ONE PERSON'S EXPERIENCE OF A SOLUTION TO MEANINGLESSNESS
Article by LiveReal Agents Thomas, Mary, and Kevin
“Meaninglessness,” for some people, is a problem.
It’s a problem that likely haunts many more people than we often suspect.
It’s the dark underbelly of the “search for meaning,” or a direct side-effect of the soft nihilism that’s so popular these days. It’s what happens when we ask “What’s the point?” and don’t get a good answer, or ask “Where is this ship headed?” and realize it might not be heading anywhere. It’s just going.
Maybe it’s headed for a tropical island paradise.
Maybe it’s headed for a herd of icebergs.
Maybe it’s just driving around in circles.
Not knowing is a legitimate, objective problem.
But is there a solution?
Is there an antidote or genuine resolution to the problem of meaninglessness?
Modern life typically offers an array of pseudo-solutions.
There’s shopping, for example. Or doomscrolling. Or various pills, additions, social media, binge-watching television, “energy drinks,” unlimited hours of video games and movies, a battery of pleasant distractions and amusements, etc. These routes can sometimes offer temporary relief from certain symptoms. But even when they aren’t unwholesome, debilitating, impoverishing, predatory, or overall troublemaking themselves, they can still simply fail to solve the core problem.
The angst abides.
So, the question becomes this: is there any legitimate answer that genuinely and fully solves the problem?
Yes, it seems so.
Although the “answer” might not necessarily come as specific words.
A closer look can clarify.
Some causes of meaninglessness are practical.
Meaninglessness can be the concrete effect of a specific cause, and if you remove the cause, you can remove the effect.
Certain drugs, for example, can nudge individuals to stop caring about anything but the drug. To a heroin user, everything but heroin can seem meaningless. There are also many forms of “heroin” or “drugs” in the sense that we can become addicted to practically anything. To a real video game addict, anything that isn’t video games is meaningless.
Some drugs can also flatten or numb feelings overall. And without feelings, it can be easy to ask, “What’s the point?”
A sense of meaninglessness can also grow from loneliness, a lack of quality relationships, or alienation from other people – which seems to be, unfortunately, increasingly common today. (See the book Bowling Alone). Meaning, on the other hand, can often spring naturally from genuine relationships with other people. (See Groundhog Day.)
Meaninglessness can also be a function of “learned helplessness” – a form of depression that’s been conditioned into someone – or seeming trapped in a bad situation, such as feeling forced to work at a dry, hollow, apparently pointless job.
In cases like these, changing the job, or addiction, or relationships can lead to relief.
But some causes of meaninglessness go beyond this.
They come from a clear-eyed view of the human condition – from seeing, lucidly and objectively, that life is often hell – and from not being able to make sense of it or see much reason for it.
As Hamlet might ask, “to be, or not to be?” Coming up with a compelling reason “to be” instead of “not being” might not be easy.
That said, not being able to make sense of it doesn’t mean it’s objectively, factually meaningless.
It can be a matter of perspective.
A foreign language, advanced math, or an image that’s out of focus – all of these might appear utterly meaningless to us – but only until we learn how to make sense of it.
Once we learn the language, get the image in focus, or understand how the math works – suddenly, what was previously incoherent becomes clear and what was seemingly senseless becomes meaningful.
“The Trick” is to “make sense of it.”
“Making sense of it” can make a sense of meaninglessness suddenly vanish.
The objective reality of a situation doesn’t necessarily need to change. All that might really need to change is how we interpret and respond to it.
It’s one aspect of “existential fitness” or truly effective spirituality.
When it’s effective, this can translate into individuals having concrete and specific experiences – powerful and profound insights – that break the spell of meaninglessness.
Researcher Howard F. Dossor described one example of this.
In her biography of the English novelist J. B. Priestley, Judith Cook records a dream that had a profound impact upon Priestley and about which he spoke frequently during the course of his lifetime.
“I dreamt,” he says, “I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down on millions of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed and speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, and watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter, and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then in a flash, bled and shriveled. And death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us at all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being: and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering, hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except as this flame of life traveled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it: what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life.”
From The Existential Theology of Nikos Kazantzakis by Howard F. Dossor
We can unpack Priestley’s dream (or “vision,” or even “revelation”).
“I dreamt,” he says, “I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down on millions of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds.”
This is the starting point: we witness life in a simple, straightforward way. It’s a “noble sight,” a kind of peaceful Eden, before the trouble starts.
But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed and speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, and watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter, and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then in a flash, bled and shriveled. And death struck everywhere at every second.
This is where the trouble starts. It’s the inciting incident, the “call,” or just the basic perception of the problem. “…death struck everywhere at every second.”
It leads to a question - one that underlies and undercuts much of what we think, feel, and do. We’re born, we live, we die. But why?
What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart.
For a person who perceives this ongoing cycle of birth, life, and death taking place for no apparent purpose or reason, it can lead to a state of crisis.
Where is all of this leading? Does it really lead nowhere? Do each of us have a brief and “ignoble little history” – and that’s it?
Based on appearances, that seems to be the case.
If it really leads nowhere, doesn’t that make everything meaningless? Doesn’t that empty or hollow everything out? Doesn’t it mean there’s ultimately no point? Doesn’t it pull the rug out from under all of our other efforts and striving?
