brain hurst.
1. Why? Because the idea of meaninglessness is too horrible to contemplate. As a sentient individual, the idea that you are born, you strive to reproduce, and you die, fulfilling some remorseless biological imperative – is just not enough, given that we are aware of these facts. Millions of people – no, billions – do no more than that, but can one say, objectively, that this is a good thing, in and of itself?
2. Given that we are both sentient and mortal, I’d guess that an achievemnt of lasting value is one that transcends mortality – something that people will use to remember you by after you are gone. It needn’t be very much at all. The promenade at Cromer is decorated with useful park benches, each bearing a plaque in memory to some soul or other who, when alive, liked to look at the view which you see from the bench. That’s immortality, of a sort.
If meaning is something that you could tick off by buying a bench and adding a plaque it does not really seem to have that much value.
Gravestones commemorate a life, but they do not give the life that was lived meaning. Surely?!
Perhaps we are talking about different things. My point really was regarding the pressure that we (or at least a subset of the global we) feel to lead meaningful lives and how this might influence how we behave.
From a purely secular0 perspective, the only meaning to life is that which we give it. So our lives only have ‘meaning’ for as long as there is ‘us’ to imbue it.
Whether that influences our behaviour then depends on how much value you attach to the ‘us’ that gives it meaning.
0 i.e. neither atheist nor theist
Richard: Do you think that it is important that we “imbue” our lives with meaning? And what do you think “counts”?
I also think that life is only meaningful if you give it meaning. BUT I think that (1) the option to accept “meaninglessness” also affects how we view the world and how we might act; (2) the way we behave is influenced both by the value attached AND what we decide counts.
I am uncertain what you mean by: “our lives only have ‘meaning’ for as long as there is ‘us’ to imbue it”. I think that you mean that a life is meaningful only to the extent that the person living it is adding meaning OR that other people are recognising the life (or result of the efforts of the person) as having had meaning.
My philosophy, I think, is based on something else (as you’ve probably gathered from other comments): personally, ‘meaning’ comes from an external source. So I can’t honestly answer your first question without going into questions of faith (I will add that my faith is not the result of a search for meaning. That’s ‘religion’, and for me there is a difference; that and the relationship with science may or may not be the subject of an essay elsewhere).
But that aside, I meant that the recognition of meaning is the only thing that gives it meaning. So I might think my life is meaningful (and it is to me) — but that will mean nothing in 100 years, once worms have destroyed this body, unless I have had a meaningful effect on other people.
Even then, in a thousand, ten thousand, a million years (a blink of an eye on the timescale of the Universe) it will, ultimately, mean nothing. (With a big ‘Unless…’, of course).
Faith (or belief in an ideal) is a powerful motivator, and is arguably the most acceptable (in terms of ethics/scruples/understandability…) source of meaning in the world outside of Nature Network. :)
I include the “belief in an ideal” as part of faith as I am not sure that this concept would be as ingrained as it is had the greek philosophers not been so obsessed with proving whether the soul was immortal, and without the considerable effect that Christianity has had on our culture.
While I do not really associate myself with a religion, I would like to add a Bible quote here:
James 2:17 ”..faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
I am interested in this action (or inaction). Perhaps “character” is more important in terms of whether people respond with action (and how long they will think before acting!)? But the motivator (or vision of the ideal) must also be an important factor?
E.g. Robert Mugabe and his followers must have had a powerful vision for the “Ideal Zimbabwe” at the time he came into power in 1980. While I have no wish to defend him, this vision did demand action (and not of the lets-discuss-this-with-”white”-people sort).
Bronwen – when I wrote my comment I was thinking of a current news story involving people who seem to live their lives as if in Brownian motion, fathering (and mothering) children seemingly without plan or thought – or meaning. Millions of people live their lives like that, practically without sentience, without any impression of considering their lives as a whole or its effect on others, good or bad. Apart from the simply Malthusian or statistical, what will be the legacy of such people?
Hi, Bronwen,
You did dive right in!
It seems to me that we scientists have a woefully underdeveloped culture in the quite ancient discipline of philosophy and that we’re going about re-inventing the wheel here.
That is, our answers are not wrong or bad in particular, but you might get more meat out of writings by folks who have devoted a significant portion of their lives to arguing with other similarly committed folks about these very questions.
If you are just curious about a small sample of opinions, then this is probably a fine approach.
My opinion is that maybe I don’t understand the question “does life have meaning?” but I agree most with Richard thus far. I don’t believe there is any intrinsic point to human or any other form of life. But there are certainly ethical and moral actions that can make life more pleasant to live for those around me and myself. In your definition of “meaning” are you implying that there is more meaning when such actions are undertaken, and less when they are not? Or thinking about the impact of one’s life adds “meaning” to it? Is “meaning” a personal plan, as Henry seems to write? Does it really matter if one leaves a legacy, anyhow? Isn’t that just hubris? Or is it the very definition of “soul”, what you leave in the memories of others?
I really have never understood this question about the “meaning of life”.
Perhaps there are three ideas that could be separated:
“The meaning of life (in general).” (which is either unanswerable, complicated or obvious depending on your faith/beliefs/religion)
“How I make sense of the world around me.”
“What I need to do in order to feel that my life is meaningful.”
Henry: (1) If people derive meaning from procreation then it is a valid addition to the list of things that count; even adding the plaque is a valid addition and I am sorry that I made a judgement on it merely because it did not “work for me”. (2) The reason that I brought the topic of meaning up is that I would like to talk about other Big Serious Complicated things that I think are Complicated because people derived meaning from different things. And of course a lot of people behave as though it is not important that life has meaning, so wanted to suggest the possibility that it might not be important (or be less achievable than other things like “happiness”).
Heather: You are right! In a way it is a bit silly to even bring it up. It is just that I think that it is important to think about this question and consider how differently people may answer when we discuss other Big Serious Complicated issues like AIDS, global warming, nuclear proliferation and food distribution.
Example 2 (Where the Zimbabwe comment was Example 1!) that I could mention is abortion. People worldwide will differ very widely about whether this is Big, Serious OR Complicated. While “we” might not be able to decide what constitutes a meaningful life, there ARE people who “know absolutely” that the foetus’s life has meaning (because it was created by God and has a soul etc) and therefore should not be sacrificed lightly. There are also people who “know absolutely” that it does not have meaning until x-weeks pre or post birth (where x probably depends on exactly how they think about life and its meaning).
I realise that a person could have an abortion without considering the life of the foetus at all, but she must have been thinking about her own life and what she planned to do with it?
(in general, of course there are obvious exceptions, but I think these are small proportion of the set)