What do we want? Happiness, experiences, or meaning?

About all it took for me to order Todd May's book was the title: "A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe." 

How could I resist?

Hey, I want a significant life. Filled with meaning. And I totally agree we live in a silent universe. That is, one which doesn't have a God or some other cosmic entity whispering in our ears, Here is what makes life meaningful...

I've got a few chapters left to read. Ordinarily getting this far into a philosophical book would make me confident that I know what the final conclusions will be. But May, a philosopher, does his profession proud.

He isn't into academic, word-splitting, intellectual philosophizing. He writes clearly, informally, and passionately about issues that everybody is deeply concerned about, such as the relationships between happiness, experiences, and meaning. 

What I like most about May's style is how he honestly considers arguments that are contrary to his own. Before stating his conclusion about something, he works through alternative ways of looking at that thing.

May does this so skillfully, several times I found myself saying to myself "Yes, that's so true!" to one of his counter-arguments, before changing my mind and saying "Yes, that's even more true!" to the thesis he ends up preferring. 

If all philosophers could write and think this way, modern philosophy would have a much better reputation than it does.

May makes it into a very practical way of assessing what makes for "a good life" -- one of those terms that gets thrown around all the time, yet rarely pondered as anything other than a shallow platitude. For example, early on in his book May considers what we're really looking for.

Happiness seems like a fine answer. After all, he points out, the founders of the United States, who were well versed in philosophy, said that we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But what is happiness? Seemingly it has a lot to do with pleasure. When we're happy, we feel pleasure; when we are unhappy, we don't. So if we could feel pleasure all of the time, wouldn't that make for a good life?

At first I thought that it would. Until May put forward a thought experiment about having electrodes implanted in my brain that activate a pleasure center.

You would be given food and water, so you wouldn't starve. You would get adequate sleep. So you would live a life of complete pleasure. You would have pleasure at every moment. Also, because you would be sustained through proper nourishment, you would live to a ripe old age. 

But here's the catch. You wouldn't be able to do anything except sit there and be stimulated by the pleasure machine. You would experience continuous pleasure, but you wouldn't be able to do anything. Would you take the offer?

May said that he wouldn't. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't either. I like the notion of continuous pleasure, but not at the expense of living a normal human life. 

The reason, May says, is that what really gives us satisfaction are life projects.

He says, "When we ask what we would like of our living, almost all of us think of our family and friends, our work or our outside hobbies, the plans we have for the future, as central to it. A life without projects would be less than a life, or at least less than a life any of us is likely to choose."

So this leads May to propose another thought experiment. The pleasure machine is redesigned. "Suppose that, instead of offering us pleasure, the machine offered us experiences." It would give us whatever experiences we desired.

The machine creates a virtual reality for its user, like that headgear one can don in order to have the visual experience of alternative worlds. The only difference is that the virtual reality created by the machine is not only visual. It is a complete experience. While immersed in it, one does not even know that it is only an experience. It would feel real. 

This seemed much more appealing to me. I've had dreams that were so enjoyable, I didn't want them to end. They felt real, but weren't. So what? If an experience has the same taste as really real reality, why not grab onto it?

A few pages on, however, May had convinced me that actually I wouldn't want to sign up for the Experience Machine. He writes:

I can't imagine for a moment that I would take that deal. The experience machine is no more tempting than the pleasure machine. It might be neat to try for a couple of hours, but so might the pleasure machine. To look upon a lifetime of unreal experience is a repulsive prospect.

While it might not seem like torture if I were already in it, it certainly seems so now. And as with the pleasure machine, hardly anyone I've asked has ever been drawn to it.

The reason, May says, is that happiness is a type of engagement with the world, not a solitary subjective exercise. "Happiness, rather than being an experience or a passing feeling, is an emotional relation to how one's life is going. It is deeper than experiences or feelings, deeper and more sustained."

Which gets us to meaningfulness. I feel like I need to finish the book before I can explain May's conclusions about what gives life meaning. Here's how he generally looks at the situation, though.

For a human life to be meaningful, it must be one in which I am not a spectator but a real participant, and a participant in something that matters to me. That something can be any number of engagements: relationships, social change, work, athletics, or some combination of these.

I have previously used the word projects to refer to them. For my life to be meaningful, those projects have to feel like my projects; not in the sense that I own them, but more in the sense that they own me, that they have captured my focus.

...It is important to distinguish a meaningful life from a good one. A person can live a perfectly good life -- one that contributes to society or is loyal to friends and family or accomplishes an important feat -- without feeling absorbed by what he or she does.

...But to be a good person who has lived a good life is not the same as having a meaningful life. 

Comments

[Richard van Pelt]

Well said, Brian: "What I like most about May's style is how he honestly considers arguments that are contrary to his own. Before stating his conclusion about something, he works through alternative ways of looking at that thing."

Would that we all thought this way. When I most fear myself has always been when I seem most confident. Some might see this is the sign of some kind of pathology, and it can be. For me, I see it as Prudence gently tugging me away from hubris.

A hobby horse is no Triple Crown champion; it is generally the attempt to place a framework around a fantasy.

