Meaningness *
Better ways of Thinking, Feeling, and Acting
Author: David Chapman
Recommended by my kindergarten/primary school buddy Max Langenkamp while reconnecting over a bowl of oyster ramen in Taipei. (二屋牡蠣拉麵 - it was so delicious I went back for lunch the next day).
Landing a job as a data scientist at Tesla seems to have been the canonical ending to my academic journey, and its probably the first time in my life I have no idea when and what I want to do next.
That’s not true, I want to do something meaningful for myself and for others, but I don’t understand meaning.
Perhaps one day I’ll have my own metaphysical thoughts, but as the first step, here’s my notes reading Meaningness.
Eternalism and Nihilism…
The two most powerful and opposing approaches to meaning.
Often and understandably presented as a duality, both are failed (albeit genuine) attempts at resolving the ambiguity of meaning.
They seem to be the only possible alternatives to each other, and each fulfills the repulsive qualities of the other. They’re both half right, but they can’t be added up to form be completely right.
Eternalism is rooted in the denial of ambiguity in meaning - it posits that everything has a definite, true meaning. Humans obviously don’t know everything, so objectivity must come from a transcendent source with an ordering principle. This source can be a theistic God, alternatively described as “fate” or “destiny” in non-religious contexts.
Eternalism requires you to buy into the cosmic plan - to either turn a blind eye to the “bad bits” of reality, or to trust that there is a net positive to all suffering. In either case, it seems much suffering is done and much good is left undone.
Nihilism is rooted in the denial of meaning - it posits that meaning in not objective and nothing has meaning, there is no cosmic plan.
What Nihilism gets right is that there is no objective source of meaning, meaning there is no ultimate basis for accepting or rejecting things. This is the acceptance of nebulosity, the chaos and contingency of the world.
True nihilism involves active hostility towards pretty much everything that makes life worth living, it relies on self-imploded intelligence and willpower to rid the world of meaning.
You deny the vastness and complexity of reality. The only problem is, denial doesn’t change reality, only your perception of it. Its as if you were lost at sea, and you build yourself a nice windowless raft for yourself and lock yourself inside; sure, everything seems simple and confined, only, you’re still lost at sea. And you know this in the back of your head, and eventually you’ll either starve or be forced to face the vastness of reality - what’s for dinner?
They’re both half right, but don’t add up to a whole truth
Eternalism correctly recognizes that reality is meaningful, and must be accepted as is - all of its variety, pains, and pleasures.
Nihilism correctly recognizes that there is no ultimate source of meaning, it accepts the nebulosity, chaos, and contingency of the world.
The Spectrum Between - A False Dichotomy
Much adoption of either eternalism or nihilism are rooted in the obvious flaws in the other, and the perception that the two stances form a dichotomy.
However, the flaws on both sides often become unbearable. So it seems we have two choices - swap stances to the other side (repeatedly), or find a compromise between the two.
It’s in this compromise where we find a spectrum of new stances that posit some parts of life are meaningful, and others are not. These stances fall into one of two views:
Things are either objectively meaningful or effectively meaningless
If meaning is not objective, it must be subjective.
Although these “confused” stances carry the inconsistencies of both eternalism and nihilism, they are also seem to be more tolerable for daily use.
Mission is the eternalism-flavored reconciliation. Mission overcomes Eternalism’s rejection of nebulosity by admitting nebulosity of the trivial/mundane domain, while reinforcing a fixed higher (but not universal) purpose.
The fixation of a higher purpose, the denial of a universal purpose, and the allowance of mundane nebulosity implies the existence of a unique personal mission that should be discovered accomplished at the expense of mundane concerns.
This sounds nice, unfortunately there isn’t an inherent and permanent higher purpose for you to pursue. With eternalism, you forgo the responsibility of choice to fulfill the cosmic plan. By forgoing the cosmic plan and regaining choice, mission becomes self-righteousness hiding behind a facade of being in accordance with the cosmic plan.
What are the mundane concerns of those who have a higher purpose?
Materialism is the nihilism-flavored reconciliation and the counterpart of Mission. It overcomes Nihilism’s rejection of meaning by admitting to mundane purposes and rejecting higher purposes. The most common and obvious of these mundane purposes is in the pursuit of only self-interested purposes, such as popularity, fame, sex, status, and power.
