5 Searching for Meaning
5
Searching for Meaning:
Why We Need More Than Just Facts
‘We cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce – we are meaning-seeking creatures.’1
Jeanette Winterson
We are indeed meaning-seeking creatures. Modern psychology points to there being a universal human sense of a need for meaning.2 Not everyone shares this experience, and not everyone who experiences this need goes on to reflect on its implications. But for most people, it’s there, and it’s important. This often takes the form of a longing for a sense of personal coherence.3 We want to understand our experience and to feel that our lives have significance and purpose.4 Psychology can’t tell us what life means; after all, that’s not an empirical question. It does, however, make it clear how enormously important this notion is for human beings, and the difference that it makes to human flourishing and wellbeing. Meaning in life could be defined as: ‘the extent to which people comprehend, make sense of, or see significance in their lives, accompanied by the degree to which they perceive themselves to have a purpose, mission, or overarching aim in life’.5
Where professional philosophers have virtually given up talking about the subject of meaning, psychologists have moved in to map this fundamental human concern, helping us to understand some of its core facets, and the difference it makes to life. We need to feel that we can make a difference to things, and to take control of our lives; we need a sense of identity and purpose if we are to cope with traumatic experiences in life and our awareness of our own mortality.6 Basically, human beings actively seek for systems of meaning which embrace an understanding of the world, our personal significance, and our capacity to transcend our limits and locations, as we sense we are part of something bigger and greater.
Research on meaning suggests that it is helpful to draw a distinction between ‘global’ and ‘situational’ meaning.7 Global meaning systems weave together beliefs, goals and subjective feelings of meaning or purpose in life to give a ‘big picture’ of reality. Yet we use this overarching global framework of beliefs, goals and sense of purpose to structure our lives and to assign meanings to specific experiences – in other words, to determine situational meaning. The ‘big picture’ thus frames our experiences, and helps us work out what they mean.8
Our theme in this chapter is the importance of meaning for human flourishing. We may not understand why, but it is natural for us to believe there is some meaning to be found, and to try and find it. At one level, we are looking for a ‘global’ way of thinking – a ‘big picture’ which interprets and illuminates our world and our experience. Yet this ‘big picture’ needs to be applied locally – to situations that we need to understand, to problems that we need to solve and to challenges we need to face. This ‘situational’ aspect of meaning is best seen in the realm of attitudes, values and behaviour, where our beliefs about the nature of things find their expression in what we actually do.
Although some ‘big picture’ philosophical systems such as Marxism do indeed engage with these questions,9 it is widely agreed that religion is one of the most common and powerful sources of meaning. Religion can provide us with a comprehensive and integrated framework of meaning that helps to explain many events, experiences and situations in ways that satisfy both our cognitive and existential concerns, while providing a way of helping us to transcend our own concerns or experiences, and connect up with something greater.
While religion has many aspects, one of its most important is its capacity to provide a comprehensive framework of interpretation of experience and life that allows the discernment of meaning.10 Religion is able to embrace and inform a vast scope of issues, including beliefs about the world (such as human nature, our social and natural environment, and the afterlife), contingencies and expectations (rewards for acting well and punishment for doing evil), goals (such as benevolence and altruism), actions and attitudes (such as compassion, charity and violence) and emotions (such as love, joy and peace).11 These provide a sense of significance, particularly in enabling individuals to feel part of a greater scheme of things. The term ‘big picture’ is particularly helpful in conveying this idea of a perception of coherence within a complex world of experience, and helping individuals to relate their own situation to a greater reality.12
We need more than science can provide for us if we are to lead meaningful lives. Ludwig Wittgenstein was clear on this point. ‘We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.’13 Science can only offer limited guidance as we reflect on the issues of meaning and value. In his critique of the growing trend in German academic circles towards scientific rationalism, the sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) pointed out that it was difficult to see how the natural sciences could teach us anything important about the meaning of the world that they investigated.
So how do we deal with the complexity of our world? One of the greatest temptations is to reduce it to something neat, tidy, and above all manageable. One of the most striking weaknesses of the eighteenth-century ‘Age of Reason’ was its failure to respect the complexity and fuzziness of our world. Its ‘obsession with reducing the muddy and mixed to the clear and distinct’14 led to it demanding all-embracing accounts of reality which were totally comprehensive and unambiguous. Yet our multi-coloured and richly textured world of experience and observation simply could not be reduced to these categories without simplification and distortion.