Would that one could have pleasure-stimulating implants in your head while your received water and nourishment. What is missing here is that the pursuit of pleasure (and meaning) requires the caloric wherewithal to accomplish. The absence of that wherewithal is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with our society and the public policies that we promulgate.

The pursuit of meaning is the foundation upon which the good life is built. But the pursuit of meaning has no end. I don’t think you can ever cease that search. I believe that tyranny is what happens when one thinks they have found the answer and then seek, for the well being of all, to impose their certainties upon me.

[TheAncientGeek]

In English, "meaning" primarily means semantic content, leading people to expect a verbal formula to satisfy their thirst for a 'meaning of life", rather than a sense of connection, or an actual connection. Is that confusion unique to English speakers? I once attended a discussion of the meaning of life in French...le sens de la vie...other speaker made much of the another meaning of "sens", direction ... not a profound truth for an English speaker.

[777]

I saw Mistakes here :

All included every child knows, we want pleasure, YES
but also the guarantee that it will not be taken away from us.

So, . . make the object of pleasure a stuff that is eternal

That is the emanation of your Soul which each person of real compassion VG is able to experience ( I said HEAR many times )

Also as an answer of the above " IT EVER GROWS"

How can that be :

Ride the Fibonacci algorithm, the Golden Rule, present in everything in Nature, Galaxies, Twisters, a Shell, a neutrino, a Flower, a body

Reverse the cycle at the right side
then double your orgasmic Love each step, while approaching the Amazing Center, The Eternal, The Beautiful, without hate , without fear, The Enlightener, The Word from the Bible, The Anahabadad Shabd Sound,

May you all experience soon.

777

[x]

The pursuit of meaning is the foundation upon which the good life is built.

Since history's worst villains pursued and found meaning in the horrors they perpetrated, I'd say Socrates proposed a better foundation when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living".

[observer]

"... then double your orgasmic Love each step..."

777

Sorry you're losing me now. This constant focus on the "orgasmic" in your comments I find off putting. Is this meant to impress the males on this forum, maybe they will become interested in the spiritual way if its orgasmic? lol

Yes, I know, lust and sex is normal and natural and all that, and most of the commenters here now on this blog are the intellectual non-spiritual types, but really 777... get over it!

Nam is the opposite of Kam.

[Appreciative Reader]

I realize these are only your first thoughts on a book only partly read, Brian : but aren't we making the familiar mistake here of extrapolating purely personal and subjective "meanings" into something universally applicable?

Why should we think of Todd May's ideas on happiness as the standard and/or ideal for all of us? I haven't thought at all deeply about this myself, but there may well be those whose ideal of happiness would be a constant effortless excitation of these pleasure nerves, or a constant immersion in ultra-real VR scenarios. Wouldn't we need the evidence of a fairly wide scientific study to agree that this kind of happiness is in any way "inferior" (or even less often encountered) than the the author's preference for "projects"?

Also : like x, I'm leery of those who follow "meaning" vigorously enough to make such meaning apply more broadly than to only themselves. Personally I'd imagine a contemplative life would be best and happiest (not that I've thought very much or very deeply about this). But perhaps I too am only talking of my ideal here, as opposed to something universal. In any case that kind of ideal would certainly be less "dangerous".

[777]

Very Sorry Observer
I didn't want to hurt
I choose the best words from a smaller vocabulary than you might have
Also I might have been pushed to a "far from preaching" style
to much

It's also because I'm from France
We have not that system of N, C,, P, V , etc word
or irritating sounds replacing the real meaning

But It's clear and women understand it too

777

The whole 7 chakra system provides sensations called pleasure
and kam is one at the low end , but not eternal
and God given also for comparison

Rumi, Hafiz, Bullah Shah, Mirabai , Soami Ji, talked about orgasme
like i did called it Divine Marriage

There really is no better understandable way to know
what is in our future
All of us

[777]

And after some minutes

There is no better comparison
for being taken in WITH WAVES, , absorbed in, totally one with, flabbergastingly united
as in a twister, an ouragan of sound and light
for being really The Shabd

can't be more expressive about that so tiny but sweet tone
within every human of compassion
while nobody knows what heaven is

It's just that

777

[Brian Hines]

Appreciative Reader, May isn't saying that some specific sorts of things are objectively more meaningful than others. His goal, which I think he succeeded in, is to argue that meaning is both subjective and objective.

A meaningful iife is one where "subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness," he says in one chapter. The trick is delineating that "objective attractiveness."

At first I resisted the notion. But May persuasively argues that without some sort of objectivity here, we are left with anything goes nihilism. He writes:

"If our lives are to be meaningful, then they must not only feel meaningful to us, they must also express a meaning that is not simply a matter of personal taste. They must have a worth that is grounded in something outside what you or I happen to enjoy or admire."

The interesting thing, though, is that this grounding is based on groundlessness, on nothing. I'll probably write a blog post about this tonight.

Meaning, the grounding isn't in anything out there in the cosmos, like a god or what the universe wants. It is a product of human culture, communication, shared values, and such. The "no man is an island" thing.

Being interrelated with other people, the meaning in our lives is connected to "narrative values" that have meaning for others. This is hard to explain briefly. Buy his book. I think you'd like it.

