I. MY EARLY QUEST FOR MEANING

II. NO HELP FROM ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

III. RELATIVE MEANINGLESSNESS AND EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

IV. HOW WE DISCOVER EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

    A. Inner Meaninglessness Projected Outward.

    B. The Collapse of 'Meanings' and Illusions.

V. MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF MEANINGLESSNESS

VI. BEYOND EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

What is this plague, this germ which, like the tubercle bacillus,
lurks within, waiting for the victim's strength to sink
below a certain level so that it may strike?
It is not a new organism. It ravages were predicted
by certain seers of the nineteenth century.
Melville and Hawthorne, Nietzsche and Marx,
Dostoievsky and Kafka all saw it coming in one form or another.
Its actual appearances have been described in some detail
by contemporary poets and painters, playwrights and novelists.
There were and are a few theologians at work on the bacterium,
but for the most part of examination and analysis
are taking place in the secular laboratories.
The germ has a very simple name: meaninglessness.
And the conditions under which is strikes are well known:
when one raises or is confronted by the ultimate questions
about live, about the purpose and meaning of existence,
and discovers that there are no answers;
no answers, that is, that can be believed.
Life seems pointless and empty,
rather cruel and even a little mad.

[William Graham Cole The Restless Quest of Modern Man
(New York: Oxford UP, 1966) p. 7]

    I first glimpsed the meaninglessness of life in my late teens,
when I began to look deeply into my future,
trying to decide what to do with my life.
It was a time of deep searching and questioning.
Let me try to reproduce from memory
some of my thoughts from that period:

    I see many people in the world, running this way and that,
busy with work and family and various kinds of recreation.
But what does it all mean in the long run?
What is I had never been born?
And after I am dead, what mark will I have left on the world
to show that I have existed,
that I have accomplished something?
Will I be remembered for even 100 years?

    Human life seems like a useless, meaningless treadmill.
It is a huge industrial complex devoted to the production of oil,
but all of the oil is needed to keep the machines running!
All it accomplishes is its own perpetuation.
What's the point of running around in a squirrel-cage,
or giving my life to a rat-race without a goal?

    My early sense of meaninglessness was directly related to death:
If we all must die, can life have any ultimate meaning?
I didn't realize it as clearly at the time, but this quest of meaning
made me quite fanatical about doing something of permanent value.
I didn't want to 'lose' any moment of life.
At the end of the each day, I wanted to be able to say
that I had accomplished something of lasting significance.

     Now I see that I misunderstood the nature of my meaninglessness
and that I was using inappropriate methods for dealing with it
—looking for a definite purpose, a specific meaning for my life.
This effort to create my own meaning did not work,
even after several years of serious endeavor.
I eventually saw thru all the goals and purposes of my contemporaries:
Possessions, accomplishments, adventures, love, marriage, family
all seemed hollow and empty, ephemeral and fleeting.
I knew these would not satisfy my quest for meaning.
And I took an arrogant attitude toward people who thought otherwise
—the near-sighted people who literally gave themselves to such trivia:

              Most people keep their eyes trained just a few paces ahead.
         They do not see their coming deaths;
         they do not ask where their journey is ultimately headed.
         In their euphoric ignorance they live relatively contented lives,
         fulfilling their little purposes,
         enjoying the many diversions and amusements along the way.
         Their lives differ little from the lives of animals.
         They live from one moment to the next as their neighbors do,
         without asking the ultimate questions of life.

     Religion also played a role in my early quest for meaning.
I wanted to believe in life after death.  This was my naive reasoning:

              Granted that this life has no meaning in itself,
         it must be preparation for life in another dimension.
         Death is not the end but the beginning,
         the beginning of an eternal life which will be so meaningful
         that its meaning will reflect back on this preparatory life.
         Only when the heavenly life has begun, however,
         will we understand the full significance
         of what is happening to us in earthly life.

     But this attempt was futile also.
I saw that my strongest reason for believing in
"existence beyond the grave" was my wish for it.
When we sense our own meaninglessness,
we project an existence where everything will be made "all better".

70        OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH

II. NO HELP FROM ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY

     Looking back on this adolescent quest for the meaning of life,
I now see it as naive but still valid for that phase of my life.
If I had not started asking for meaning in those simple ways,
perhaps I would not have achieved my present level of understanding.
All of us search for meaning in our own individual ways,
even if we begin naively.

     A supposedly more mature approach examines the quest analytically.
Questions about the "meaning of life" have no meaning, we are told.
I clearly remember the laughter evoked
when a psychology professor of mine commented to a large lecture class
that the quest for meaning in life was childish.
The students obviously did not agree.
To us it was still an important question,
even tho the professor thought it was a useless effort.
As we 'settle down' in life,
we are supposed to be satisfied with relative meanings.
That is, we can only ask significant questions of meaning
within a framework of assumed value or purpose.
For instance, if we assume the value of human survival,
then we can evaluate the 'meaning' or 'significance'
of the occupations of the farmer, the trucker, and the grocer.
Their activities can be examined in detail and judged useful or not
against the background of the assumed value of human survival.
Such evaluations of the significance of specific activities occur every day:
Every business enterprise or government program,
every parent or employee, every individual choice or international policy
is subject to evaluation against the background of assumed meanings.

