Ending the Meaning Crisis
Humanity’s Most Urgent Pursuit
This is the greatest time in history to be alive.
Unfortunately, the fruits of our progress are obscenely stratified. We are amid a loneliness epidemic, increasing anxiety/depression, and escalating numbers of suicides.
The most disturbing trend is that for the first time in history, the younger generations are being most affected by these diseases of despair. There are many causes — accelerating change, unprecedented levels of uncertainty, political upheaval, intergenerational conflicts, extreme inequality, racism, automation, financial insecurity, climate change, social media, evolutionary mismatches, capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich, among the traditional existential challenges of life.
A shrinking future goes against the fundamental nature of what it means to be human. Contraction is always extremely disturbing and is the root cause of the meaning crisis. The existential challenges that have been with humanity for eons are being intensified by a set of emergent threats generated by an accelerating world. These factors make putting an end to the meaning crisis humanity’s most urgent pursuit.
The Search for Meaning has Become an Urgent Pursuit
When one seeks the meaning of life, it is typically not an urgent pursuit. Yet, accelerating change is forcing a growing number to hasten their quest for meaning while modernity makes the quest more challenging than ever. Traditionally, meaning was found in the magical intersubjective stories of the past. Myth, religion, superstition, and the conjuring of demons and witches offered profound meaning. Fortunately, the explosion of science, information, education, and personal autonomy has resulted in a precipitous decline in witch burnings and demon hunting. Unfortunately, this coincides with a steep decline in perceived purpose.
500 years ago, I might have been a zealous witch hunter, burning sorcerers at the stake. The zealots of today lack such clarity. They occupy extremes of a much broader spectrum and their solutions often worsen our problems. It is difficult to remain passionate in our complex, sophisticated, nuanced world. Intellectual honesty and the ability to analyze threads of truth in opposing narratives is a rare skill not always suited to the pursuit of meaning. Our evolutionary need to identify with a tribe and adopt its biases further degrades our sensemaking.
While I retract from the violence and destruction in the streets (June 2020), given different circumstances, I doubt I would do much better. Hunting witches was commonplace in the early days of the printing press; witch-hunting instruction manuals were second to the bible in sales for 200 years! I might have easily fallen into this trap. Or maybe not; perhaps, looking into their eyes I would catch a glimpse of the humanity we share. Fortunately, I will never know.
What I do know is that life has meaning, and it will not be found in modern woke witch hunting, cancel culture, magical thinking, consumerism, or the trappings of wealth and fame. We must temper the intersubjective stories that are dividing our world and come together around a unifying story.
The following offers significant insight into that story as well as the purpose and meaning of your life.
Life is Meaningless
Two decades ago, I attended a popular self-help seminar that promised to reveal the meaning of life. I cleverly deduced this from the title of the last lesson: “The purpose and meaning of life.” Finally, some answers!
But after an annoying and protracted prologue, the instructor laid a giant rotten egg:
“Life is empty and meaningless, and it is empty and meaningless that it is empty and meaningless.”
Disappointment does not capture the depths of my sentiment. I ruminated on this for a while, even repeated it at cocktail parties sounding more ill-mannered than enlightened.
Eventually, an unlikely source set me on the right path and inspired much of what you are about to read. Yes, you are about to remember your purpose in life, and our shared humanity is at the center of these insights. This is the greatest story ever told. If telling you the meaning of your life makes me sound arrogant, apologies in advance. Please indulge me, I consider the following to be the ultimate truth.
Preamble: No Mystical, Magical, Spiritual Thinking
Before we go further, it is important to clarify that there will be no mystical, magical, spiritual explanations. That type of rhetoric is counterproductive; deceptions will not help you find meaning and purpose. To answer the four fundamental questions of life, metaphor is useful. When I say something like it took the universe 13.8 billion years to become aware of itself or that the universe was one-verse, I assign no intrinsic intention or supernatural assist. It is just a symbolic way of relating the science and the facts.
The Four Questions
To understand life’s purpose, we must explore and answer four important questions. Answer them briefly and quickly before we continue. This is not a quiz; there are no right or wrong answers. They offer insight into your current understanding of life and will help create a pathway to deeper understanding:
- Who Am I?
- Where Am I?
- Why Am I Here?
- What Am I Here to Do?
Who Are You?
You have done enough corporate trainings and/or personal development seminars to know that you are not your name, religion, job, or social status. Who you are is the perfect creator of your life. You are a complex psycho-cybernetic organism that constantly creates and recreates your circumstances from the preset images in your mind.
