I have written elsewhere that the word meaningful describes two epistemological concepts. The first centers on a thought or action that might have universal or nearly universal truth, commonsense, or logical validity. Socrates’ syllogisms are examples: “All human beings are animals; Donald is a human being; therefore, Donald is an animal.” Just about everyone can find that syllogism meaningful. But it lacks what the second kind of meaningfulness has, and that is an emotional involvement. It’s just a set of statements. The second concept of meaningful lies in a holistic epistemology: What is personal is meaningful (and the corollary: What isn’t personal isn’t meaningful).
The second concept of meaningful (that suggests meaningfulness is dependent upon personal involvement) does not preclude the first concept. I might, for example, find meaning in a hobby on a very personal level, an obsession to collect some similar gizmos. I might find meaning in a personal addiction. On the one hand, to another person my finding meaning in something might be intellectually understandable, but not personally meaningful. “Oh! Yeah. Collecting those. Interesting at best, but it’s not for me.” Or, “I can see the need for rehabilitation centers because addictions can destroy lives.” Both responses represent a cool and detached understanding without any emotional involvement. If, on the other hand, someone says, “Charles, you’re spending all our savings on your car collection. You’re ruining us financially” or “Charles, if you don’t get help, I’m leaving you,” The other person has incorporated the addictions into her own life, making them more than just a syllogistic and logical game, such as “Addictions ruin relationships; Charles has an addiction; Charles’ addiction is ruining a relationship.” No, in the second concept, Charles is ruining their relationship.
Whatever is personal is meaningful.
We see the first concept in responses to the travails of others: Recovering from disease, famine, poverty, war. In some ways, under the first concept of meaningful, the detached version, we don’t differ from ants in the colony. When one ant doesn’t return to the colony after a day’s foraging, who notices? The colony goes on; each ant has a job to do. There’s no “Where’s John? Has anybody seen John? He left this morning to find a dead bug to drag back here. I hope he’s all right.” No, there’s none of that. The ant colony continues. Think of the past century or so in the United States. Men and women have gone off to fight in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and all the while back home the other “ants” went about the business of the hive, making or attending movies, for example, or moving into a new house, traveling on vacation, or playing golf.
Probably nowhere in literature has the first concept been better described than in W. H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts.” He begins by saying that suffering
…takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along…
And he ends with the a description of Brueughel’s Icarus, the painting in which the artist portrays the fall of Icarus into the sea. A farmer, a ploughman, in the foreground of the painting hears the Icarus’ “forsaken cry” but…
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out off the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
So, on this late February day in 2022, as Russian tanks, planes, and artillery take Ukrainian lives and territory, each of us might ask about our own concept of meaningful.
The second concept of meaningful (that suggests meaningfulness is dependent upon personal involvement) does not preclude the first concept. I might, for example, find meaning in a hobby on a very personal level, an obsession to collect some similar gizmos. I might find meaning in a personal addiction. On the one hand, to another person my finding meaning in something might be intellectually understandable, but not personally meaningful. “Oh! Yeah. Collecting those. Interesting at best, but it’s not for me.” Or, “I can see the need for rehabilitation centers because addictions can destroy lives.” Both responses represent a cool and detached understanding without any emotional involvement. If, on the other hand, someone says, “Charles, you’re spending all our savings on your car collection. You’re ruining us financially” or “Charles, if you don’t get help, I’m leaving you,” The other person has incorporated the addictions into her own life, making them more than just a syllogistic and logical game, such as “Addictions ruin relationships; Charles has an addiction; Charles’ addiction is ruining a relationship.” No, in the second concept, Charles is ruining their relationship.
Whatever is personal is meaningful.
We see the first concept in responses to the travails of others: Recovering from disease, famine, poverty, war. In some ways, under the first concept of meaningful, the detached version, we don’t differ from ants in the colony. When one ant doesn’t return to the colony after a day’s foraging, who notices? The colony goes on; each ant has a job to do. There’s no “Where’s John? Has anybody seen John? He left this morning to find a dead bug to drag back here. I hope he’s all right.” No, there’s none of that. The ant colony continues. Think of the past century or so in the United States. Men and women have gone off to fight in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and all the while back home the other “ants” went about the business of the hive, making or attending movies, for example, or moving into a new house, traveling on vacation, or playing golf.
Probably nowhere in literature has the first concept been better described than in W. H. Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts.” He begins by saying that suffering
…takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along…
And he ends with the a description of Brueughel’s Icarus, the painting in which the artist portrays the fall of Icarus into the sea. A farmer, a ploughman, in the foreground of the painting hears the Icarus’ “forsaken cry” but…
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out off the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
So, on this late February day in 2022, as Russian tanks, planes, and artillery take Ukrainian lives and territory, each of us might ask about our own concept of meaningful.
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