A good example of something that simply cannot be reduced to ‘clear and distinct ideas’ is the beauty of natural landscapes. On closer inspection, natural beauty often seems to co-exist with ugliness – for example, an attractive forest scene which seems spoiled by the presence of the rotting carcass of an animal.15 The natural world is ambivalent, studded with beauty at some points, and suffering and decay at others. We cannot express this in ‘clear and distinct ideas’ without failing to do justice to the complexity of things.
For the English poet Thomas Traherne (1636–74), the human eye all too often fails to penetrate the depths of nature. It skims the surface of reality, failing to penetrate deeper, lacking commitment and discernment.16 ‘The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it.’17 To discern this beauty requires the development of a particular way of seeing things – a heightened perceptiveness and disciplined alertness, which needs to be developed through both the mind and the imagination.
There are two difficulties here. First, there are limits to the human capacity to make sense of our world. We don’t have the mental capacity to grasp things fully and properly, and have to make do with the best that we can. If things seem blurred, it’s because there are limits to our vision. The New Testament makes extensive use of images suggesting that fallen humanity has a defective vision, which calls out to be healed by divine grace. Paul, for example, speaks of our vision being obscured by a veil, which needs to be removed if we are to see properly (2 Corinthians 3:13–17). At times, Paul’s imagery shifts, suggesting that our failure to see things clearly is a consequence of our creaturely status, not merely our sinfulness – for example, his famous remark about now seeing things dimly, as if through a mirror (1 Corinthians 13:12), in the hope that we will eventually see them fully.
The second difficulty is that some may be looking at the world through the wrong lens. A ‘theory’ is first and foremost a way of looking at the world. Things which actually are clear and interconnected may appear to be out of focus and incoherent because we are using an instrument of vision which is defective, and prevents us from seeing things properly. Moments of scientific breakthrough often involve a connection being established between observations that seemed to be totally disconnected. For example, Isaac Newton showed that the orbits of the planets around the sun and the path of objects falling to earth – such as his famous apple – were fundamentally interconnected, and governed by the same laws.18
A perception of incoherence or meaninglessness within the world can easily arise from the imaginative failure of an inadequate theory, rather than from the universe that is being observed. Richard Dawkins’ statement that ‘the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference’19 is simply his way of looking at things, using his ‘New Atheist’ instrument of vision. But what if his theoretical lens is out of focus, preventing him from discerning anything other than an inferred blind cosmic indifference?
Science and Meaning
What is the meaning of life? As we have seen, this is a very natural human question. Science can certainly help us to clarify what sorts of things people find to be meaningful. But that’s not the same as telling us what the meaning of life is. In the end, that’s just not a scientific question. It is one of those many great questions which transcend science’s capacity to answer. Karl Popper, the noted philosopher of science, referred to these as ‘ultimate questions’ which related to the great ‘riddles of existence’.20 These questions really matter to most people. What is the point of life? What is the good life, and how do I lead it?
We’ve already seen how many professional philosophers tend to see these questions as meaningless or incoherent. For the professionals, these are the sort of questions asked by philosophically unsophisticated people. Now, there may be some truth in this. But there is a still greater truth here, which is that these questions matter to most people, even if they have difficulty in articulating them in terms that command respect within the philosophical guild.
Some do believe that science is able to answer these questions – even if the answers are somewhat bleak and challenging. The atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg takes the view that science is ‘our exclusive guide to reality’.21 It is a difficult position to maintain, as Rosenberg himself admits, as arguments in its support tend to be ‘viciously circular’.22 To defend its approach, you have to presuppose the accuracy of its core beliefs. (The same problem arises with rationalism, which is obliged to assume the validity of reason in order to demonstrate its unique competence.) Yet for any research method to be validated properly, we need an extra-systemic vantage point from which it can be judged. However, if there is a vantage point beyond science by which it may be judged, then the exclusive authority of science is clearly called into question, in that its authority ultimately rests on something else – something that lies beyond science. Scientism itself cannot be judged or justified without appealing to, or presupposing, matters that transcend scientific inquiry. Curiously, scientism, rationalism and religious belief all find themselves depending on ideas whose validity cannot be absolutely demonstrated – yet which are still believed to be reasonable by those who embrace them.
