What is meaning?

[PurpleTree]

Meaning what is it?

Do you know Viktor Frankl Men’s search for meaning?

This is PurpleTree’s search out of meaning. Meaning is exhausting. I used to think everything has meaning. It was silly. 

[James123]

41 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

Meaning what is it?

Do you know Viktor Frankl Men’s search for meaning?

This is PurpleTree’s search out of meaning. Meaning is exhausting. I used to think everything has meaning. It was silly. 

Meaning is perfectly functioning and made out of love. Such as nature, you, air, water, etc... 

[PurpleTree]

9 minutes ago, James123 said:

Meaning is perfectly functioning and made out of love. Such as nature, you, air, water, etc... 

 Nah

[James123]

2 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

 Nah

King Baldwin knew about it.

[PurpleTree]

4 minutes ago, James123 said:

King Baldwin knew about it.

King Baldwin never existed.

It has no meaning.

[saif2]

@PurpleTree It has to do with understanding. Why would you want less meaning?

 

[Salvijus]

Meaning = evaluation. 

To say life is meaningless is to put another evaluation on it - just another form of meaning. Life is beyond meaning. But not meaningless. 

Edited June 28 by Salvijus

[saif2]

Meaning is a creation that you create. How do you assume that there is no objective meaning to things? 

[Carl-Richard]

Meaning boils down to biology and movement, but also more fundamentally the interplay between energy and form, dynamism and structure, Logos. Do you cohere and connect with reality? Does reality make sense to you? Do things matter?

Edited June 28 by Carl-Richard

[PurpleTree]

13 minutes ago, saif2 said:

Meaning is a creation that you create. How do you assume that there is no objective meaning to things? 

Meaning. Me-aning. Mean-ing.

Meaning is dreaming. Like a semen, floundering like a seamen. Glittering gleaming beaming. Feening for meaning. Sizzling steaming. Scheming. Screaming for meaning. But nobody hears you in outer space.

 

And all of that is meaningless ^

 

 

Meaning is meaningless. Ponder that.🤔 

 

[UnbornTao]

A charged interpretation that's generated by you and applied onto - or coming after - bare perception.

Or, forget about answers and take a look. What makes something meaningful? What does it mean for something to have meaning? 

[PurpleTree]

5 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

A charged interpretation that's generated by you and applied onto - or coming after - bare perception.

Or, forget about answers and take a look. What makes something meaningful? What does it mean for something to have meaning? 

Meaning feels energetically heavy. I think that’s mostly the freedom in liberation. Free of meaning.

[saif2]

 

1 hour ago, PurpleTree said:

Meaning. Me-aning. Mean-ing.

Meaning is dreaming. Like a semen, floundering like a seamen. Glittering gleaming beaming. Feening for meaning. Sizzling steaming. Scheming. Screaming for meaning. But nobody hears you in outer space.

 

And all of that is meaningless ^

 

 

Meaning is meaningless. Ponder that.🤔 

 

Meaning is meaningless, is the case only if one does not exist, which seems to be the case. 

Edited June 28 by saif2

[UnbornTao]

13 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

Meaning feels energetically heavy. I think that’s mostly the freedom in liberation. Free of meaning.

Sounds good, thanks. It was more of a rhetorical question meant to invite personal contemplation. 

Another exercise: pick a small, simple object and perceive it prior to the addition of meaning. 

[Nilsi]

Meaning is always incidental.

The smell of rain rising from warm asphalt on a summer afternoon. The way a song drifts out of a passing car and for a moment feels like it was meant just for you. The unexpected conversation with the shop clerk whose words stay with you long after you’ve left. The new coworker whose presence won’t quite leave your mind. The shape of the clouds one evening that seems to echo a thought you didn’t know you had. The feeling of standing in an empty train station, watching someone disappear into a crowd.

To believe in some absolute logos is confusion - a desperate attempt to anchor yourself in a fiction.

And to create your own meaning is at best like trying to assemble a vast, intricate puzzle: for a while, you feel the satisfaction of progress, as if the pieces might finally form a clear image. But the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that they were never cut to fit together at all.

Meaning is always fleeting, contingent, localized - an assemblage: a temporary constellation of impressions, gestures, fragments of memory, held together just long enough to feel real before dissolving back into the noise.

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Meaning is always incidental.

The smell of rain rising from warm asphalt on a summer afternoon. The way a song drifts out of a passing car and for a moment feels like it was meant just for you. The unexpected conversation with the shop clerk whose words stay with you long after you’ve left. The new coworker whose presence won’t quite leave your mind. The shape of the clouds one evening that seems to echo a thought you didn’t know you had. The feeling of standing in an empty train station, watching someone disappear into a crowd.

To believe in some absolute logos is confusion - a desperate attempt to anchor yourself in a fiction.

And to create your own meaning is at best like trying to assemble a vast, intricate puzzle: for a while, you feel the satisfaction of progress, as if the pieces might finally form a clear image. But the further you go, the more obvious it becomes that they were never cut to fit together at all.

