Is Meaning Dead?
Article By Sabine Leitner
I have always believed that it is healthy to question everything every now and then and to check whether the beliefs we have adopted during our journey through life are still valid. In some way, we could call this a mini-crisis of meaning because it can be quite painful, even destructive to current arrangements, and a time of great sadness and loneliness because suddenly we might not enjoy what we used to any more and not fit in any more with our usual community. To a certain extent, we should not avoid or be afraid of these moments of hopelessness, despair, anxiety or great sadness because they are often turning points and lead to renewal and growth.
However, if we get stuck in this process for too long and can only cope by numbing ourselves, then this crisis of meaning becomes unhealthy and paralyzing. Rising reports of anxiety, depression and loneliness suggest that we are suffering today from a kind of chronic, low-level sense of meaninglessness in Western societies, a lack of motivation and a sense of disorientation, which is even more pronounced in young people and teenagers, whereas it used to be typical of the midlife crisis of previous generations.
What has changed? Our previous sources of meaning (religions, communities, traditions) have become obsolete and the promises of secularization, globalization and economic growth for all have not been fulfilled. Declining trust in governments and institutions, fewer shared narratives, the destruction of our environment, and also disillusionment with technology – after all, the promised connection and knowledge became outweighed by misinformation, loneliness and digital fatigue – have led to a great sense of disillusionment, apathy and a feeling of powerlessness.
Nihilism has become mainstream and postmodern philosophy, popular culture, films and music often reflect and spread its message that life itself is without meaning, purpose or value and that there is no objective basis for moral truths, even if this is impossible to prove and therefore an opinion rather than a fact. But is nihilism really the final answer to our millennia-old quest for the meaning of life? Is meaning now, after God, also dead?
The fact that we seem to have an ingrained need to search for and find some meaning in our lives is significant. If humans are part of the universe, and humans can experience meaning, then doesn’t this suggest that meaning is already somehow present in the universe? If the universe were entirely devoid of meaning, how could one of its parts (us) ‘generate it’ or even have the notion of it? In other words: if the universe produces beings that are capable of meaning, would it not be logical to suggest that meaning is a latent property of the universe?
There is actually a broad consensus that meaning does exist in some form or other. The divide lies as to whether meaning arises solely from human minds and does not exist ‘out there’ in the fabric of the cosmos (the subjective or ‘emergent’ view), or whether meaning is built into the structure of reality itself, independent of human invention (the ‘fundamental’ or objective view). A synthesis of both views would suggest that meaning is a ‘hidden potential’ that does already exist but which needs to be actualized to become real for us.
On another note, I don’t believe that our human evolution or the evolution of the universe has finished, so why should we be able to grasp the ultimate meaning of life now? Would it not be arrogant to think that in our current evolutionary state we could fully understand the purpose of the universe? Only time and evolution will tell. And our understanding of meaning will surely change and grow as we go through changes and growth.
Meaning is not dead. But what has become increasingly meaningless is probably the way we see life. A purely materialistic and utilitarian outlook that reduces existence to consumption, productivity and measurable outputs is bound to produce a sense of disenchantment. When we see love as ‘just chemistry’, nature as ‘just resources’, and human worth as ‘just economic value’, then we have truly lost something vital.
Only a proper crisis of meaning can wake us up from this reductionist view of the world and of ourselves and connect us again with our yearning for depth, wonder, enchantment and transcendence. For the time being, let us face with courage the apparent meaninglessness of pain and suffering, let us assume our responsibility to create or discover meaning for ourselves and let us continue to explore with untiring curiosity the existential questions that seem to be inherent in our human nature.
Image Credits: By yugdas manandhar | Pexels | CC BY PD
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By yugdas manandhar | Pexels | CC BY PD
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