You are amazing at it — there is no one better in the universe. You are an exact printout of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This is the initial place where people try to sneak magical thinking into the equation: “God is the perfect creator of life, and so are you!” (No, that is not how it works.)
You are 100% responsible for creating and recreating your life. Understanding this process is crucial to your success and integral to your search for meaning. The creative process is at the center of what it means to be human and should be a mandatory study.
What sets humanity apart is that we have been given the gift of meta-cognition. You can observe your thoughts and choose new ones, setting your life and our world on a successively new and evolving trajectory. This is no small accomplishment; it took 13.8 billion years for the universe to become aware of itself, and it has done so through humanity. When you contemplate what we have created in the last 12,000 years, it is astounding. You are an integral part of that creative journey.
Answer: You are the perfect creator of your life. (An intensive study the creative process is recommended.)
WHERE ARE YOU?
The prevailing scientific theory is that your atoms originated in a very small space in a state of very low entropy. Estimates range from the size of a proton to as large as a soccer ball. Either way, compared to the universe’s astronomically large size, it was incomprehensibly small.
The universe was “one-verse” in a state of infinite mass and density. In an instant, the Big Bang created mass, space-time, and gravity. In less than a fraction of a fraction of a second, the universe doubled in size 100 times — an expansion rate that is incomprehensible.
This was the beginning (initial conditions) of our story and it is, by far, the greatest story ever told. Our hero is expansion. The villain is entropy. The main characters are opposites and the moral of the story is experience. The ending is unwritten. Unfortunately, with our current understanding of science, the probable outcome is that the villain will be victorious — a slow and inexorable heat death.
Heraclitus understood the relevance of opposites more than 2,500 years ago. Opposites emerged from the chaos of the Big Bang, allowing us to comprehend our world — before/after — darkness/light. Unfortunately, many B-movies (the Bible for instance) have tried to turn these characters into the villains: “Life is suffering,” the knowledge of good and evil, heaven and hell, death entered the world, etc.
The most difficult thing in life is to reconcile its immense suffering. In one sense suffering is a gift because without it, there could be no joy — without bad, there is no good — without death, no life. This is the deeper truth of opposites. I do not know about you, but I have experienced and witnessed enough suffering. End suffering now but keep it as a memory to give you context for a joyous future.
Basic stuff so far!
Answer: You live in a relative world (opposites).
WHY AM I HERE?
Why you are here is now obvious. You have been given the grand prize, the ultimate gift the ability to experience life. It took the universe 13.8 billion years to become aware of itself, and it has done so through you. You are here to experience life, to experience and know yourself. The only way to accomplish this is through relationships.
Again, indulge me in some metaphor. Relationship (opposites) is the only way to experience life. Relationships are by far our greatest source of joy and satisfaction. Human beings are the most relationship-oriented animals. Helpless young, astronomically high parental investment, tribes; evolutionary psychologists have gone so far as to say that our need for relationship surpasses our instincts for safety and survival. This is controversial but supports the narrative that you are here to experience life for life itself. You are the universe experiencing itself through relationships.
What sets us apart from other species is our ability to experience our thoughts. Only we can observe our thinking, understand opposites, are capable of love, and comprehend death. These are the great blessings and curses of our existence. The paradox, of course, is that more death allows you to experience more life. You can hear, taste, smell, see, and touch life — hopefully, it is now clear that this is the greatest of all gifts.
Answer: You are the fulfillment of the universe’s greatest desire (metaphor) — you are here to experience life for life itself.
4. WHAT ARE YOU HERE TO DO?
The standard answer is that you are here to wake-up to the above insights and wake others up through your example. This is truer than ever but in an evolving and expanding way (see below). You are the perfect creator and re-creator of your life. This relative world allows for experience. You are the pinnacle of creation, the fulfillment of the universe’s greatest desire. You are life’s eyes, ears, taste, touch, and smell. Once you have awakened to these truths, your deepest desire will be to help others do the same — this offers deep meaning and purpose.
This is what it means to be a light unto the world that dispels the darkness. What greater purpose is there? This is the great underlying theme of all cosmologies, religions, philosophies, literature, and the creative process — overcoming, perseverance, oneness, non-duality. This is the predominant archetype that runs through every human pursuit.
The great luminaries and leaders of yesterday and today are the ones who have significantly expanded our minds and this world. They have set new standards of achievement by advancing science, technology, philosophy, the arts, and life. More importantly, there are the invisible creators:
“The most invisible creators I know are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the inexpressible without brush, hammer, clay, or guitar. They are neither painter nor sculptor. Their medium is being, whatsoever their presence touches has increased life. They see and don’t have to draw. They are artists of being alive.”
