David Summerhays[00:00] Welcome everyone, my name is David Summerhays and this is the Forging Purpose podcast. Today I’d like to tell you a bit about this podcast and what you can expect out of this first series of episodes.
[00:15] I got the idea for this podcast while reading a bit of philosopher Charles Taylor, his book Sources of the Self, where he argues that in modern times we’re experiencing a crisis of meaning, a difficulty in finding meaning in life. And I’d like to dig into those ideas just a little bit more in this podcast and then set the table for what the rest of the podcast is going to look like for this season. Today’s episode is a short one. I’ll be saying a bit about what meaning is and then a bit more about what a crisis of meaning is. And then I’ll say a bit about what my plan is for the next series of episodes that you’re going to see.
[00:57] So first of all, what is meaning?
I’m going to give three different ways of defining it because meaning is something that’s a little bit hard to define when we’re talking about the meaning of a human life.
So I think the easiest place to start is by looking at the meaning of words.
[01:13] When do words have meaning?
And then we’re going to use the metaphor of words to think about the meaning of a human life.
So if I’m talking about a tree and I say the word tree, people have an image in mind of the plant with the leaves and all that. Now the word itself is just a sound or a written thing or a concept. And then it has meaning by sort of pointing at something outside in reality like the plant right there. The word plant will point at it. If I say, look at the plant behind my head, you’ll see what I mean, the word literally points at it.
I’m not good at pointing in reverse, but you get the idea.
If you’re just listening to this, I’m just pointing at plants behind my head.
[01:58] But if I make up a word like gobbledygoo and you’re like, well, what does that mean? And I point at this plant. This plant is a gobbledygoo plant or gobbledygoo means tree or something like that. You would think, okay, you’re really weird. But at least if I say, hey, can you meet me out by the gobbledygoo out front? You would probably be standing by a tree and so would I, right? So the word gobbledygoo, which might be kind of nonsensical, it gains meaning once I tell you what it means, what it points to, the real thing that it points to. Okay, now the idea is that a human life has meaning, metaphorically speaking, when it points to something beyond itself, when it points to a purpose, to a thing that it does or accomplishes that lies beyond itself because the self is limited. And this comes to the second type of or way of defining meaning that I’d like to get to.
So this, I call this the root.
So the first definition was the metaphor of the word.
Meaning is like a word when it points to something.
[03:07] Now I want to talk about the root of meaning, like what is it about the human condition that makes us want meaning or need a meaning to our lives? And for that, Paul Tillich argues that, which is again a theologian, he argues in, I believe it’s systematic theology, if it’s not the courage to be, that the reason humans seek meaning lies in the sort of dual nature of humanity.
[03:32] That we’re at once sort of animals, biological material, and that at the same time we have this capacity for imagination and not just imagination, but really imagining infinity, something beyond all limits. So we’re sort of finite or limited. And at the same time, we’re infinite. We can imagine beyond all limits.
[03:54] And in some sense, we believe or sense or feel that we belong with the infinite. And that’s part of this painful human condition of being able to imagine living forever or the afterlife and having to die. But humans are limited in a lot of ways, and we can imagine beyond a lot of those limitations in a lot of different directions. And that leads to suffering of all different kinds. So it’s not just the suffering of fear of death, that we can sense our own death and imagine life without us and before us. So we’re limited in time, and yet we can imagine the infinite in time, but we’re also limited in space, not just in the space that we’ll cover when we’re alive, but we can imagine and see distant galaxies that we’ll never ever get to visit, but we can imagine visiting. We’re limited in our morals. We can imagine ourselves being morally perfect, and then we have to deal with our moral limitations and our selfishness and impulsiveness and the limited time we have to make decisions. We’re limited in our ability to obtain truth. We don’t know why some things happen. We can take a guess, but we’re not really sure. So yeah, we’re limited in our ability to attain the truth. We’re limited in beauty, the beauty that we can create, the beauty that we are, and yet we can imagine being and creating a kind of infinite and perfect beauty. Yeah. We’re limited in a lot of different ways, I probably am forgetting a few, and yet we can imagine beyond those limitations in ways that are really painful for us. And like I said, death is really the king because there’s a limit to our lives. Like similarly, the way words are limited, we can’t just think or communicate telepathically our thoughts. We have to use words to point to concepts to try to get ideas across. And similarly, we have a life, we are alive, and we have to use the limited actions and decisions that we can make to try to create something really, really important. So the second way of defining meaning is really as the human quest for a kind of infinite object, a kind of infinite finite, an action we can do that is infinitely important, a decision that we can make that will help us arrive at something infinite, infinitely meaningful. You know, that will sort of overcome or somehow reconcile us to the division between us, that finite infinite dual nature within us. Okay, so that’s the root of meaning.
[06:41] And then the fruit of meaning, by this, I just mean meaning is that meaningful life. It means a satisfactory life. It means we can come, let’s say, for instance, to the end of our days and think, well, my life has been limited, I’m about to die, but I’m satisfied with my decisions. I see why I did the things that I did. I’m glad that I did. I’m ready to go, you know, I’ve had a full life, that sort of thing. So the fruit of meaning is this kind of peace and satisfaction. When we have meaning, we are peaceful with the decisions and even the mistakes that we’ve made because they’ve been meaningful, because they’ve led to something infinite coming to pass or something infinitely important has happened as a result. Okay, so that’s the fruit of meaning. That isn’t to say that the purpose of life is to be satisfied, because often the most meaningful things are very, very difficult. And to say that the purpose of life is to be meaningful is a circular argument. But what I am saying is that a meaningful life is, you know, satisfying, and we can know that we have meaning by the satisfaction that we take in it. Okay, so that’s what meaning is.
