Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the meaning, or lack thereof, of life. It is rare to see the view stated so respectfully of other points of view.
You are spot on about the experiential, existential nature of the issue. Speaking for the religious point of view (I'm a devout Anglican: daily Bible reading, church every Sunday, not going to evangelize you unless you request it), it absolutely is. The nonreligious make a major error about religions I call the Cognitive Fallacy: the focus on S believes that P. It's overwhelmingly more a matter of what people do than what they explicitly believe. George MacDonald, the 19th century preacher and fantasy author, wrote perceptively that men would rather cudgel their brains over doctrine (and cudgel others brains...) to avoid acting as Chris did, and doing what he commanded them to do.
The going to church, the tithing, the Bible reading, ARE the religion. It's like love: it's an action with an only a loosely associated feeling (holding my screaming three-year old son down to clip a hang nail is love in action - I definitely wasn't a feeling in the moment).
I wouldn't even say that religion is some answer to the "meaning of life." Personally, I think the question of whether life has meaning or not is a category mistake, akin to asking whether rocks are moral. People saying "the universe is indifferent" strike me as making a similar category mistake: the universe - the totality of all the matter and energy there is - is not the kind of thing that can even be described as indifferent, as that would require the possibility of caring in the first place. Just because questions can be framed grammatically doesn't mean they are sensible - capable of having answers.
And if "does life have a meaning" is a question with an answer, I've never understood how some answer that could be given in a series English sentences could be adequate. If there is an answer, it's a way of living.
This is almost becoming a Substack essay unto itself, so let me close by just thanking you for expressing your thoughts clearly and respectfully.
Once, during a particularly tough period, I spent quite literally entire days philosophizing what the driving motivation for my life would be. Would it be a startup? Untold riches? Mastery in some niche hobby, or my preferred career path? A diversity of quirky skills, posing as a cultured Renaissance man? Family? Giving back? These all seemed like good answers - answers I attempted in vain to copy-and-paste as my own.
Given the arbitrariness of it all (as rational - or perhaps "rationalizing" - exercises often are), I finally came to the conclusion that I would not derive some singular meaning, some static "truth", on the back of a napkin. In other words, it would not and could never be an intellectual exercise.
I would instead find it in my felt experience, my day-to-day observation of what I enjoyed and did not enjoy. That, so far, has stuck with me. I no longer intellectualize about some greater purpose. I do what I enjoy and avoid what I don't, and whatever that is, it "feels meaningful" to me.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the meaning, or lack thereof, of life. It is rare to see the view stated so respectfully of other points of view.
You are spot on about the experiential, existential nature of the issue. Speaking for the religious point of view (I'm a devout Anglican: daily Bible reading, church every Sunday, not going to evangelize you unless you request it), it absolutely is. The nonreligious make a major error about religions I call the Cognitive Fallacy: the focus on S believes that P. It's overwhelmingly more a matter of what people do than what they explicitly believe. George MacDonald, the 19th century preacher and fantasy author, wrote perceptively that men would rather cudgel their brains over doctrine (and cudgel others brains...) to avoid acting as Chris did, and doing what he commanded them to do.
The going to church, the tithing, the Bible reading, ARE the religion. It's like love: it's an action with an only a loosely associated feeling (holding my screaming three-year old son down to clip a hang nail is love in action - I definitely wasn't a feeling in the moment).
I wouldn't even say that religion is some answer to the "meaning of life." Personally, I think the question of whether life has meaning or not is a category mistake, akin to asking whether rocks are moral. People saying "the universe is indifferent" strike me as making a similar category mistake: the universe - the totality of all the matter and energy there is - is not the kind of thing that can even be described as indifferent, as that would require the possibility of caring in the first place. Just because questions can be framed grammatically doesn't mean they are sensible - capable of having answers.
And if "does life have a meaning" is a question with an answer, I've never understood how some answer that could be given in a series English sentences could be adequate. If there is an answer, it's a way of living.
This is almost becoming a Substack essay unto itself, so let me close by just thanking you for expressing your thoughts clearly and respectfully.
You expressed it the way it feels to me. Category error!
I now think of Meaning a lot like I do Health or Wealth. That is...
- we are guaranteed none
- thinking we have it, is more important than objectively having it
- it's not "found" then voila! all is well; we must continually be finding it and/or working it
- getting a massive dollop of luck (from somewhere) is very underrated
- like running a marathon, it's not complex, but still difficult (and more accessible than people think)
Once, during a particularly tough period, I spent quite literally entire days philosophizing what the driving motivation for my life would be. Would it be a startup? Untold riches? Mastery in some niche hobby, or my preferred career path? A diversity of quirky skills, posing as a cultured Renaissance man? Family? Giving back? These all seemed like good answers - answers I attempted in vain to copy-and-paste as my own.
Given the arbitrariness of it all (as rational - or perhaps "rationalizing" - exercises often are), I finally came to the conclusion that I would not derive some singular meaning, some static "truth", on the back of a napkin. In other words, it would not and could never be an intellectual exercise.
I would instead find it in my felt experience, my day-to-day observation of what I enjoyed and did not enjoy. That, so far, has stuck with me. I no longer intellectualize about some greater purpose. I do what I enjoy and avoid what I don't, and whatever that is, it "feels meaningful" to me.