[x]

"If our lives are to be meaningful, then they must not only feel meaningful to us, they must also express a meaning that is not simply a matter of personal taste. They must have a worth that is grounded in something outside what you or I happen to enjoy or admire."

My preachiness detector responded to this little sermon. Who is May to say what meaning "must" be? Why can't meaning be "a matter of personal taste"?

[George Poergie puddin 'n pie]

777,

May I just say you are clearly smoking some very powerful shit.

Whatever blows your back I say.

[Juan]

May I just say you are clearly smoking some very powerful shit...

...or maybe it is the divine grace of a Perfect Living Master.

[777]

"I'm just a messenger, nothing more" °°
Funny, the other day , after writing here and appreciating with my ego what I wrote
my TV Screen went on Tilt and this text °° was there
I took my phone and made a photo of it
I could send it to Brian if He wants that

---
This processes is for any Jeeva ( Soul+ego )
There is no other 'place' to go. (only timedifferences)

The Sound is already above your eyes if VG like Brian and Dave
you even don't need help to hear

But riding IT is a whole other ball game

many seek brahm because of the IQ appreciation there ( Advaita )
but then long , heavy ascese may be required and no housefathers accepted

Better pray the real Lord he gives us some exponential Love,
like I said
allowing for IMMORTALITY NOW !
Wouldn't it be marvelous to really experience the no fear of death at all;
to be FREE

I regret to have hurt feelings an also forgot often
"EXCLUSIVELY ABOVE THE EYES" :-)

George :
A recently RSSB initiated ex coke user said to me " This Super stuff , and free "

777

[George Poergie puddin 'n pie]

Gdam free coke, now that does sound like a good bunch of happy clappies to me.

To join, do I need to dress up in Orange robes and clang some symbols together and shave my head and turn up at airports and annoy ppl?

[TheAncientGeek]

"clang some symbols together"

That's what I call semantics!

[David R]

Brian is a self confessed acid head that found some guru and Indian cult and ultimately concluded that God didn't exist. Usually we treat druggies as seriously out of touch with reality. But unfortunately blogs like this exist on the internet that generate millions of traffic views and then influence those persons in negative ways. Surely we ought to point out the most obvious problem here - Brian was a druggy that fucked up his own brain with acid and other drugs, went and found a fake guru, and has spent the rest of his life blogging the same things over and over and over again, without end, about how God doesn't exist. It sounds almost like jealousy to me. Well, pride is linked to jealousy, and that is linked to the human ego, which is human perception deluded into believing it is the doer, it is in control, making itself the only God that exists. It fails to acknowledge it's own creation by parents and how the universe is older in time than they are when they were born, and by drug usage, confuse and delude themselves. Brian, it is dangerous to give guns to monkeys because they might shoot and kill you with it. And it is dangerous for the general public to listen to a washed out hippy saying that God doesn't exist. This is what causes wars.

[Appreciative Reader]

@David R

That's a remarkably offensive comment, that's also remarkably innocent of any content per se. Unless it's some kind of inside joke amongst old friends (that outsiders will naturally not understand or properly appreciate), it's in the worst possible taste!

One wonders whether jealousy and a mind addled by drug abuse (both of which seem to be repeated themes in your brief comment) -- as well as what psychiatrists refer to as 'projection' -- have something to with it?

Another thing I found remarkable there is Brian's astonishing levels of tolerance: anyone else would have put on their thickest shoes and gloves and hosed out those leavings of yours without a second thought.

[Brian Hines]

Appreciative Reader, I don't take ridiculous comments like David R's seriously. It's just another example of people making statements that have no basis in fact.

Yeah, I sure must have been a drug-addled freak in college. I graduated "With Great Distinction," getting high grades in almost all of my classes, and spending my first two years in a Tutorials in Letters and Sciences special program that featured seminar "classes" with top professors, lots of intense discussions, and much writing of serious papers.

But, hey, what do facts and reality matter to people with religious beliefs? They just want to believe what they want to believe. At least David spelled my name right.

[David R]

Brian, you did eventually respond. As if I wasn't waiting for it. Touche'

I know you believe that God doesn't exist but you could save everybody a lot of time by simply closing down this blog and leaving a sentence that says, "I don't believe in God". What else is this blog for? If this blog is about how some Indian gurus are frauds you ought to make that the main feature of the website, otherwise it looks like you have some agenda to fulfil.

[George Poergie puddin 'n pie]

What is the harm in a bit of acid? Or even a lot of it?

Okay okay your pip gets fried but what a way to go, not so.

As for saying gif does of doesn't exist, what difference does that make to God should he exist. Nietzsche said God was dead and that poor badtard couldve with a shedload of acid.

[june schlebusch]

David R, sometime ago I had to text my priest a sms on my cell phone..I started with the predictive speech and typed Fathe and got David I then put in the r and got Father..That gave me "A lot of happiness" as I believe Jesus was the son of David..I don't know if it is the same overseas but here in SA it is...I still read the blog but don't comment much anymore as I don't feel believers are welcome which is a pity as they gave another perpective...PS David R is my password.