Notes Meanings of Life

Category: Books

Ontology:

Who Says Live Has No Meaning?
1. Creating Your Own Meaning
2. Who Says Life Does Have Meaning?
3. Individuals and Society
4. Plan of the Book
5. Conclusion and Summary
Coming to Terms with Meaning
1. What is Reality
2. Life
3. Meaning
  1. Functions of Meaning
  2. Networks and Contexts
  3. Levels of Meaning
  4. Standards
  5. Interpretation
  6. Social Systems and Meaning
  7. Where do Meanings Reside?
4. Conclusion and Summary
The Four Needs for Meaning: An Existential Shopping List
1. The Concept of Need
2. Four Needs for Meaning
  1. Purpose
  2. Value (Justification)
    1. Origins of Morals and Values
    2. Justification and Value Basis
  3. Efficacy
  4. Self-Worth
3. On Unsatisfied Needs
  1. Loss of Purpose
  2. Lack of Value and Justification
  3. Loss of Efficacy
  4. Lack of Self-Worth
4. Conclusion and Summary
The Myth of Higher Meaning
1. The Expectation of Meaningfulness
2. Completeness: There Must Be an Answer
3. The Faith in Consistency
4. False Permanence: The Myth of Forever
5. The Myth of Fulfillment
6. Summary and Conclusion
Self-Identity and the Value Gap
1. The Modern Outlook on Life’s Meanings
2. The Value Gap
  1. The Decline of Religion
  2. The Weakening of Morality
  3. Tradition
  4. Conclusion: The Shortage of Values
3. Constructing the Modern Self
  1. Defining the Self
  2. Self, Emotional Bonds, and Value
  3. Complicating the Self
4. The Rise of the Self
  1. The Rational, Economic Individual
  2. Political Individualism
  3. Social Developments
  4. Summary
5. Selfhood as Value Base
6. Self as Fulfillment
  1. Self-Actualization
  2. Self-Esteem
7. Self and Morality: Together at Last
8. Conclusion and Summary
Work, Work, Work, Work
1. Why Must we Work?
2. The Social Problem of Work
3. Three Meanings of Work
  1. Work as Job
  2. Work as Career
  3. Work as Calling
  4. Summary
4. Rise and Fall of the Work Ethic
  1. Concluding Summary
5. Meanings of Success
  1. Conclusion
6. Summary and Conclusion: Work in Modern Life
Passionate Love, Domestic Bliss
1. Meanings of Love
2. Sex as Social Problem
3. The Sacred Family
  1. Domestic Bliss as Fulfillment
  2. The Family as Value Base
4. The Parenthood Paradox
5. Love, Family, and the Self
  1. Gender Differences in Family and Self-Worth
  2. Selfhood, Love, and Family in Conflict
6. On Successful and Unsuccessful Illusions
7. Conclusion and Summary
Religion
1. Believing and Belonging
  1. The Need to Believe
  2. The Need to Belong
2. The Social Problem of Religion
3. The Invention of Life’s Purpose
  1. Dawn of the Salvation Systems
  2. Life as Misery
  3. Suffering Today
  4. Conclusion
4. The Ultimate Value Base
  1. Religion and Selfhood
  2. Conclusion
5. The Temptations of Efficacy
6. Self-Worth
7. Conclusion and Summary
Happiness
1. Happiness: Inside and Outside
2. Needs for Meaning
3. The Problem of Receding Standards: The Hedonic Treadmill
4. Shortfall and Illusion: Reality May Be Hazardous to Your Health
5. Stability of Happiness
6. Summary and Conclusion: Can Happiness be Changed?
Suffering and Unhappiness
Meanings, Contexts, and Suffering
Suffering
1. Pain
2. Misfortune and Distress
3. Search or Denial
4. Conclusion: The Meaning Vacuum
Coping and Illusion
1. Purpose
2. Value and Justification
3. Efficacy
4. Self-Worth
Does Loss of Meaning Always Hurt?
Conclusion and Summary: The Structure of Suffering and Coping
Meanings of Death
The Social Problem of Death
The Personal Problem of Death
Immortality and Afterlife
Death and Meaning
1. Imposing Meaning on Death
2. Good and Bad Deaths
Conclusion and Summary
Life Change: Adding and Subtracting Meanings
Maintaining Commitment, Avoiding Dissonance
The Crystallization of Discontent
The Focal Incident
Rewriting the Story
The Meaning Vacuum
Self-Worth
Filling the Vacuum
Continuity
Conclusion and Summary
Why Women Once Disliked Sex
Did They, Really?
1. Beliefs about Female Sexuality
2. Women’s Sexual Behavior
3. Psychology of Passionlessness
Brief History of Women
1. Women’s Status
2. Work
3. Sex
4. Summary: The Victorian Woman’s Inheritance
Analysis of the Change
1. Other Factors
Conclusion and Summary
Epilogue
Why do People Crave Meaning?
How Meaning Operates
The Mutual Bluff
The Value Gap and the Glorification of Selfhood
When Will the Definitive Answer Be Known?
The Work Ethic
The Eroding Disdain for Work
1. Protestants, Puritans, and Inner Virtue
The Emergence of the Work Ethic
1. Contradictions in the Work Ethic
2. Self-Fulfillment vs. Self-Denial
3. Duty vs. Success
4. Individualism vs. Collectivism
5. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Decline of the Work Ethic
1. Work Became Boring
2. Dead End Jobs
3. Bureaucratic Life
4. Leisure and Consumption
5. Overjustification
Summary and Conclusion
The Parenthood Paradox
The Evidence
Effects of Culture
Other Causes and Factors
1. Effort Justification
2. Self-Deception
3. Social Bonds
4. Affect Balance
5. Conclusion