Rosenberg argues that science alone is able to provide clear and compelling answers to questions that were traditionally seen as ethical, religious or philosophical. For Rosenberg, these are fundamentally scientific questions, and thus can only be answered by science. Rosenberg helpfully provides some examples of questions that are easily answered in this manner, along with his clear answers, to show off the elegant simplicity of his approach.
Is there a God? No.
What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.
What is the meaning of life? Ditto.
What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.
Science here debunks the pretensions and mystifications of theology and philosophy. Yet on closer examination, this approach is not about science, but about the application of a specific philosophical interpretation of science which goes way beyond anything that the scientific evidence demands. It smuggles in all kinds of metaphysical assumptions that may seem self-evident to those who think like this, but which are not demanded or warranted by the evidence. We see here not a loyalty to science or evidence, but to conclusions that are prior to that evidence, and used to control and constrain that evidence. Many scientists will squirm with intellectual discomfort and irritation at this obvious philosophical hijacking of science.
Many, however, will feel that the conclusions reached call into question the methods used to derive them. Is there really ‘no moral difference’ between right and wrong? Between good and evil? These simplistic statements seem shallow and empty as we contemplate ‘horrendous evils’ – such as Nazi extermination camps, torture chambers, and the mass graves of women and children massacred for belonging to the wrong tribe. Rosenberg’s approach deprives us of a vital element of the moral framework that we need to challenge evil – to name it for what it really is.
If Rosenberg is right, it is meaningless to speak of an action or attitude as being ‘evil’. For Rosenberg, science cannot tell us what is good or evil. This view is widely held among moral philosophers, who rightly note that there cannot be a deductively valid argument whose premises take the form of factual or scientific statements, and whose conclusion contains a moral statement.23 Rosenberg goes further, and suggests that, for such reasons, good and evil are essentially meaningless terms. So if we end up inventing our ideas of good and evil, why not do the same with our ideas of meaning? We’ll come back to this important question later (73–90), as we consider whether the ‘meaning of life’ is something discerned or invented.
Why Facts Aren’t Enough
‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts!’ It’s a great strapline. But what sort of life can be based solely on mastering facts? One of the more memorable characters created by Charles Dickens was Mr Gradgrind, a dour schoolteacher in Hard Times (1854). His educational philosophy was simple. ‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.’24 For Gradgrind, human emotion and imagination were useless distractions to the business of number crunching. Facts alone gave rise to intellectual certainty. Yet if we were mad enough to follow Gradgrind’s philosophy, we would simply end up being deluged with information, while failing to find wisdom.
Facts just aren’t enough. They are the raw material of knowledge, but they need to be interpreted and understood. Even science is about more that the collection of factual observations. The great Renaissance philosopher of science Francis Bacon made this point back in 1620. Some thinkers, he suggested, were like ants – they just accumulated things. Others, however, were like bees, who gathered material from the ‘flowers of the garden and of the field’, but transformed it into honey. Bacon’s point was simple: science is about understanding the significance of facts, and trying to discern the bigger picture which lies behind them. It is about the development of theories – ways of seeing reality which make sense of our factual observations, while going beyond them.
A good example of this concerns the movement of the planets against the fixed stars. What is the best explanation of these movements? The traditional explanation was that the sun, moon and all the planets revolved around the earth. This ‘big picture’ was not itself an observation, but was rather an interpretation of observations. Yet as these observations became more accurate, doubts began to arise about its reliability. Might these observations of planetary movements be accounted for more effectively if it was proposed that the earth, along with other planets, revolved around the sun? By the middle of the seventeenth century, this heliocentric way of picturing things had gained the ascendancy.
Each scientific observation of the position of a planet against the fixed stars was a fact – important in itself, yet failing to extend the reach of our knowledge. The key question was this: was there a ‘big picture’ which accounted for these facts, yet extended our knowledge by going beyond a mere accumulation of information? If each observation was a thread, could these be woven into a fabric of meaning? Mr Gradgrind was only concerned with facts; he does not seem to have grasped that what we really need lies beyond them – even if it includes them. Gradgrind’s joyless rational world consists of cold facts which marginalise – if not totally exclude – the imagination and emotions.
Dickens deftly brings out the utter lifelessness of this factual world through the lens of Gradgrind’s daughter, Louisa. She is portrayed as having a ‘starved imagination’,25 inclined to view everything from the standpoint of ‘reason and calculation’.26 Yet her impressive accumulation of facts and figures does not equip her to live out a joyful life. She needs something deeper to bring stability and joy to her life. Having been indoctrinated into her father’s creed of the all-sufficiency of cold, hard facts, Louisa finds herself trapped in a loveless world, unable to find happiness and security.