[07:58] Again, defining it three ways as a metaphor of a word that’s rooted in the human condition and that when we have meaning, we can recognize it by a sense of satisfaction and peace and acceptance of our of our limited actions in this life. We’re satisfied with it. Okay?
[08:18] Now a crisis of meaning, what does it mean to have a crisis of meaning? What does that mean? It does not mean that everybody in modern times is directly and, you know, living a kind of existential crisis where they’re having tremendous anxiety or a sense of depression that there’s no purpose to human existence, nothing I do matters. You know, it doesn’t mean that everybody is living a kind of existential crisis every moment of their lives. And in fact, it doesn’t even mean that everybody will be particularly, you know, existential. Some folks are just kind of satisfied, you know, you see the fruit of meaning in them and other people, you see the crisis of meaning in them more. You see the fruit, the rotting fruit of meaning, you see lack of fruit on the tree, and you see that the root of the human condition is really getting to them and making them extremely discouraged. And as humans, we need a lot of sense of purpose in order to feel that it’s worthwhile to keep going.
[09:29] And let’s be clear, humans have always struggled with the question of meaning. There has been no perfect answer and there’s been no age of innocence where these questions have been any easier than they are today. They are eternal questions for a reason because they’re eternally difficult and we eternally do not have satisfactory answers to them, okay? So it’s not that modern times has fallen from some sort of state of innocence or anything like that. So how do we know that in modern times we have a more difficult relationship with meaning than people of any other time? And you know, Paul Tillich’s answer to that, and also Charles Taylor, are really starting with the arts. For Paul Tillich, it’s really the existentialist movement that kicks off the really big modern crisis of meaning. You know, that post-Nitja, God is Dead, the first existentialists who were, you know, like Camus talking about the plague or these other kinds of works that talk a lot about the emptiness of existence, that portray people with no purpose. You can think about a play like Waiting for Godot where the whole point of the play is they’re waiting for somebody that doesn’t come, which is this larger metaphor for life, where we’re waiting for the infinite to arrive, something infinitely important to happen, but nothing happens. You know, you can see it in, I don’t know, a show about nothing like Seinfeld where nothing happens and they’re not talking about anything of consequence and these are just kind of shallow desperate lives going on, right? So we can really look at the arts as a good indicator of when, you know, these kinds of crises are happening and how their shape is changing. And more to the point for this podcast, the first season of this podcast is really going to look more carefully at the signs of a crisis.
[11:28] That’s why I call the first season signs of crisis. So we’re looking at crises of all sorts. First we’ll think about midlife crisis, but also quarter life crisis, adolescence, even the terrible twos, and even retirement are all kinds of crises. And they’re all moments where people grapple terribly with the meaning of their lives as these different life stages come along. And all of them can be painfully difficult, lead to divorces and all kinds of upheaval as people grapple with these really difficult questions for which easy answers just aren’t available in our culture at this moment.
[12:04] So in this first season, we’re going to look at people who are really on the front lines of combating or dealing with people who are in the midst of a crisis of meaning. In this first season, I’m going to be talking to psychologists, chaplains, you know, people working in hospitals, job counselors, addictions counselors, as well as just ordinary people to talk about the meaning of their life and what their life quest or quest for meaning has looked like.
[12:32] In future seasons, we’ll look at other signs of crisis. So season two will be dedicated to religion, in particular atheism, evangelism, and fundamentalism. In season three, we’ll be looking at politics, not just extreme politics where people have utopian ideas that seek to fill the void of meaning, but we’ll also look at apathy, people that feel that there’s just no point in politics at all. And then in season four, we’ll be looking at the larger crisis of myth. So not just myth in terms of religious myth, but also secular myths. And I’m thinking in particular of the family, gender, marriage, and also secular myths such as ethnicity, which is like an extended family, and then race, and also nation and nationhood. And we’ll have already covered a number of political myths such as progress and liberation.
[13:29] Finally, I’d just like to note that there are a few questions that I’m not really getting into today that I could do in a future episode of just me kind of talking at you. The first is how long has this crisis of meaning been going on? What causes it? And also who is the most affected? And in what stage of life are people most affected? And is this crisis of meaning most visible? Okay, so I haven’t covered those questions, but by popular demand, I can sit here and talk.
The first part, this first season is interviews.
I’m really interested in talking to people and hearing their experience and also their expertise.
[14:05] I have ideas that have come from books that I’ve read in my own observations and experience, but I think it’s really interesting to talk just to ordinary people and also experts to bring out, like I said, signs of crisis and just look at what their experience is and what they’re observing on the ground on these sort of front lines of the crisis of meaning.
So that will do it for today.
[14:30] Just by listening to this, you are part of a community, a community who is thinking about the crisis of meaning. You want to hear more, you want to learn more. And just by participating and listening, you are supporting this work and you are saying that this crisis of meaning is important. And I think if there’s one thing I’m trying to show in this podcast series is the broad effects of this crisis of meaning in our politics, in our own psychology, in our inner lives, as well as the way we relate to each other and, you know, sometimes the extreme things people are doing in order to find meaning in their lives by participating and by listening and by supporting this podcast, by liking it, by subscribing, by sharing with friends. We are building a movement to talk about this crisis of meaning and not just let politicians sort of manipulate us or make false promises that their political decisions can lead to a meaningful life. It can’t. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and we’ll see you in the next one.