Who Says Life Has No Meaning?

Thesis:

Existentialist position was not that life has no meaning, but that there is no ultimate, externally determined meaning. Other approaches to the concept of meaning. Monty Python skits. A useless philosophical exercise. In practice, this text is about what social scientists have learned about happiness, and suffering, love and work, religion and death, and so on.

There’s an ambiguity in the definition of existentialist. It could mean ‘having to do with existence’, but in practice it’s about a more practical approach to meaning.

Creating your own meaning: Meaning as acquired socially, from other people and culture at large. “At most, the person chooses among meanings offered by culture and society.” Whoa! What a deeply unfree and aggressive statement. Insufficiently Nietzcheian. Spoken like a true social scientist.

I appreciate that they look for data (say, about love, work, religion, suicide, etc.) to validate their ideas. It reviews facts rather than theories. Ignores the ‘wisdom’ of William James or Sigmund Freud.

Pay attention to Chapters Three and Four - definitions of the needs for meaning.

Takeaway:

Happiness
Suffering
Love
Work
Religion
Death

Sub-chapters:

Creating Your Own Meaning
Who Says Life Does Have Meaning?
Individuals and Society
Plan of the Book
Conclusion and Summary

Coming to Terms with Meaning

Separating reality into nature and culture. Physical matter and meaning. Wow. what a disgusting conceptual scheme. So filled with conflation.

Meaning’s functions as being 1. Discerning patterns in the environment and 2. To control ones-self, regulating one’s internal states.

This is close to the distinction that needs to be made throughout between meaningful information and the experience of something being meaningful.

I bet the reason philosophers don’t touch this anymore is that they see the ambiguity and dirtiness of the concept and refuse to reason with it.

So many references to philosophers and writers - Sarte, Heiddeger. Though I guess I’m ignoring the social scientists. (Clebsch, McLoughlin)

The Four Needs for Meaning: An Existential Shopping List The Myth of Higher Meaning

I’m really happy that there’s coverage of this felt need for meaning. I’d love to spend more time with it, it’s incredibly important.

Self-Identity and the Value Gap

I guess I did write down ‘my values’, not ‘our values’, and an important part of my values was not being subsumed by the collective. Mimetic resistance and individualism were central. I rejected religion, somewhat explicitly, on that basis. You might see religion as a mechanism for replacing your own value system with a collective value system. And this identitiless omega alpha is an attempt to paradoxically replace someone’s value system with a value system of (in part) being against replacement.

Work, Work, Work, Work Work offers efficacy (control, power, status) to the worker. It’s an effective way to satisfy that need. - I need to run this! It’s incredibly important. When I describe anti-work, it’s from the frame that work is an instrumental path to money. And while I know it’s also about social position, I didn’t have this argument from efficacy.

Passionate Love, Domestic Bliss

Sternberg three-part model for love, empirically grounded.

“Women, in particular, would turn to extramarital affairs when their home life was oppressive or denied them opportunities for self-expression.”

Religion Happiness Suffering and Unhappiness Meanings of Death Life Change: Adding and Subtracting Meanings Why Women Once Disliked Sex

Epilogue In ‘Why do people crave meaning?’ Roy literally moves through all three definitions of meaning in an incredibly ambiguous and all encompassing section. He describes the need for simulation and the impulse to talk, label, analyze, describe in his opening, focusing on semantic meaning. Then he describes the need for suffering to mean something, in the ‘what are the consequences’ notion of meaning. He hasn’t gotten to ‘the sermon was deeply meaningful’ felt meaning as yet, but thus far I’m desperate for conceptual clarity.

The Work Ethic The Parenthood Paradox

Source: Original Google Doc