My quest for the meaninglessness of life

I've spent most of my 58 years looking for the meaning of life. That was easy.

I've found lots of meanings in religion, family, friends, jobs, volunteer work, books, causes, charity, martial arts, television, nature, food, sex—you name it, I've probably found some sort of meaning in it.

But as I said before, and before that, I'm now on a quest for meaninglessness. That's tough. Everywhere I turn, there's meanings staring me in the face. And on one level I want them. I'm addicted to meaningfulness. It's what makes life, well, meaningful.

However, like James Park said in his intriguing, but not quite right on for me, cybersermon on "Looking for the Meaning of Life," there's a residual hollowness in all the meanings—even spiritual or religious—with which we desperately try to fill the perceived emptiness in our lives.

When we seek to make our own lives "meaningful", we might be struggling with two different sorts of meaninglessness. We can create many kinds of relative meanings within the assumed areas of meaningful life: money, achievement, love, marriage, children, enjoyment, & religion.

But even when we have fulfilled such meanings, we might still feel an ultimate hollowness, a spiritual or existential meaninglessness. This deeper meaninglessness is not overcome by any of the relative meanings we are able to create or achieve. Ultimate meaning comes only as a gift —independent of whatever relative meanings we can achieve.

Basically, I don't disagree. Park's endpoint, though, is "the removal of existential meaninglessness, not the attainment of any specific meanings." Myself, I'm drawn toward that very existential meaninglessness.

I guess you could call that my new meaning in life. Which, logically, sort of undermines the quest for meaninglessness.

But, hey, complete consistency isn't my goal. When you're trying to go beyond meanings, you've got to expect that some (or a lot) of paradox and confusion will pop up along the way.

Here's what isn't confusing to me: when you pull on an ultimate meaning thread, trying to figure out what the end is attached to, it always comes back loose in your hand.

This isn't true of relative meanings. They may be circular—this depends on that which depends on something else—but at least you have a sense of firm connectivity.

Yesterday my daughter gave birth to her first child, Evelyn Elizabeth Vos, reportedly the absolutely cutest baby that has ever existed in the history of Earth (I believe my daughter, even without having seen any photos yet).

I am the father of Celeste; she is the mother of Evelyn; and so the chain of meaningful relationships goes, without end (since anyone without a relationship to another human doesn't exist).

This is the sort of "emptiness" Buddhists speak of —an interdependence in which everything is connected.

There's another sort of emptiness though, the ultimate metaphysical, philosophical, scientific, spiritual, or mystical variety (ultimate truth-seeking comes in quite a few flavors).

Even when it seems that you've come to a pinnacle of understanding, a Mystery void lies beyond.

"God created the heavens and the earth." Who created God?

"Superstrings form the structure of time and space." What forms superstrings?

"It's possible to experience union with the oneness of existence." How would you ever know it?

Go ahead, try to imagine any meaningful statement about ultimate reality, or any meaningful experience of it, without someone (like me) being able to say, "And behind that is…what?"

The question mark points to the meaninglessness that lies just beyond the furthest extent of human meanings. It isn't to be feared. It's real. And it's not going away.

Ever.

So why not embrace it? Of course, that's impossible. But we can turn in its direction, setting our compass heading for Meaningless Mystery, experiencing with wide-eyed interest the scenery along the way, knowing that the ultimate destination won't ever be reached.

It's funny. The past three posts now, I've started off intending to say something that I never get to. Maybe next time. Maybe not.

Really meaningful meaning, I seem to be learning, is always around the next bend. Since I never catch up to it, I'm more comfortable seeing it as "meaninglessness" now.

And that's become the most meaningful thing to me.

Comments

[nmdswkh3j4twg9syv2]

If you want to experience meaninglessness get a job at a for profit company and spend your life on the goal of accumulating money, power and status. Or do anything, including trying to attain mystical states, for the selfish purpose of gratifying your ego in the attainment.

If you want to find meaningfulness get a job and provide things that other people find useful, treat your coworkers with respect and kindness, and do your best.

Meaningfulness and meaninglessness come from your own attitude towards what you do. If you are motivated by selfishness you will find meaninglessness.

If you want to experience meaningfulness understand that you are an immortal spirit and that your time on earth is for the purpose of developing characteristics that will have eternal value because you will use them in the future forever. This is how we are "rewarded" for being good. We are not given rewards, we don't earn them. We create them in ourselves through our efforts to do what is right and good and to improve.

[kay]

Wonderful series of posts. I've enjoyed them very much. I've been thinking along similar lines myself recently.

[Tucson Bob]

Dear nmdswkh3...,

The "you" that seems to choose to work as a greedy profiteer or philanthropist is purely illusory, a conceptual phantom. Life goes on of its own and whatever role you find yourself in is just fine as far as Existence is concerned. There is no judge, no high court. It's all equal, interwoven threads in the incomprehensible, magical mystery of the play of consciousness. What seems to be good may actually be bad and vice versa.