This is a state of something many of us have sensed, even as a faint flicker. There’s no common name for it, but it could be described as “acute angst,” “mental nausea,” “existential vertigo,” “metaphysical horror,” etc.
It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us at all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy.
This state is one of profound disorientation and misery. It’s a taste of nihilism, described and explored in some depth by Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Camus, Dante, Solomon, and others.
Remaining in this state means experiencing a pull toward nihilism as a worldview or life philosophy. It’s a practical impossibility in practical reality – like trying to build a headquarters inside a black hole – since actual nihilism as a worldview is incoherent and unlivable. But like black holes, they can still influence a lot of things that fall within range.
So, what’s the way out? Is a solution possible?
But now the gear was changed again and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers.
When we’re young, we often live immersed in the immediate moment. When we become able to get a wider view, where we look beyond that to the future, we see that what lies ahead for us, eventually, is our own death.
When we ask what happens beyond even that, we can see that it isn’t just us in this predicament. Everyone and everything we can see has the same fate.
But what happens when we look beyond even that?
But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being: and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering, hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except as this flame of life traveled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it: what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life.
The above is the heart of what Priestley experienced.
It amounts to what essentially appears to be a mystical vision – or, at the very least, a profound insight or aha experience.
For anyone reading the passage above, the words and phrases might make sense or offer insight.
Or, they might not.
Like any “mystical vision” or any profound spiritual experience – such as the revelation of Job, or Thomas Aquinas (“all I have written is like chaff to me,” according to a guy who wrote roughly 50 volumes) – the exact meaning of it can be difficult to communicate in words or even impossible to communicate precisely to another person.
(To be fair, even mundane experiences can be difficult to communicate. Poets have been trying to describe love, for example – something all of us are familiar with – for millennia. For most of us, it’s a challenge even clearly to describe a trip to Disneyland or a good meal.)
This is because the matter at hand isn’t mere information that can be simply transferred from one person to another. It isn’t mere data that can be simply copied from one person and pasted into another.
What’s being described here isn’t a mere pile of facts.
It’s more akin to a “living knowledge.”
It can be recognized, sensed, felt, intuited, or perhaps even understood – but it can’t be captured, bottled, or converted into mechanical formula. To some degree, people can either “get it,” “not get it,” or “partially get it.” But it’s not like a math or engineering problem with a visible, fully articulated, tangible solution. It deals with something fundamentally elusive on the verbal level. Whether it can be seen depends on who is trying to see it. Like the full meaning of a play or a deep appreciation of a painting or piece of music, one person might “get it” and be moved profoundly while another doesn’t.
With art, music, or poetry, first-person subjective interpretation is key. Some see the Mona Lisa or hear Bach or Beethoven and remain utterly bored or unmoved. There’s a sensitivity involved – an ability to see or hear that a mere object can’t overcome by itself. It isn’t that “it isn’t there” – it’s that not everyone sees it. Beauty depends on the beholder.
Like the proverbial “finger pointing at the moon,” the words are trying to point to something beyond themselves. The poet is trying to describe something that can’t easily be put into words – or possibly even something that’s impossible to put into words.
That “something” might be sensed or grasped by the reader, or not.
For example, “what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show.”
Those thirteen words describe a powerful sentiment: the idea that life’s tragedy – something we’ve all experienced or had a taste of – ultimately proves to be a kind of illusion – a “shadow show.”
This contradicts most of our lived experience. Yet this insight testifies to it.
According to that, the misery, suffering, and seemingly aimlessness of life seems to evaporate and vanish:
“…all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically…”
Again, the actual words above might make sense, or not.
The vision above depends on “this quivering, hurrying lambency of being” (“lambency” meaning like a “glow” or “subtle light” or “radiance”) or “…this flame of life…” “…the white flame of life…” – all of which might mean something to us, or not.
But whether those actual words make sense or not don’t seem to be the most important point.
Either way, the most critical element might be simply that Priestley found an answer, according to his own satisfaction.
And he didn’t just “find” an answer, but experienced it firsthand. If the problem of meaninglessness is a disease, he seemed to be “cured,” perhaps in a customized way that would only work for him.
For the rest of is, Priestley’s insight is secondhand.
We’re experiencing it vicariously.
The key that unlocked the door for him might not be the same key that unlocks ours.
But whether his specific medicine – his description of his answer – is useful or not is secondary.
For those of us who don’t understand or grasp the words he’s using to describe the “medicine” that “cured” him – we can still benefit from his experience. The critical element isn’t the description itself.
The key point is this being evidence that an answer exists.
If we’re bothered by the problem of meaninglessness, this can reassure us that a solution to this condition does exist.
Maybe it can’t be bottled, canned, shrink-wrapped, pre-packaged, streamed, binge-watched, or sold as a pill or as a monthly subscription service. It might boil down to advice as vague as “become a better mystic” or run a few experiments or become more contemplative in the direction of experiential spirituality.
We might not be able to say what it is very easily.
But we do know this: it isn’t just a herd of icebergs, or driving around in circles.
It isn’t nothing.
And it’s out there.
And that means that, quite possibly, we can find it for ourselves.