Materialism seems like common sense - it’s easy to arrive here based on simple observations that getting what you want makes you happy, and not getting what you want doesn’t make you happy; Therefore, to maximize happiness, I should try to get enough of I want.
Materialism → Happiness → Meaning
This stance is mostly not wrong in that mundane purposes are real purposes. However, the flowchart above often breaks down during two primary realizations:
Getting what you want doesn’t always make you happy (materialism → happiness is broken)
Ignoring unselfish purposes can make life feel meaningless. (happiness → meaning is broken)
Existentialism is another failed attempt at bridging eternalism and nihilism as it shares the same incorrect underlying metaphysical assumption - that meaning is something to be localized.
In eternalism, meaning is localized to the object - it is objective.
In nihilism meaning is not inherent to anything, and therefore cannot exist.
In existentialism, meaning is localized within the subject - it is subjective.
Existentialism posits that meaning is not inherent, but can be created by the subject. This can go one of two ways:
An idealized ego in which you maintain the illusion that you have the capacity to make individual judgements about the world. This can be attractive as it tends towards the mission/eternalism end of the spectrum.
An intelligent realization that while meaning cannot be objective, it also cannot be created from nothing - true subjective meanings are impossible. If meanings cannot be objective or subjective - they cannot exist. You’ve arrived at nihilism.
The way out of existentialism is the realization that meaning can exist despite being neither objective nor subjective, it is accomplished through dynamic interaction with reality.
Nebulosity
Stemming from the word “nebula”, or mist/cloud in Latin, nebulosity means “cloud-like-ness”.
Clouds have the interesting property of being both real, but impossible to completely pin down. Some properties of clouds:
From afar, they look like a well defined object with clear boundaries; up close, the boundaries disappear and we may not even be able to know when we’ve entered one
It is impossible to say where a cloud ends and “non-cloud” begins
Clouds can change in shape, size, and even slowly disappear - but it is impossible to quantify these exactly.
It can be impossible to say whether a cloud exists in a particular place or not.
Meanings behave in these ways too.
Whether we’re talking about words, art, or life, meanings cannot be well defined and fully specified, meanings can even change over time, we can even disagree about meanings. Yet, they do mean something.
There are two primary approaches to rejecting nebulosity - eternalism fixates it, nihilism denies it, muddled middles try to do both; all lead to problems down the line.
The difficulty in acknowledging nebulosity is not that we don’t know what true meaning is, but rather in accepting that it is inherently ambiguous. That is, nebulosity doesn’t exist as a product of lack of knowledge - it is a built in feature of reality.
Pattern
Pattern is how we interpret and make sense of the world. It is the regular occurrence of various features in reality that make effective action possible.
Evolution has a tendency to find the patterns most conducive to survival and reproduction, but not all patterns are useful or meaningful. Humans have a tendency of frequently perceiving patterns that aren’t there - we’re particularly good at spotting faces when there are none.
On the other hand, we can also miss patterns that do exist. But in general, we are biased towards pattern recognition as evolutionarily, overreacting to false positive is usually not too serious, while it just takes one under-reaction to a false negative to cease to exist :)
Eternalism is a cognitive form of pattern - everything is meaningful, we just haven’t discovered it yet, but god has!
Nihilism is a dismissal of the significance pattern - nothing is meaningful, and patterns do not convey purpose or value.
Unity and Diversity
Boundaries and connections
Monism is the idea that boundaries do not exist, the idea of self and the universe are one. As a social ideology, it tends towards the totalitarian denial of individual responsibility.
Dualism is the idea that reality consists of separate objects within clear boundaries between them. As a social ideology, it tends towards denial of collective responsibility.
Monism is the fixation of total connection and denial of boundaries. The fantasy of monism is the total connection between you and the universe (or god) - all is one substance. The refusal to make distinctions quickly collides with reality when you realize you do not have the ability to affect everything you want.
Dualism is the fixation of boundaries and denial of total connection. The fantasy of dualism is the clear separation between you and the world frees you from responsibility. By blinding you to connections, it allows the evasion of ethical responsibility and produces alienation from the natural world and from other people.
Monism and Dualism Recursion
Much like yin and yang, monism and dualism are as distinct as black and white, yet each contains the other, resulting in a pathological counter-dependency between the two.