     Beyond this, questions of meaning cannot be raised, we are told,
because there is no standard against which to make a judgment.
For such thinking, "meaninglessness" simply signifies
failure to fulfill certain requirements of meaning within specific situations.

III. RELATIVE MEANINGLESSNESS AND EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

     Logically this holds water, but personally—existentially—it does not.
When we say that life is meaningless, we do not mean merely
that it has failed to measure up to assumed standards of meaning,
but that assumed standards of meaning themselves are in doubt.
Granted, we can easily fill our lives by struggling toward relative goals.
Most of human life consists precisely of such efforts.
But is such life meaningful?  The whole process seems hollow and empty.
Such existential disclosures come not as logical deductions
concerning the degree of fulfillment of assumed meanings
but as the result of the crumbling of the whole system.

Chapter 4     EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS: COLLAPSE OF ILLUSIONS     by JAMES PARK     71

    Here "meaninglessness" is used metaphorically.
We are not judging the farmer's life meaningless when he grows nothing.
But we are expressing our sense that everything in life is empty and absurd.
When we confront our Existential Predicament,
we are asking about the ultimate meanings.
We have no implicit yardstick to hold up against life to measure its meaning,
for the very lack of relevant yardsticks constitutes our meaninglessness.

     Short-term purposes and relative goals no longer satisfy us.
We used to devote our day-to-day lives to practical goals in work and family,
never asking whether these little meanings added up to anything,
being satisfied to enjoy our few days under the sun.
But even in the midst of such contentment,
existential meaninglessness may rear its ugly head.

     This discovery is not a reasoned conclusion but an inward disclosure.
Nevertheless, our logical minds demand an explanation.
We want to grasp our interior problem conceptually.
Later we may understand that our recognition of life's meaninglessness
does not arise from realizing that the human race will someday end
or that everything we do will eventually be lost
or that all our little goals and projects ultimately add up to nothing.
Such 'explanations of meaninglessness' we offer ourselves
allow our minds to accept what our spirits already know.
Existential meaninglessness is a futile sense that arises from within.
There is no rational way to convince ourselves that life is meaningless.
Attack our life-illusions as we may, we will only be convinced
if deep within ourselves we already sense our futility and emptiness.

     The following five distinctions may help us to probe beneath
the practical problem of meaning to our Existential Dilemma:
 

Relative Meaninglessness	Existential Meaninglessness
1. Disappointed expectations; failure to fulfill accepted criteria.	1. Frameworks of meaning collapse; lack of ultimate purpose in life.
2. Discrepancy between established criteria and observable actualities; based on intellectual information.	2. Uncaused; discovered as a fundamental condition-of-being; existentially disclosed.
3. Temporary—lasts only until the discrepancy is corrected.	3. Permanent—no matter what we change, meaninglessness continues.
4. Limited to a specific  realm of meaning.	4. Pervades every dimension of life.
5. We know what to change   to bring meaning.	5. Nothing we can do will make life ultimately meaningful.

72        OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH

IV. HOW WE DISCOVER EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

     We cannot argue for the meaninglessness of life.
Such intellectual reasoning does not touch us where we live.
Rather, we notice our existential meaninglessness in 'disclosive moments'.
Perhaps the collapse of some life-game we were playing
or the failure of some goal or purpose opens us to our deepest levels.
Or maybe just a period of leisure allows us to see ourselves in depth.
In such 'moments of vision' we may be struck
by the futility of our lives and everything around us.
One of the "Peanuts" comic strips illustrates this:
Lucy is merrily jumping rope.  Suddenly her mouth droops;
she drags her jump-rope over to Charlie Brown and says,
"I suddenly realized the futility of it all!"

         A. Inner Meaninglessness Projected Outward.

     Sometimes we find ourselves set at a distance
from the world of our daily concerns.
We begin to see the familiar as if it were new and strange.
We may seem to be wandering in a foreign land.
We notice things in a new light:

              What are all these people so busy doing?
         Where are they going in such a hurry?
         Do they ever notice the ridiculousness of their behavior?
         Why do they regard their activities as valuable and important?
         What difference would it make if this day had not happened?
         Sometimes the world seems like a colony of ants,
         each individual endlessly repeating his behavior until he dies.
         No one asks about the ultimate meaning.
         Each merely continues faithfully to fulfill his little function.
         Would it be so great a loss (and a loss to whom)
         if the whole ant colony were wiped out in an instant
         —like a distant city of which we have never heard
         being swallowed up by the earth?
         What is a city for, anyway?
         It is a cluster of buildings where people live and reproduce.
         They hold jobs and live off one another.
         But is it not circular, adding up to precisely zero in the end?

         B. The Collapse of 'Meanings' and Illusions.

     If we have not experienced such 'disclosive moments',
—when our inner sense of meaninglessness projects itself onto the world—
perhaps we have experienced a sudden collapse of definite life-meanings.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea, Roquentin, the anti-hero,
is living for the purpose of producing a book on the Marquis de Rollebon.
It is the only activity that justifies his existence.
And when he abandons that project, he is gripped by meaninglessness.