There is the well-known story of the farmer who has various events in his life that at first appear to be good or bad, but the end result is the opposite which appears to be good or bad but turns out to be its opposite, ad infinitum.

As the "I" sense drops away and oneness is apperceived one tends to find oneself (in language I have to use some kind of identifying term) functioning in ways that from a relative standpoint appear to be kinder and more harmonious because when everything is what you are, there is a natural affinity and feeling of benificence to all. However, this is not necessarily so. It all rolls on of its own accord. There is no "you" to make any choice.

Meaningfulness and meaninglessness are merely concepts..little bubbles in the sky of awareness. Our 'time' on earth has no purpose for "developing characteristics" that will have eternal value for some future use. There is no future. There is no time. No reward in some imagined future for deeds done in some imagined past. No "you" to get the imagined reward. No eternity in the sense of a progression of linear time. There is only what is now, as it appears now. It is as it is. It has no more meaning than that.

[bill]

Great post. I've been thinking along a similar path myself, if not off stumbling in the ditch alongside the path.

What you're calling meaninglessness, I thought was transcendence. Or, at least recognizing that I can't know it is transcendence. But now I'm not so sure.

What Park calls relative meaninglessness, I would have called idolatry: seeking meaning in meaningless things, or in symbols that point to true meaning. But again, I'm no longer so sure of my definition. I am somewhat familiar with the Existential Meaning that lies somewhere just between nihilism and angst, but I haven't read his page yet.

Ultimately, I think that meaning is in the same car with happiness meandering down the road of pursuit.

[Brian]

Bill, you're right. I do consider "meaninglessness" to live in the same neighborhood as "transcendence." Along with "mystery" and "ultimacy."

Meaninglessness gets a bad rap. It gets confused with depression, anomie, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and sipping super-strong expresso in a Paris (or anywhere) cafe and talking about how nothing matters, including talking about how nothing matters.

I see it more as "beyond meaning." The "lessness" part of the word can mean either than you've lost meaning, or that you've moved past meaning.

When we don't know what, if anything, lies beyond the relative, limited, material meanings we're aware of now, the door leading to the realm of meaninglessness is ajar.

We may never be able to get beyond the threshold. But even putting our ear to the door and getting vague hints of the mysteries that lie beyond--that's good.

[Sita]

Its good to have meaning in the meaningness.
Just like dancing little flies..in the sun.

[Helen]

Brian, is your "meanlingless" akin to "no-thing-ness"? I ask, because that's how it appears to me.

[Brian]

Helen, yes, I'd say that it is. No-thing is pretty much the same as meaning-less. Meanings are about relationships, analogies, metaphors.

When there's nothing, no-thing, how can you have meaning? We like to make Mystery meaningful, but that just makes it into another thing.

I'm prone to this. I admit it. But at least I'm beginning to realize the loopiness of what I'm doing.

Might not be able to resist writing more about this unwritable stuff tonight.

[Paul Martin]

I think you're right - that if your supposition is that meaning is to be found in sentences that purport to describe being or reality in its totality or ultimate state, you're bound to be disappointed.

[ander]

ela file Brian,

THE SAVIORS OF GOD
'SPIRITUAL EXERCISES'
by Nikos Kazantzakis

(Translated by Kimon Friar)

PROLOGUE

WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide: (a) the ascent toward composition, toward life, toward immortality; (b) the descent toward decomposition, toward matter, toward death. Both streams well up from the depths of primordial essence. Life startles us at first; it seems somewhat beyond the law, somewhat contrary to nature, somewhat like a transitory counteraction to the dark eternal fountains; but deeper down we feel that Life is itself without beginning, an indestructible force of the Universe. Otherwise, from where did that superhuman strength come which hurls us from the unborn to the born and gives us - plants, animals, men - courage for the struggle? But both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.

......

[Jim G]

Good stuff, Brian. Have been a number of studies about how evolution set our brains up to seek meaning in everything (an article by Paul Bloom comes to mind). Had a survival value in the jungle and savanna, still helps with computers and technology, but needs to be considered on the philosophical / existential level. Of course, that stuff is all about meaning, by definition. So, in order to mean anything, meaning needs to doubt why it needs to mean anything. Sounds like a 'strange loop'. (I really need to get around to reading that book!).

God created everything. Who created God? Superstrings form everything. What forms superstrings? Get the strange loops out.

Good koan material! Not that I'd really know a koan if it bit me. So please excuse the last bit of brain debris I'm going to leave here. Your topic reminds me of an episode from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Was called "The Nowhere Affair". Something to do with an abandoned mining town in Nevada called "Nowhere". Final scene, agent Napolean Solo asks the femme fatale from THRUSH, "do you know where you are". She answers, "nowhere", in a manner all dripping with multiple meaning. To keep up with all of the strange looping going on, Solo comments: "then you are somewhere". Fade to black, cue theme song.