So let’s be clear: facts matter. They are the building blocks of the ‘big pictures’ which give life meaning, purpose and joy. Yet what really matters in life is not a wearisome accumulation of facts, but the discovery of the greater reality that lies behind them. Ludwig Wittgenstein realised this in 1916, when he penned these words: ‘To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.’27
Human beings need more than facts; they seek meaning. And very often they express this meaning using stories.
Telling Stories of Meaning
One of the most effective ways in which human beings preserve and transmit insights about meaning is by telling stories. These appeal to our imaginations, while at the same time pass on information about the past and its importance for our present. Telling stories allows narration to be supplemented with interpretation. This is what happened – and this is what it means. Not surprisingly, this important aspect of human life has been noticed and explored by cultural anthropologists (24–25), who have highlighted the importance of this apparently universal human tendency to tell stories. ‘[We] are animals who must fundamentally understand what reality is, who we are, and how we ought to live by locating ourselves within the larger narratives and metanarratives that we hear and tell, and that constitute what is for us real and significant.’28
We tell stories to make sense of our individual and corporate experience – whether this ‘sense-making’ is stated in political, religious or more general terms – and to transmit these ideas within a culture.29 Stories provide a natural way of organising, recalling and interpreting experience, allowing the wisdom of the past to be passed on to the future, and helping communities to gain a subjective sense of social or religious identity and historical location.30 They can consolidate the identity of a community, just as they can help rebel poets and artists create their own micronarrative of the world through rejecting the metanarratives of their age.
But why do we tell stories in this way? Why are we storytelling and meaning-seeking animals?31 If storytelling is a fundamental human instinct, what story can be told to explain this? Is there a framework of interpretation that helps us to make sense of it? Carl Jung famously suggested that there were certain ‘universal psychic structures’ which underlie human experience and behaviour – an idea taken up in Joseph Henderson’s famous account of the fundamental plotlines of stories, such as the ‘myth of the hero’.32 Tolkien, however, saw the human instinct to tell stories of meaning as grounded in a Christian doctrine of creation, and offered a theological explanation for our love of narration.
Tolkien argues that our capacity to create stories such as the great fantasy epic of The Lord of the Rings is the result of being created in the ‘image of God’.33 ‘Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.’34 Tolkien is often described as developing a ‘theology of sub-creation’, in that he holds that human beings create stories which are ultimately patterned on the ‘Grand Story’ of God. We unconsciously tell stories which are patterned along the lines of this great story of creation and redemption, and which reflect our true destiny as lying with God. For Tolkien, one of the great strengths of the Christian narrative was its ability to explain why human beings tell stories of meaning in the first place.
Story, Meaning and Literature
It is only to be expected that many in the world of literature both celebrate the importance of stories and reflect on their deeper significance. J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary work in the field of Nordic culture and literature persuaded him of the importance of what he termed ‘myths’. While most people understand ‘myth’ as ‘a false story’ or an ‘outdated account of something’, Tolkien used the word in a more specialised sense. For him, it referred to a narrated account of reality, which appeals primarily to the imagination and secondarily to the reason. A myth is a story that conveys meaning, capturing our imaginations and informing our reason. Tolkien himself put this idea to good use in his celebrated Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tolkien knew there was another respect in which the Christian narrative helped to make sense of the world: its capacity to explore the relation of other faiths and worldviews to Christianity. Tolkien himself was particularly interested in how the great Nordic pagan myths related to the gospel. He argued that the Christian ‘Grand Story’ was able to show how pagan myths arose in response to a deeper truth, yet represented inadequate and imperfect realisations of that truth. Human ‘myths’ allow a glimpse of a fragment of that truth, not its totality. They are like splintered fragments of the true light. Yet when the full and true story is told, it is able to bring to fulfilment all that was right and wise in those fragmentary visions of things.
