Ref to: If there’s no inherent meaning to life, what gives meaning to your life? Or, maybe a better follow-up question, how do you *make* meaning in your life?
What we know from neuroscience is that your brain has an automatic, unconscious predisposition to assign meaning to everything it sees and experiences. You cannot avoid assigning significance to what you perceive or live. If you ask it, your brain will immediately offer a story (a sense, a meaning) that will stitch together events and things no matter how disparate or random. Some stories will be more realistic, others more fantastical, depending on how your brain was educated in childhood. Some people will settle for the childlike stories born of their own mind or of those who’ve made a profession out of selling stories for others to believe. Others will try to verify these stories, confront them with the bio-psycho-social reality, and choose the stories (the sense, the meaning) that have the most positive real impact on their lives and on those around them. In other words, the same eternal struggle between two worldviews: the religious-authoritarian and the scientific-experimental.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it in the greater scheme of things — as in what motivates you to translate the meaning in a spiritual, religious, scientific, or pragmatic way. Since I’m reading an evolutionary biology book, right now I’m biased towards there’s no inherent meaning, but we give it (as you said re: neuroscience) based on our values and worldview. So my question still stands: what did you find meaningful lately in your life, made possible by your efforts? 👀
Ref to: If there’s no inherent meaning to life, what gives meaning to your life? Or, maybe a better follow-up question, how do you *make* meaning in your life?
What we know from neuroscience is that your brain has an automatic, unconscious predisposition to assign meaning to everything it sees and experiences. You cannot avoid assigning significance to what you perceive or live. If you ask it, your brain will immediately offer a story (a sense, a meaning) that will stitch together events and things no matter how disparate or random. Some stories will be more realistic, others more fantastical, depending on how your brain was educated in childhood. Some people will settle for the childlike stories born of their own mind or of those who’ve made a profession out of selling stories for others to believe. Others will try to verify these stories, confront them with the bio-psycho-social reality, and choose the stories (the sense, the meaning) that have the most positive real impact on their lives and on those around them. In other words, the same eternal struggle between two worldviews: the religious-authoritarian and the scientific-experimental.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it in the greater scheme of things — as in what motivates you to translate the meaning in a spiritual, religious, scientific, or pragmatic way. Since I’m reading an evolutionary biology book, right now I’m biased towards there’s no inherent meaning, but we give it (as you said re: neuroscience) based on our values and worldview. So my question still stands: what did you find meaningful lately in your life, made possible by your efforts? 👀