This is a story about the power of meaning. Life is a spiritual journey, and it has continuity. It is but one stage in our travels from unity to multiplicity and back, from that which is whole to that which fragments. We lose our way before we rediscover how to get back home. Life is replete with meaning which would give us purpose. Meaning and purpose are all around us, if only we could see them.
It is of utmost importance to each one of us for our experience of life to have meaning as it makes our life more social, fulfilling, interesting, and satisfying, with many instances of celebration and happiness. Meaning also carries us during the hard times, it gives us strength to take on the responsibilities that are ours to bear in the service to others. Meaning has power.
A life without meaning is a lonely, empty, narcissistic experience with many instances of depression and dark mental states.
In our search for meaning, it is useful not to look at this one particular life in isolation. We should look at life as coming from somewhere and going to somewhere else.
This is a valid hypothesis as it reflects the actual experience we have day to day, month to month and year to year. The story of our life stretches into the mists of past and future time. Our being before we were born, as well as our being after we pass on, is all part of our story.
It is not possible to find meaning in one chapter of a story. We need to read the whole book. Meaning and purpose arise from the transcendental parts of our story, not from the physical realm of this life. They are intangibles and not less critical for being so.
Purpose underpins life on earth. As a species, humanity has its collective meaning, that we all share, that is made up of the stories of all humans that have ever been, are now and ever shall be.
This is the landscape of meaning within which we find the confines of our own personal meaning. We know what we know, and therefore also our meanings, from our cognitions. Cognitions are the mental process of knowing, reasoning and judgment as well as the awareness and perceptions that come from being. Cognition is that which comes to be known through personal views or experiences and through intuition.
As we are social beings, we gather in communities for survival, which is inevitable. This consistently and persistently causes us to interact with others. As a result, we rely more and more on information provided by others rather than from our own perceptions. Information sources have tended to centralise. Monopoly on information translates into power and herein lies the conundrum.
People in our western culture are prone to chronic narcissism, now verging on the pathological. In such a culture, we would be naïve and wrong to assume that information coming from others generally, or from higher national or international corporate interests or authorities, to be well-intentioned. Our western culture loves to virtue signal on the one hand, and on the other hand, to reward falsehoods and deceit.
It is interesting to note that we have found it necessary to add a number of terms to our vernacular with regards to information. Misinformation is sharing something one believes to be true but that is thought by others to be false. Disinformation is when people create false or misleading information to deceive others. Mal-information involves sharing true information which, however, is considered by some to be inconvenient. The information peddlers are having a field day.
There is a growing body of evidence to show that life has evolved, or been created, to have meaning and purpose- David Marinelli
When we believe the lies, live the lies and act on the basis of falsehoods, all may seem well for a while.
However, at some point, unless we have been irreversibly brainwashed, our own perceptions will reveal the truth to us, as there is a crack in every untruth. In the field of psychology, it is explained that when truth finally surfaces, people then feel a mental disturbance that is called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance arises when a person realises that their cognitions are inconsistent with, or even contradictory to, their actions and views.
Now, human society has, over millennia, so abused truth and made untruths so commonplace, that our view of the world today is dramatically divorced from reality.
In such a world view, all meaning is lost and no meaning can be found.
In order to find meaning, one has to go higher. It is easier to see the meaning and purpose of a river or a valley woodland if one is standing on the hillside, rather than on the riverbank or in the midst of trees. Meaning is not to be found in the place where its absence is felt.
There is a growing body of evidence to show that life has evolved, or been created, to have meaning and purpose. This intended significance is therefore transcendental.
Rather than transcendental, one may prefer to call it spiritual or religious. What we call it matters little. Also, any perceived difference between ‘evolution’ and ‘creation’ is purely academic.
What matters is that, ultimately, meaning, and therefore purpose, cannot be found in that which has been created or in that which we think we have created. We must go higher, broader, to that which precedes, underlies and sustains the physical world.
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