Monism within Dualism
Dualism assumes categorical boundaries exist that exaggerates the commonalities of whatever falls on either side - it forces a choice of every item to fall on one side of a boundary or another. This imposes an impression of homogeneity, where everything within a boundary is perfectly connected to everything else within the same boundary. So, given categorical boundaries can be drawn, within each boundary dualism turns into monism.
This dynamic is closely akin to essentialism, a typical strategy for justifying the equivalence of the apparently dissimilar. The “essence” is the property present within each “thing” that makes it that “thing”.
Dualism within Monism
Monism attempts to force universal homogeneity in the face of patterned distinctions. Everything must be included, everything must be totally connected; this is enlightenment, and anything that does not conform is the root of all evil.
When monism encounters a difference it cannot ignore, it transitions into (often a particularly absolutist and pathological) dualism. Any recognition of distinctions are denied, which draws a boundary between the distinction that was recognized and the purported homogeneity.
Boundaries are Nebulous and Patterned
Monism and dualism are mirror-image attempts to separate sameness and difference, an idea that harkens back to the paired nature of confused stances. Each pair shares the same underlying mistaken metaphysical assumption, which is solved by addressing the inaccuracy of the other.
The metaphysical assumption in this case is that boundaries must be objective and definite.
Monism (correctly) recognizes that these definite boundaries do not exist, but (incorrectly) denies all differences.
Dualism (correctly) recognizes that distinctions do exist, but (incorrectly) fixates them.
Much like meaning, boundaries are nebulous, yet the patternicity of the world implies meaningful boundaries can be made at varying abstractions. There is never a perfect border that can be drawn, or a definite truth to whether two things are similar or distinct, connected or separated.
Combining Boundaries and Meaning
We’ve covered stances across two dimensions/axes of meaning that can be combined to form complex ideologies.
Eternalism - Nihilism
Monism - Dualism
If we take the cartesian product of these, we end up with three combinations that most systems align with and one outlier.
Dualist Eternalism - everything is given an objective meaning by a separate entity. This is how Christianity and Islam operate; God is the one that gives meaning.
Secondary stances: mission, ethical eternalism, reasonable respectability, religiosity
Monist Eternalism - you are one with God and the universe, which is objectively meaningful. Advaita Hinduism and much of modern spirituality are examples of this.
Secondary stances: mission, true self, total responsibility, specialness
Dualist Nihilism - we are distinct and isolated individual entities in a meaningless universe. Existentialism, postmodernism (humans as the center of reality and rejection of metaphysics), and scientism (science is the only way to determine truth) tend towards dualist nihilism.
Secondary stances: materialism, ethical nihilism, romantic rebellion, secularism
Monist Nihilism - all is one, and everything is meaningless. This is conceptually coherent but entirely emotionally unattractive and attracts few if any advocates.
The Complete Stance
The complete stance recognizes that meaning is both nebulous and patterned. Equivalently, it enables the realistic and creative possibilities that emerge when you neither fixate nor deny meaning. This is more or less obvious to many of us, yet it seems unattractive as it does not offer comforting promises such as certainty, understanding, or control.
Without a fixated meaning, we are made to contend with the daunting intricate interrelationships between pattern and nebulosity. Yet, viewed from the perspective of the complete stance, pattern and nebulosity are not divided, they are always present together when considering the quality of being meaningful or meaningless.
Because of the obviousness of the complete stance, the complete stance can appear dull and deflationary in nature - it doesn’t come with the excitement or drama of the confused stances. This exciting and appealing drama, despite also being imposed and confused, can be enticing because we fear actually existing meanings are inadequate. Yet, we are better off without them.
What the complete stance lacks in appeal, it makes up for in its promise: freedom.
Freedom from metaphysical delusions and their propensity to limit the possibility of actions. To stabilize within the complete stance (as opposed to falling into a more unstable but possibly more attractive confused stance) is to gain skill in grappling with fluid, non-fixated meaning.
Aspects of this skill include curiosity, playfulness, and creativity. It affords an actively participatory stance towards boundaries and connections, acknowledging a nebulous self/other boundaries with diverse connections, bringing about an appreciation of the extraordinary variability that the world offers.
By acknowledging that meaning, boundaries, and connections are neither subjective nor objective, neither inherent nor decisions, we realize that they are neither imposed nor arbitrary. Meaning is a collaborative and improvised accomplishment, that is re-made in every moment by the nebulous yet patterned boundaries and connections between the self and other.
