You walk into a place you’ve never entered. You look around. Much of what you see makes sense. Things that belong on the floor are on the floor. Things for the walls, on the walls, and the ceiling stuff, too, is where you would expect it. It all seems to make sense.
Of course, someone could rearrange everything. You know, put the ceiling stuff on the floor and vice versa. Such an arrangement would certainly catch your eye. But why? Well, as you know, you’ve come to expect certain arrangements that seem to be “orderly ones.” You recognize arrangements (sets) by use and usefulness and by the laws of nature, like gravity, all contexts of meaning. The absence of such contexts signals meaninglessness.
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we’ve been writing about meaning. We’ve run the entire philosophical spectrum of explanations. Meaning derives from culture. Meaning derives from a set of natural laws. Meaning derives from language. No. Check that. Language derives from meaning. Meaning is variable. Meaningfulness is dependent on mind. No meaning is independent of human consciousness. The universe is imbued with meaning. Or maybe not. Sometimes our thoughts about meaning seem like light beams bouncing in a room full of mirrors and crystals. Interference patterns occur as thoughts contradict and cancel one another.
Meaninglessness is a problem of identity. I know who I am because I find meaning in thing and process. If neither the arrangements of the material world nor the processes at work in the universe have discernible order, then identity of any kind diminishes or disappears. Identity requires meaning, and in turn, all meaning is a matter of arrangement, that, in its turn, is dependent upon a background, a context, a “world.”
Meaninglessness is the background against which we see the meaningful, and, by extension, our own meaningfulness. Meaninglessness is the context of identity. It is the place without arrangement on which arrangements are superposed.
Now, your argument: “I can walk into a self-contained room, see the arrangement of everything, and not detect any chaos or meaninglessness. The room has meaning by and in itself.”
“No,” I counter, “the room into which you walk is one of many into which you have walked, and it lies in a larger universe of thing and process that are the context for any room. You look out at a world of seeming chaos and meaninglessness. Chaotic natural disasters, chaotic relationships, chaotic random acts of violence. And you identify yourself as ‘not part of that scheme.’ You find security in ‘knowing’ whatever makes sense. Isn’t that the reason we all find ourselves at a loss when death intervenes in a relationship? Even a living dissolution of a relationship can disturb the most secure identity because every relationship develops a behavioral set, an arrangement of connecting actions that serve as process. Breakup and death nullify arrangement of thing and process.”
Meaninglessness envelopes meaningfulness and threatens it. But that’s the good news. As I have said elsewhere, “Give me chaos, and you make me a god.” You, too. You can create. You can put random thing and process in any arrangement you wish, save those fundamental things and processes that underlie your existence: The four fundamental forces of nature, the fundamental composition of the universe, and the process of dying.
You’ve been in the process of creating meaning out of meaninglessness all your life. You have arranged and rearranged the room always with the goal of its making sense. When “things seem out of place” and “processes go awry,” you invariably attempt to order both. Your entire existence is making meaning out of meaninglessness. That is a meaning of meaninglessness.
Of course, someone could rearrange everything. You know, put the ceiling stuff on the floor and vice versa. Such an arrangement would certainly catch your eye. But why? Well, as you know, you’ve come to expect certain arrangements that seem to be “orderly ones.” You recognize arrangements (sets) by use and usefulness and by the laws of nature, like gravity, all contexts of meaning. The absence of such contexts signals meaninglessness.
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we’ve been writing about meaning. We’ve run the entire philosophical spectrum of explanations. Meaning derives from culture. Meaning derives from a set of natural laws. Meaning derives from language. No. Check that. Language derives from meaning. Meaning is variable. Meaningfulness is dependent on mind. No meaning is independent of human consciousness. The universe is imbued with meaning. Or maybe not. Sometimes our thoughts about meaning seem like light beams bouncing in a room full of mirrors and crystals. Interference patterns occur as thoughts contradict and cancel one another.
Meaninglessness is a problem of identity. I know who I am because I find meaning in thing and process. If neither the arrangements of the material world nor the processes at work in the universe have discernible order, then identity of any kind diminishes or disappears. Identity requires meaning, and in turn, all meaning is a matter of arrangement, that, in its turn, is dependent upon a background, a context, a “world.”
Meaninglessness is the background against which we see the meaningful, and, by extension, our own meaningfulness. Meaninglessness is the context of identity. It is the place without arrangement on which arrangements are superposed.
Now, your argument: “I can walk into a self-contained room, see the arrangement of everything, and not detect any chaos or meaninglessness. The room has meaning by and in itself.”
“No,” I counter, “the room into which you walk is one of many into which you have walked, and it lies in a larger universe of thing and process that are the context for any room. You look out at a world of seeming chaos and meaninglessness. Chaotic natural disasters, chaotic relationships, chaotic random acts of violence. And you identify yourself as ‘not part of that scheme.’ You find security in ‘knowing’ whatever makes sense. Isn’t that the reason we all find ourselves at a loss when death intervenes in a relationship? Even a living dissolution of a relationship can disturb the most secure identity because every relationship develops a behavioral set, an arrangement of connecting actions that serve as process. Breakup and death nullify arrangement of thing and process.”
Meaninglessness envelopes meaningfulness and threatens it. But that’s the good news. As I have said elsewhere, “Give me chaos, and you make me a god.” You, too. You can create. You can put random thing and process in any arrangement you wish, save those fundamental things and processes that underlie your existence: The four fundamental forces of nature, the fundamental composition of the universe, and the process of dying.
You’ve been in the process of creating meaning out of meaninglessness all your life. You have arranged and rearranged the room always with the goal of its making sense. When “things seem out of place” and “processes go awry,” you invariably attempt to order both. Your entire existence is making meaning out of meaninglessness. That is a meaning of meaninglessness.
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