It Means Something

We all have the experience of having our lives mean something. Meaning is just a basic encounter with the world. But how often do we really reflect on what we mean by 'meaning'? Rarely, I gather.

When a person tells me that there is meaning even without God, I have to wonder what they mean. I know what I mean by talking about meaning, but I'm not sure what they mean. I guess they mean that things 'mean something' to them. But what does 'mean something' parse out to? If someone helps them, it has a positive 'effect' on them, that is the answer I usually get. But doesn't this just amount to saying that they like or don't like certain things? Is that all meaning amounts to?

In truth, this isn't simply what they mean. What they are talking about is having some kind of impact on the world. But, in truth, not all impact can be meaningful. If I hurt you, that has an impact on you too. But that means that hurting people is just as meaningful as helping them. Does this sound right to you? It doesn't to me.

Of course mattering 'to me' isn't really enough anyways, despite the hand waving. "Matters to me" can't be equivalent to "it matters" any more than "it is purple to me" is the same as "it is purple." If a person sees green as purple because of some genetic defect, then the purple appearance to that individual has no real bearing on the actual color of the object. A momentary, subjective encounter with meaning is no sign that anything is, in fact, meaningful.

A person may momentarily try to insist that a passing meaning is enough, but in point of fact, they betray that it is not enough in various ways. Most people (and I've found this is particularly true of atheists), want to make an impact that lasts beyond them. They care about being remembered, they care about creating something that has a long effect in this world. People are fascinated by ancient things like the pyramids because they have lasted so long. They are in awe of mountains because they seem eternal. Awe and wonder are responses to perceived significance. Additionally, as soon as you seek remembrance beyond your lifetime as a route to meaning you have already admitted that 'life is not enough.' The momentary change in my own being is not enough to satisfy your sense of significance.

In point of fact, though, both 'mattering to me' and 'making an impact beyond myself' are both important components in understanding our experience of meaning. The truth is that making an impact beyond oneself is only important because one might make an impact on others' subjective experience. One wonders why we stand in such awe of stars and mountains, frozen by their seeming meaning, if much of that is about their lasting without observation. Who cares if a mountain is there forever, if there is no one there to see it. Subjective experience, while on it's own not enough to account for meaning, is still an important part of it.

So let me suggest that, in the end, our talk of meaning really parses out to something else: significance. We want to know that what we do makes an impact, and impression, that really lasts. Reflection always threatens our sense of meaning, because it threatens our sense of significance. That mountain may seem significant, and thus meaningful, because it lasts a long time. But we know that next to the span of the universe, that sense of significance is reduced to nothing, for a mountain's lifespan is tiny compared to the lifespan of the universe in which it dwells. Similarly, contemplation of the universe makes us aware of our own insignificance, because it reveals just how tiny we are. The momentary changes in our experience even more so.

A universal context may seem to save our sense of mattering and meaning and significance, but in reality it doesn't. For it is quite likely the universe is just one instantiation of an eternal set of physical laws. And 15 billion years is nothing, nothing, nothing...bare nothingness, compared to eternity. What's more, what we want to have a lasting impact is that which we value. That is why our intuitions about meaning are frustrated when we realize that other people value things we consider evil. What matters to me is this moment, this subjective encounter with the world. There will never be another me, looking out over the beauty of the world, and soaking it all in as me. That subjective encounter with the world, that experience of this moment, which is mine and can be no one else's, is what I really value. That is why changes in that subjectivity seem meaningful in themselves.

But those changes lack significance, because they fail to make any lasting change in the world. Think about this: if you were a robot, with no subjective experience, but all the same behaviors, your impact on the world would be the same. For all the glory of our own subjective encounter with the world, they make no difference. They have no real impact. They are, in fact, meaningless.

So in the end I think all our talk of meaning really grounds out in a search for the eternal. We are looking for that endless ground in the sea of change. Buddhists and Platonists talk about looking for a 'changeless' ground, but in fact that isn't quite right. What we want is a place where the changes we make in ourselves find eternity, where our subjective encounter makes a difference in the world.

I want to suggest to you here that only process conceptions of divinity speak to the fullest range of our experience of meaning. Only in a certain understanding of God as sharing in life and thus eternalizing our own encounter with the world, can we find some sense in our talk of meaningfulness. What I experience is my own, and it is as me, but it is shared by God. Every change, every positive value experienced, every beauty known, as me, by me, is also known as me, but by God. What happens to us, and what we do, both have an eternity in the life of God. In this way what matters TO ME has at least the potential to really matter, since experienced value is shared by God, remembered by God, and makes a difference in the life of God. Who, incidentally, also uses that value to help build the world, not just now but forever. We find the eternity we seek, and the ability to make a difference too.

Some may question why an eternal meaning is to be preferred to a momentary meaning. To answer this, I can only point back to our desire to be remembered, our awe at long standing structures and natural formations, and our dissatisfaction at knowing our subjectivity dissipates into nothingness. It is not like we have a choice between a momentary meaning and eternal meaning, making an eternal difference through our subjective encounter is just what meaning IS, on this account. I really can't understand it any other way. I've tried. You may know what you mean when you talk about a momentary and passing 'meaning', but I don't know what you mean. Significance has to do with scale, and no scale can satisfy a mind that can abstract except an eternal and infinite scale. Everything else is just smoke, to me.