Chapter 4     EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS: COLLAPSE OF ILLUSIONS     by JAMES PARK     73

   Usually we keep our underlying condition locked away, under wraps.
We keep ourselves busy and preoccupied
so that we never notice our fundamental meaninglessness.
But sometimes—against our wills—something pierces our thick skin,
cracks our protective shell, opens the cage of our imprisonment,
and our guts spill tangled on the ground.
Our central life-purpose has collapsed, leaving us empty and alone.

     Every meaning we hold dear contains the possibility of disillusionment.
If we devote ourselves to possessions, success,
marriage, children, pleasure, or religion,
we can be profoundly disappointed when that 'meaning' fails.

     For example, we can see how the collapse of religious illusions
might become a moment that discloses our repressed meaninglessness.
If we have lived under the belief that God created us
with a specific purpose in mind, then life's meaning is assured.
Even tho we cannot name or describe this purpose,
it is enough to believe that somewhere in God's mystery, meaning resides.
"No person makes anything without a purpose.
So God must have had something in mind when he created us."
If such thinking is demolished, perhaps be a careful study of evolution,
then our existential meaninglessness may be unveiled.

     If we have hoped to attain meaning thru children who will live after us
—perhaps even being a form of 'immortality'—
then we may be cast into confusion and regret
if our children disappoint our hopes 'for them'
or if all our children die, leaving no children of their own.
If our dreams of finding meaning thru reproduction are destroyed,
our hidden existential meaninglessness may flood into consciousness.

     Illustrations could be multiplied endlessly.
In our pluralistic society—in contrast to a stable and closed society—
our 'life-meanings' and illusions are challenged every day.
No longer do our assumed life-purposes pass easily to the next generation.
Doubts surround every conceivable meaning we might pursue.
Thus we as a culture may have passed (as Paul Tillich notes)
from the problem of guilt to the problem of meaninglessness.

V. MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF MEANINGLESSNESS

     Sartre and Camus urge us to embrace our meaninglessness.
They claim that life is better because it is meaningless and absurd.
If there is no given purpose to which we must conform to gain meaning,
then we can create our own meanings in the midst of meaninglessness.
By rebelling against our Predicament, we create our own Authenticity.
(This theme is explored more completely in Becoming More Authentic:
The Positive Side of Existentialism by James Park.)

74        OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH

VI. BEYOND EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS

     If we have been gripped by meaninglessness,
and if we find Authentic Existence inadequate,
perhaps we are ready to be released from our existential meaninglessness
in a way unimagined beforehand.
Martin Buber puts it this way:
 

 There is an inexpressible confirmation of meaning.
 Meaning is assured.
 Nothing can any longer be meaningless.
 The question about the meaning of life is no longer there.
 But were it there, it would not have to be answered.
 You do not know how to exhibit and define the meaning of life,
 you have no formula or picture for it,
 and yet it has more certitude for you
 than the perceptions of your senses....
 Meaning does not permit itself to be transmitted
 and made into knowledge generally current and admissible....
 It is not prescribed, it is not specified on any tablet,
 to be raised about all men's heads.
 The meaning that has been received can be proved true
 to each man only in the singleness of his being
 and the singleness of his life.

 [Martin Buber I and Thou translated by Ronald Gregor Smith
 (New York: Scribners, 1958) p. 110-111]

     This 'meaning' is the removal of existential meaninglessness,
not the attainment of specific meanings.
As meaninglessness was experienced as inner frailty and collapse,
so 'meaningfulness' is the inner condition of strength and integrity.
This is not the kind of meaning we can tell others about.
Literally there is still no given meaning in the universe.
But existentially, we have been freed from the grip of meaninglessness.

     We know that this "confirmation of meaning" comes from beyond us
because we have already tried our own resources—without success.
All we can know is how we orient ourselves to be released:
We open ourselves in trust, receptivity, humility, surrender.
And our existential meaninglessness—our inward Malaise—is removed.

     This is not a cognitive meaning, which could be logically explained.
It is not a cosmic meaning, picturing another life.
No new insights have occurred; no new information has been provided.
Existential meaning comes here and now—received but not experienced.
Meaning is a new inner state-of-being, which we glimpse occasionally.
It does not reveal itself all at once;
we gradually come to realize that meaning has dawned upon us.

Chapter 4     EXISTENTIAL MEANINGLESSNESS: COLLAPSE OF ILLUSIONS     by JAMES PARK     75

    Since "Existential Meaninglessness" is the shortest chapter in
Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death,
it is presented here in its entirety.
If you would like to have your own printed and bound copy,
go to the publisher's website: www.existentialbooks.com

       Another book by the same author
contains a 4-page chapter on meaninglessness and meaning:
"Relative Meaninglessness and Spiritual Meaninglessness".
The title of the book is:
Opening to Grace: Transcending Our Spiritual Malaise.

    A very short presentation (3-pages)
of these basic ideas appears in an online article:
"Looking for the Meaning of Life".