— Donna J. Stone, Wielder of Words
“Whatsoever their presence touches has increased life.” — says it all. The ultimate dream is that one day we will collectively and permanently overcome our struggles, control our world and everything and everyone will be OK. That day will never come — there is a greater challenge before us.
Answer: Wake-up and wake others up in the process through your example.
The Ultimate Challenge for Humanity
There is one more, deeply hidden truth we must discuss that is fundamental to the quest for meaning. The great story of the universe and humanity is accelerating expansion. This fundamental truth is the genesis of and motivation behind love, religion, spiritual pursuit, relationships, evolution, revolution, science, technology, philosophy, and all social constructs.
This pursuit may have finally hit a threshold. All but the most greedy and pathologic now realize that we can no longer sustain our unlimited need for growth on a limited planet. This creates the pivotal challenge for the future of humanity — the dynamic tension between expansion and sustainability.
The tightrope we must walk is that few, if any, will stand for even minor steps backward. Hedonic adaptation is a well understood phenomenon and is a major factor in our deepening epidemic of despair. Most people no longer see a reasonable path forward. The great meritocracy Boomers were born into has become a cryptic cesspool of kleptocracy. The system no longer works for the overwhelming majority — capitalism for the young, poor, and middle class — socialism for the rich, big business, and politicians — this is a disheartening and despicable hate crime.
A Despicable Hate Crime
Yes, a despicable hate crime has been perpetrated on the younger generation, mortgaging their future with astronomical debt in 2008 and again in 2020 (not to mention bequeathing them a collapsing environment, a corrupt government, as well as immoral corporate and social structures). These vast economic resources did not go to the environment, healthcare, education, research, or infrastructure. It went to bail out (2008) the irresponsible individuals and corporations that created the mess — it is depraved.
A few hundred million well-placed dollars in politicians’ hands brings corporations trillions of dollars of undeserved profits and unjustifiable bailouts. How do we stand for this? The younger generation did not sign-off this Ponzi scheme, yet it is their responsibility to pay for it. They deserve opportunity and should be given the structures and incentives to move life forward.
The young, the middle class and the poor are becoming acutely aware of this shell game. They are smart and will no longer heed the self-help psychobabble: “If you can dream it, you can achieve it; just work hard.” Astronomical amounts of debt have been laid at their doorstep.
The traditional solution to debt, economic growth, is no longer a viable strategy. Certainly not in the conventional sense of never-ending extraction, while continuing to externalize costs to the environment and labor. As humanity continues to “wake-up” and collectively grow more conscious, the leaders of the future must show us how to move life forward in a conscious and sustainable way.
Humanity’s Struggle
Humanity’s struggle has always been one of waking up and going beyond its current circumstances. Innovation is how we have come to dominate the earth and extend beyond it. The expansion of life (consciousness) is fundamental to human purpose and meaning. Religions filled this gap for 5,000 years. Thankfully, science slowly took a foothold and has done more for humanity than any iteration of magical thinking.
Unfortunately, in the relative peace of the last 75 years, we have been lulled into a trap. Many of us find meaning in rampant irresponsible consumerism. The consumer is king with cheaper and cheaper products supported by fragile supply chains, cheap labor, increasing extraction, while externalizing costs to labor and the environment. Critical services like healthcare have been maximized for efficiency not necessary capacity. This is happening in the context of an exploding set of perverse incentives at every level of society. It is time for us to wake-up!
We Need to Wake Up and Help Others do the Same
The answer to question number four has never been more urgent. We need to wake-up and help others do the same. Expansion is fundamental to life. As we contemplate all the generations to come after us, how will they be able to fulfill this basic need? What are the solutions and innovations that will improve the quality of life without further destruction?
We must forge a new path forward with — fewer things/more happiness — fewer indulgences/greater health — less social media/greater connection — less conflict/more cooperation — less greed and more love.
In times of great stress, we revert to the past. We cannot go back to some derivation of those awful tribal witch hunting days filled with ignorance, judgement, division, and magical thinking. In life and human evolution, there are only two choices: move forward together proactively, consciously, and deliberately — or contract by continuing down the unconscious path of division, reaction, pain, and suffering. I choose the former.
I believe that humanity, especially the younger generation, will wake-up and wake others up in the process. They will create the cultural, scientific, and technological innovations that will save our world. They will experience the full purpose and meaning of life in an expanding and sustainable way — this pursuit has never been more urgent.
