What is the meaning of life? (part one)

(Note to the reader: I'm never sure how much personal information to reveal in a blog, but I know the blogs I like best are those that are the most personal. So, I've decided to just say what I want to say. I hope you find it interesting.)

From what I can tell, most people find meaning in their lives by raising children. Early in my life, I chose not to go down that road and, perhaps as a result, a good many of my thoughts over the years have focused on what is important to me, what is my purpose, and “what is the meaning of life?”

As a child, I had a fervent desire to be a veterinarian and heal animals. That lasted through the first three years of college, until I served some time in a veterinary clinic and found that a) vets get peed on and b) vets in private practice spend far more time and energy running a business than they do healing animals. I changed my major to Physics.

In graduate school, I thought my purpose in life was to pursue theoretical physics to unimaginable frontiers. Then I realized that involves a) reading a whole lot of dry, boring academic literature and b) getting funding from the Department of Defense. (At least at that time [early 1980s], there was little if any research in Physics that wasn’t funded by the DOD. I could not compromise my ideals that far.) Besides, while my math skills are much better than average, they aren’t good enough for high-powered theoretical physics.

I landed a job as a process engineer for a semiconductor manufacturer and, after a couple of years, decided that learning how to design biomedical equipment must really be my purpose in life. I was mapping out some steps to start in that direction when I was laid off. (I rationalize that since there were two rounds of layoffs before my turn came, I wasn’t totally incompetent.)

Then, in October 1985, I got a brief reprieve from my lifelong search for purpose when I had one of the few experiences that I can categorize as mystical. A brief summary of the end of the experience: “God, if I believe in you, does that mean I have to start reading the Bible? That's a rule, right - to believe in God you have to read the Bible?.“ My god of that moment responded:

“There’s only one rule - have fun!”

If one can have a personal motto, this is mine (though you might not be able to tell that from the tenor of this blog).

Still, my search for meaning continued. To some extent, the search for purpose and meaning has been “fun.” Certainly if I’d found a purpose, THAT would have been fun! In the early 1990s, that journey led me to the work of W. Edwards Deming.

I was so compelled by Deming’s work that I wrote a manuscript for a book (rejected by a few publishers) titled Quality of Life that applied Deming’s fourteen points (modified and condensed to seven) to handling personal relationships. One of the chapters was titled “On Purpose” and described the importance of finding and having a purpose in life. While I was writing it, I thought proselytizing the importance of maintaining good personal relationships was my purpose in life. I remain convinced that relationships with other people should be the focus of our lives, but it became clear that I'm not particularly good at "proselytizing".

As time went on, I tried harder and harder to find some purpose that would give my life enduring meaning. This became more important to me once I found myself in a job that seems anything but enduringly meaningful.

This more or less sums up the first fifty years of my search for meaning. In the last couple of years, though, things have taken a different direction. I'll probably post something about that once I've sorted out what I want to say.

The Solstice time of year

My psyche is dealing with what I can only describe as a one-two punch as a result of my current reading list: The Archdruid Report (and the book, The Long Descent) from John Michael Greer (JMG), and The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands (MR).

First, very brief descriptions:

• JMG's recent work (at least the part of it I'm reading) clearly states that resource depletion (specifically peak oil) and, secondarily, climate change guarantee that the days of the industrial society are numbered. He sees attempts at converting current society's demands to run on renewable sources as futile (they wouldn't have been in the 1980s, but they are now) so all that's left to do is prepare for the decline. He makes a strong case that the decline will take centuries, and preparation for it goes way beyond stocking up on canned goods.



• MR's book is hard to summarize and even harder to do justice. Starting with the well-researched and more or less proven premise that apes' reasoning and intelligence grew out of social structures that selected for scheming, deceipt and malice aforethought, he describes how his relationship with a wolf helped him "connect with" the part of him that is "pre-ape." There is much more to his book, but this is a start.

Not everything that I'm learning from JMG is news to me. I decided not to have children when I was very young (I'd say 8, maybe 10 - about the time I asked my parents to pay for my memberships to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club) primarily because I couldn't stand to be around them. But as I matured into my early 20s (this was the late 1970s), my motivations were more ecologically minded. I knew that, as an American, the single best thing I could do for the planet was to not have a child.

So I've been aware - heartsick, for that matter - for most of my life that the impact of humans on the planet has been horrendous and that it couldn't last. I was relatively certain that, if I'd had them, my children would have been the ones to see the beginning of the end of the human dynasty. What I'm learning from JMG is that, if he's right, I could be among the "lucky ones."

Apparently that's not enough. I have to also be absorbed in a powerful book that describes with stunningly sickening examples just how evil simians/apes/humans can be. On the most unforgettable page - unforgettable because I couldn't bring myself to focus on it and read every word, but I certainly got the gist - MR describes a long-running 'experiment' performed on dogs by Harvard research faculty that involves electric shocks [more than that I will save you], under the pretense of investigating learned helplessness as a model for human depression. As MR points out, the researchers were well rewarded in academia, whereas if they'd been doing the same thing in a garage they would have (we hope) been thrown in jail. (After several years and several thousand dogs tortured, it was decided that the model was invalid or useless.)

So here I am, confronted with the evil that is, apparently, part of my ancient genetic lineage, facing a future that bodes ill. It is the dark time of year.

Dance: an activity of value

Christal Brown, the instructor of a dance class I took during Fall 2009 (who, among many other accomplishments, founded INSPIRIT, a dance troupe based in NYC) occasionally said something like "the best dancers have no idea who they are - they literally just stand there until someone tells them to move." Or another example: a dancer or choreographer must "negate the self to embody the product."

What I understood her to mean is that a creative work has its own life. In bringing a creative work from conception to reality, a dancer or artist must set aside their own limitations and expectations, either of themselves or of what the work 'should' be, and 'serve the work.'

Most of my dance experience has been self-created in my living room. At the best of those times I have been so focused on embodying the music that 'I lost myself in it.' I think that is probably at least part of "negating the self" that Christal spoke of.

I also think 'negating the self' could mean losing purpose. It is the self that wants to accomplish, earn, succeed - all purposes that exist outside of an activity. To best embody a creative work, think not of what awards might be won, but only of what serves the work.

In Mark Rowlands' interview on the CBC (see previous post), he said, When things have purposes, the purpose typically lies outside the activity ... We do all these things, but there’s very little that has value in itself.

Dance has value in itself.

The philosopher and the Wolf

My worldview is being shaken, not stirred. Many things have contributed to this, including climate change, peak oil, maturing past 50.

But what I want to focus on here are some words from a recent CBC radio program (that will be available on podcast until mid-December 2009). It is an interview with Mark Rowlands, author of "The philosopher and the wolf," about the impact a long-term relationship with a wolf had on Rowlands' outlook on life.

Rowlands makes several fascinating points, but one in particular has stuck with me:

We experience time as a line, from the past through the present and into the future. … This way of experiencing time is fundamental to human beings and brings with it a certain conception or outlook on the value of life. Just as time is sort of an arrow flowing from the past to the future, so too the meaning of our lives is sort of built into things we’re aiming at somewhere down the line, projects we’re trying to achieve, goals we’re trying to fulfill. … I think that’s an unfortunate way of thinking about the meaning of life.
…
A better way of looking at our lives is not so much the meaning of our lives as the value of our lives.
...
When things have purposes, the purpose typically lies outside the activity – you go to school and work hard to get to University. You work hard at University so you can get a good job and the good job is to get money… The purpose is outside them, and therefore the value lies outside the activity. We do all these things, but there’s very little that has value in itself.

That will serve as a starting point for this blog.