For Tolkien, the Christian ‘myth’ created intellectual and imaginative space for other stories. By offering what Tolkien termed ‘a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world’, pagan myths could create both an appetite and an opening for the discovery of the deeper truth that underlies all truth, however fragmentary and veiled.35 Christianity, rather than being one myth alongside many others, is thus to be seen as representing the fulfilment of all myths – the ‘true myth’ towards which all other myths merely point; Christianity tells a true story about humanity, which makes sense of all the stories that humanity tells about itself. Some readers will not be persuaded by Tolkien’s ideas, feeling that they are perhaps too optimistic about what can be glimpsed of God from the human side of things. Yet for Tolkien, a love of pagan myth could become a gateway for the discovery of Christianity.
The religious importance of such narratives can be seen from what is perhaps one of the best-known biblical stories, which tells how the people of Israel were delivered from their harsh bondage under Pharaoh in Egypt, and led through the wilderness of Sinai into the ‘Promised Land’ of Canaan. The Passover celebration recalled the events of Exodus and their significance, thus becoming a focus for Israel’s memory of its past, and its hopes for its future. When future generations asked why the Passover was being celebrated, they would be told about the deeper meaning of the event (Exodus 12:26–7). The festival of Passover was to be a permanent memorial of the mighty acts of God, which led to Israel being liberated from bondage in Egypt: ‘Remember this day on which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, because the Lord brought you out from there by strength of hand’ (Exodus 13:3). Once Israel had settled in the Promised Land, she was to continue the Passover ceremony as a way of remembering this act of divine deliverance.
Yet as the people of Israel wandered through the wilderness, they did more than remember the past; they looked forwards to the future. They looked backwards to the past, and recalled their period of captivity in Israel, and their liberation through Moses. Yet they also looked forwards to the final entry into the Promised Land, the eagerly awaited goal of their long journey. The uncertainties and difficulties of the present were thus sustained by the memory of past events and the hope of future events.
How We Fit Into Grand Narratives
I have already used the language of a ‘big picture’ in setting out the idea that there are certain frameworks of meaning – such as those offered by Marxism and Christianity – that provide an interpretation of the world and the place of human beings in it. Yet this is easily transposed into the idea of a ‘grand narrative’ – a story which has the imaginative power to change the way in which we see the world and ourselves. The term ‘metanarrative’ is often used to refer to such stories. Postmodern writers have been severely critical of these ‘metanarratives’, seeing them as authoritarian and normative. Yet ironically, they have simply created an alternative metanarrative, rather than abolishing the category altogether.
So how might we relate to these grand stories, such as those told by Marxism or Christianity? In both cases, the answer lies in our understanding of the narrative being supplemented by our participation within the narrative. Marx, for example, developed a narrative which affirmed the historical inevitability of socialism. He then invited his followers to become part of this narrative, and thus shorten the birth pangs of this process. They could work to hasten the coming of the revolution. Marx believed that what was historically inevitable could thus happen more quickly, as believers participated in – and thus accelerated the pace of – this grand narrative.
In the case of the Christian narrative, faith can be understood as a decision to become involved within this story. It is seen not simply as a means of making sense of the world, but as a way of becoming involved in the world. The New Testament uses a number of images to unfold the idea of individuals redirecting their personal stories, as they become part of something bigger and better. Paul’s image of the crucifixion of the ‘old Adam’ is a good example. For Paul, Christians have been ‘crucified with Christ’, so that they now live ‘by faith in the Son of God’ (Galatians 2:20). Faith involves putting to death the old self, and rising to a new life. We do not lose our individuality; rather, we become new individuals. Our story is taken up within a greater story.
C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia can be seen as an imaginative retelling of the Christian ‘big story’ or ‘grand narrative’ of creation, fall, redemption and final consummation. One of the points Lewis makes in these works is that the stories of individual participants – such as Lucy Pevensie – are transformed, without losing their individuality, by becoming part of this bigger story. There is a sense in which faith is about embracing such a grand narrative, and becoming part of it.
The Christian sacraments also explore this point. The Eucharist – or Mass, or Lord’s Supper – reminds Christians of the foundational story of their faith, and invites them to become part of this story. The sacraments thus recall the past, and at the same time invite believers to reshape their present in their light. The Christian story is something we are asked to enter and inhabit, not simply retell or recall. Meaning, identity and purpose are all safeguarded by becoming part of this grand narrative, and leaving behind a lesser, self-centred story. The quest for meaning is thus a search for the story in which we believe we are located, and working out what role we are to play within it.
Yet what if we simply make up our own story, creating an imaginary world of our own invention? How can we know that the quest for meaning is not illusory, something that is ultimately pointless? It’s a good question, and we shall consider this in the next chapter.