Meaning and Responsibility

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What matters to us?

What makes some things good, and others bad? What makes us like some music and not other music? Why do we care about what happens to ourselves, our peers, or our universe? In this post, I will explore what matters to us, how meaning arises, and how we can use this information to improve our own lives.

In order to navigate our lives, pursue our goals, and make choices in life, we require the ability to derive meaning. When we identify a goal, an important event, or a potential decision, we automatically search for the ways in which this goal, event, or decision are important to us. But, humans are far from perfect, and we often find ourselves not fulfilling our dreams, misinterpreting events, and making the wrong decisions in retrospect. In order to better achieve our goals, and improve our lives, it is helpful to step back and consider what we actually mean by the concept of meaning.

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What is meaning? How do we know what matters?

A thing or an event is not meaningful intrinsically. It is only meaningful to us, and therefor it has to do with our relationship with said thing. It is important to recognize that meaning arises from the connections between things, not from the things themselves. This is not to say that said meaning does not reflect elements of each node, but rather to emphasize the idea that meaning itself is a subjective concept, it requires an interpreting party. The significance of something is only derived from its role within the context of our value structure, as understood by our brains. Without consciousness, the experiential witnessing of life, there is nothing to ascribe meaning to anything else, further there is no importance of anything happening over anything else from our perspective.

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Memory is not for remembering the past.
It is for deriving lessons from the past to best structure things for the future
-Jordan Peterson

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Deriving meaning, and taking responsibility

In my last post, Known and Unknown: The Dichotomy of Chaos and Order, I make the case that meaning exists between the known and the unknown.

When we get the balance just right, we can experience moments of tangible importance and significance. In these moments of profound meaning we are enveloped in the present moment. We are not thinking, we are not doing, we are not feeling, we simply are. Everything seems to align, and the interconnected nature of life becomes palpable.

It is at this junction where learning and growth happen, when there is new information that can be tethered down to already integrated information. It is between these realms of order (the known) and chaos (the unknown) where things are important, meaningful, and interesting. This process of deriving meaning from the world, and integrating it into your understanding of yourself, your world, and the experience of life are thus the formation of new connections. These connections are seen in our biology, our psychology, our ideologies, and further in our societies.

This process requires work, it requires action, and thus it requires responsibility. To properly pursue a purposeful existence, we must dedicate ourselves to truth, to the correct integration of chaos into order. This is how you create value, this is how you better yourself and the world; it is through taking on the responsibility of honestly organizing the world around you and considering everything that you do to matter.

Thanks so much for reading. Please leave any thoughts in the comments below. Be sure to let me know if you have a request for a topic in Philosophy, Neuroscience, or anything else!

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