Meaning is always fleeting, contingent, localized - an assemblage: a temporary constellation of impressions, gestures, fragments of memory, held together just long enough to feel real before dissolving back into the noise.

But how fleeting? Are there not certain regularities, certain cycles, like the heartbeat, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and fall of cortisol and melatonin, the cycles of anabolism and catabolism in relation to feeding cycles and physical activity? And are there not ways to better align with these cycles, in a way that is not simply random or fleeting, in a way which creates harmony rather than dissonance?

Edited June 29 by Carl-Richard

[Breakingthewall]

Meaning is a cause-effect relationship, the absolute is meaningless, unthinkable and unknowable, you can be open to it or not.

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, PurpleTree said:

Meaning feels energetically heavy. I think that’s mostly the freedom in liberation. Free of meaning.

You can completely separate yourself from meaning at will, but to do so, you must first break it. Meaning goes deeper than the superficial layer of the mind; it's in your structure. It's not enough to silence the mind for it to dissolve; it lurks behind it, closing off your perception.

Drugs are useful for breaking meaning, for being in a state where reality flows and means absolutely nothing, and you don't search for any meaning; you simply are. There's no God or stories. Then it can happen that your heart opens, and the reality that you are manifests. If you want to trap this with the grip of the mind, which fixes everything through meaning, then you get a wall.

[Nilsi]

7 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

But how fleeting? Are there not certain regularities, certain cycles, like the heartbeat, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and fall of cortisol and melatonin, the cycles of anabolism and catabolism in relation to feeding cycles and physical activity? And are there not ways to better align with these cycles, in a way that is not simply random or fleeting, in a way which creates harmony rather than dissonance?

 

 

Maybe it’s just me, but “aligning” with my supposed biological or holistic optimum - and thereby achieving some lasting sense of balance or well-being - has always felt hollow. I understand why people value it: the idea that you can live in harmony with your body, your mind, and your environment, and cultivate an integrated sense of wholeness. But in practice, that’s never held much meaning for me beyond the basic pragmatism of not falling apart.

Sure, I do it to some extent, because I’m still an ambitious person. I want to be able to function, to show up for work, to have energy for sex, for friendship, for all the small obligations that make up a life. So yes, I try to take care of myself. But that’s just maintenance - keeping the machinery going.

What actually feels meaningful are precisely the things that don’t fit any vision of equilibrium or purpose: the contingencies that arrive unannounced. Staying up too late with a glass of red wine and a book that somehow feels more necessary than sleep. Running into someone by chance and talking until dawn. Forgetting to eat because you’re caught up in some creative impulse that dissolves time. Missing something important because you decided to stand under a sudden summer rain.

Almost by definition - at least for me - meaning is antithetical to survival or “optimal experience.” It’s never just something you produce by discipline or by carefully designing your life. It’s the surplus that emerges when life exceeds its own logic. Philosophically, this is exactly what Bataille called the “accursed share”: the part of existence that has to be expended or transformed into something beyond utility.

And yes, in some sense, it is a curse. You can’t fully control it or subsume it into a project of self-mastery. You can try to ritualize it, to create frameworks or practices that give it shape. And sometimes that works - temporarily. But sooner or later, even those structures start to feel like just another puzzle you thought would form a coherent image, until you realize the pieces don’t actually fit together.

So for me, this surplus is both a burden and a necessity. You can’t eradicate it, and you can’t ever fully contain it in any ritual, narrative, or system. You can only recognize it when it appears - unasked for - and try, however imperfectly, to let it change you for as long as it lasts, before it dissolves again.

[Nilsi]

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

But how fleeting? Are there not certain regularities, certain cycles, like the heartbeat, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and fall of cortisol and melatonin, the cycles of anabolism and catabolism in relation to feeding cycles and physical activity? And are there not ways to better align with these cycles, in a way that is not simply random or fleeting, in a way which creates harmony rather than dissonance?

To give you a more polemical answer: this quest for “holism” or “enlightenment” or whatever you want to call it is just another redemptive teleology. It’s the same old alchemical hubris - the belief that by studying reality and rearranging its parts in just the right configuration, something absolutely redemptive will emerge.

But if there were truly a stable equilibrium at the heart of this so-called holism, why is nature itself so unstable, contingent, and mad? You’re painting a picture of some harmonious cosmic balance, when in reality nature is a carnival of chaos: mass extinctions, mega-catastrophes that left behind entire oceans of oil, bizarre species that defy any logic of purpose.

People love to point to the day and night cycle or the rhythm of the heartbeat as proof of some perfect order. But that same day and night cycle is so contingent and precarious that one day it will end entirely. And your heart - so steady and reliable - can burst or simply stop beating without warning.

That contradiction alone should be enough to make anyone suspicious. It’s just the fundamental myth of modern man, dressed up in more soothing language.

Edited June 29 by Nilsi