Anatomy of Meaning

Recently I attended three occasions that prompted me to think about a series of related questions. They eventually lead me back to the question of meaning.

Three Occasions

A friend of mine had finished his training and formally became a independent professional. We had a dinner along with other close friends. He spoke about his concern that in the early career he might need to rely on other sources to support his means. It is not an easy path. A large proportion of newscomers either quit or find a hard way to stay until it works. Nevertheless he likes the content of his profession a lot. It is satisfying and fulfilling to him. It made me think about: What do I really want? What’s the point of it?

Another friend of mine was about to go to another country to pursue further study in performing arts. Before her departure she held a mini-performance. Although I knew it wasn’t my thing, I went to it in the end. I must admit that during the show my mind did wander off and this question came: Why are the things we want so different, yet on a deeper level, so structually similar?

A penfriend and I met for a virtual coffee chat. She and I both had similar education background (psychology), so we had quite an interesting conversation on that. We talked about personality theories and interpersonal relationship. We talked about what defines a “good” interpersonal relationship of any kind. Later when I think about it, the “goodness” discussion seems to apply on another topic: Are the things I want good? Or are there better things “to want”?

Why A Re-examination of Meaning?

On this blog I wrote a few posts about meaning of life, or specifically of my life. I also tried to add a new section to do a more systematic elaboration of my idea on the topic of meaning in general. But I kind of abandoned it because I felt it got stuck on the tip of my tongue. I couldn’t continue on it in a constructive manner. I only rejected an objective omnipresence of universal meaning, and found a proxy for the meaning of life.

I have been feeling this non-constructive gap long before my very first post. In all materials I read on this topic, e.g. Man’s Search for Meaning, The Myth of Sisyphus, Stoicism, Mark Manson, Self-Actualisation, they sound about right to me to some extend. Yet they seems all lacking a underlying (or maybe overarching) integration with everything else.

A few months ago I wrote about the reformulation of the term “I”. Although in it I consciously reaffirmed the position of rejecting a universal, a priori and pre-defined and “grand” meaning, I have found myself still using the word “meaning” a lot, or in some form that is equivalent, e.g. my question about asking what the point is of wanting something. I started to see it as more an abstraction of things underneath to help us make sense of them. The missing pieces are some more atomic building blocks that allow us to construct meaning. “Totality is just aggegate”, as I wrote on my first Instagram blog post.

A side note: Recently I have listened to quite a number of conversation on love & relationship. I started to think that the modern idea of “love” suffers similarly from the missing of a constructive formulation.

Preparation: Composition of the Self in Layers

Existence precedes essence, a major notion of existenialism that implies meaning are made consciously, will be quite similar to the narrative in this section. But the choice of words by existentialist, due to being philosophy in nature, obscures more than it clarifies, like authenticity, freedom, transcendence. It’s like putting up more patchwork hoping to clean up some mess, while neglecting the fundamentals. Nevertheless, the central notion here can be eventually distilled into meaning are made consciously.

Our existence consists of different layers of description, biological (e.g. anatomy), physiological (e.g. the endocrine system), psychological (e.g. personality) and eventually more conscious levels of concepts (e.g. values and preferences). They all determine how an individual behaves as a unit in this world. So they are like rules of how a robot functions.

But we are not robots. There is a major difference that we have plasticity on these rules. These changes might not be all conscious, intentional and desired. Nevertheless we change. Some are less changeable (or a slow pace), e.g. biological structure or personality, while some are more changeable, e.g. opinions, attitudes and worldviews. The latter are quite dependent on the former. For example, our personality influences a lot on how we think about things.

These rules together compose a system. I observed that the tendency of a system is that once formed, it goes more in the direction of maintaining the system, rather than going for self-destruction. I do not have a good idea or proof about it. But it seems that if a system is formed in the first place, it means there are some conditions that favour its maintenance. (A side note: I have an intuition that it loosely links to how evolution is less about intentionally finding a winning combination, but more about the dying out of combinations that are too wrong. I shall revisit this later in the future.)

The Constructive Formulation of Meaning

We as human have an innate tendency of not wanting to die. Suicide is either a very conscious and wilful decision, or a dysfunction (e.g. mental disorder). Or dying is in general something most people may have a fear of an unknown, unconscious source. But survival (i.e. not dying) isn’t a meaning. People who would ask the question about meaning wouldn’t call mere survival the meaning of life. Usually we refer to something “higher” or “that one looks forward to”.

A very primitive element of meaning is something we want or desire (positive part). These come from our lower-level self, e.g. biology, personality or lower-level consciousness. But if we have only these, it’d just be pleasure or high and possibly not biologically sustainable for the rest of one’s life. It is a brute fact that there must be something that upset, sadden or causing us to feel negatively. Sometimes these can be totally unrelated to us, but more often we feel them because it is connected to things we want or desire. So another primitive element of meaning is the managing of the negative side. The final element needed in a meaning is the conscious making-sense of the above two elements (recognising their presence and interaction between them), and to mediate between them.

Human doesn’t have a preset meaning. But each of us has some tendencies on biological or psychological level, together with the nurture, building up our preferences that we want or desire, that we are willing to go after despite the bad things that may happen. But it doesn’t become a meaning until we fully consciously make sense on it: examining if we really want it against the costs, and how it relates to possible other meanings that we have. It is a construct built on top of our other understanding of reality.

Meaning is a map of causal relationship for events happening on the conscious level of the self, which in turn is built upon the lower levels of the self.

Application

I feel compelled to put it under myself as example as it seems to go too abstract.

Going back to the three questions starting this post, one thing I find myself wanting the most is having quiet time on my own thinking. It is unsurprising because I always know myself to be very introverted. But sometimes I can’t help but to ask what’s the point of it? By connecting it with other parts of my life, first I certainly feel present and joy in these moments of silence (which introversion is quiet biological in the end). And I also feel recharged to allow me to be better at other things that I want to do, my work and people about whom I care. What’s the bad part about it? It is the opportunity cost of not able to use this time for other things. I used to feel selfish about it and feeling anxious and not quite able to relax as I am too conscientious. But once I make sense of it, it appears to be both intrinsically enjoyable and positive to my other meanings. Plus I find it unsustainable to not give time to be quiet and alone. So I don’t stress over it about being somewhat different in a number of things in my life (for example, I observe myself to have comparatively low material wants). Everyone is in this regard different in some ways, and there is no objectively better comparison.

A concern I foresee is that this construction of meaning may be circular. In the end, it may just require meanings to dependent on each other. Upon certain level I think it’s true. But it doesn’t mean that it didn’t start somewhere. Always it has a primitive cause in our existence biologically or psychologically (which was somewhat rooted in biology and during the course of upbringing).

Was using a day to formulate and bang out this post, instead of working on important deadlines, meaningful? I can find a number of edges and vertices in my map that say so.