Where does meaning come from?

Some Guy in History

Not constantly, only occasionally.

8-[

I’m your mirror.

Don’t get lost.

Some Guy in History

I do believe you are my mirror. I wont get lost.

And then the mirror shatters
broken glass and broken dreams
lacerations to your skin
blood flowing from deep within
dark and crimson
laugh and the world laughs with you
cry and the world laughs at you
The end is here and the world has had the last laugh
at your expense as they blast
every bit of you that you could have
believed to be worthy of long-term existence

Some Guy in History

Quite beautiful in an antithetical kind of way . . .

There is no such thing as antithetical. No such thing as extreme and direct opposites. No such thing as opposites.

Some Guy in History

I do like the piece of writing.

Now I am interested in your apparent deeper knowledge of one.

:-k

For the new to be built, we must first deconstruct the old. To build directly on top would not create a very firm foundation. To deconstruct the old, this has to be done while it all still stands and leave the old still intact to some degree to prepare the building of the new, which is the rebuilding of all the new that has come while the oldest still stands and to bring the old into the new and make it new again while making new seem older than it is to jumpstart our own travels forward again as a species. In this, there is meaning. In this, there is even the personal meanings of rebuilding contact, rebuilding communities, rebuilding friendships; and the forging of new. This is the meaning of crafting for ourselves a new lease on life. Where does meaning come from? All around and often through whatever source we will listen to.

That is because the gap between words and worlds will always be either large or small.

Some words describe the world around us with precision. Why? Because we invented the words to describe with precision that which our senses and conscious minds seem able to agree on.

The common example is “bachelor”. It is a word that denotes what it is “out in the world”: “a man who is not and has never been married.”

Same with the word “married”. You either are or you are not. But suppose the discussion shifts to a debate regarding the merits of either being or not being a bachelor.

Is there an argument [a clump of words] able to resolve it such that all rational men and women “out in the world” are obligated to share it?

Instead, the conflicts always revolve around our is/ought reactions to the either/or world.

Human beings are conditioned [in some respects indoctrinated] to intertwine “I” and “we” and all that is deemed to be “other”, out in a particular world. Historically, culturally, experientially.

So the crucial part here is the extent to which what we construe words to mean in any particular context is able to be demonstrated to others as the meaning which they must share in turn. If they wish to be thought of as rational/reasonable.

Meaning is the golden naïveté. It is something you build with metaphor, with your feet in the clouds. Meaning’s yield is emotion, which is a song a lute makes when the blind wind blows through. Meaning is a dream; a conversation you have with the universe that only you can hear, in that massless phantom zone where complete solitude and ultimate connection compete for your soul. In a Godless Universe; Meaning is God.

.

Contemplation . . .

The golden naïveté; I really like that. Thank you - this gives rise to much thought . . .

I have great affinity with this - whilst I believe that meaning comes in the form of logic as well.

Totally . . . Is it reality that our conscious mind is agreeing on?

I would also add emotional to this list with rational/reasonable.

I am loving the contrast on display . . . much to ponder . . . Meaning then as an expression to yield emotion and sagacious resolve.

:-k

As do I, but I think of it more as balance, not logic.

Each string of the lute vibrates on a certain frequency, a certain pitch, with certain intervals.
So even though the blind wind plays on the strings of perception, the natural set of the strings
is a Pythagorean equation. The logic is embedded in the structure.

Such that when the wind blows, the notes often harmonize.

But we also know that we can find meaning in atonal music.

This is the true essence of golden naivete.

When you are able to construct meaning without the need for external coherence.

When you are willing and able to build – and live – in worlds built from microtones.

Points of interest . . . points of expansion . . .

Whilst I believe that meaning comes in the form of logic as well, I still find emotion at times more expressive of meaning.

I am inclined to agree with a concept of balance - I have found that the expression of emotion can be rational too . . .

Nearly meditative meaning . . . an expansion of meaning . . . I have found a similar thing with poetry . . .

As you say in another way: When you are able to construct meaning without the need for external coherence.
[size=85]I am still in contemplation on what else you have written . . .[/size]

We often have a pseudo-reality that our conscious mind seems able to agree on. This could add to the explanation of the occurrence of paradoxes . . . I doubt that is what either of you are saying entirely though. I still think the scale of the gap is where imagination comes in . . .
. . . being able to construct new meaning next to reality . . . being able to make the imagining real . . .

In this there is a great amount of meaning . . . Id est there is meaning in everything and its contrasts . . .
. . . I like the way you have written it . . . rather Socratic . . . new lease on life . . .

Old meaning meets the new to create synergy . . . and greater meaning . . . and like you stated - where does meaning come from? All around and often through whatever source we will listen to; to me could also include finding meaning in music, culture, poetry, society, science and philosophy as well as more . . .

encode_decode,

First of all, I must tell you how very much I am enjoying sitting in your Zen garden, surrounded by all of this beauty, this silence and stillness. It almost seems a shame for us to speak in here at all.
Oh, I would appreciate it if you could offer me a nice tall glass of lemonade with lots and lots of ice~ if you please.

How does one derive meaning in/from their life?

I recently saw the move Dunkirk. What an awesome movie it was. I literally sat on the edge of my seat during most of it. I don’t really want to give anything away since some may want to see it. It IS a movie well worth the seeing. But that is my perspective.

There was a scene in the movie where 700 non-military private ships (that was the reality though I don’t think we see all those ships on the screen) went out…

When 400,000 men couldn’t get home, home came for them

It was absolutely awe-inspiring and heartrending. My heart was in my throat. The tears would just not stop coming. Meaning for me was within those tears.

You asked how does one derive meaning in one’s life? What gives your life meaning?

These were people from all walks of life, down to a boy of about age 14, 15…
They came for these men, to rescue them.
They put their lives at risk. Courage under fire is one of the most meaningful, beautiful things in the world to me. I also experienced it with the movie Hacksaw Ridge.

A scene of such human solidarity brought on as a result of all of these people coming together is meaningful and beautiful to see.
Perseverance and the will to move forward DESPITE all danger (and oh was there ever danger) obstacles and odds in order to save other human beings is something beautiful and meaningful to see.
You could see many of the people standing on their boats. Their faces, registering such looks of determination and quiet courage, to get to those men ~~ were meaningful and beautiful to see and more than that, to experience.

I cried me a river. This was a moment when humanity was at their very best and a moment where I felt so proud to be a human being. There can be great meaning in that. That is when Life reaches to the heights even though there was also great tragedy seen there.

I think that what it is, or may be, which allows us to derive/experience such real meaningfulness in life are the other opposite-sides- of- the- coin, meaninglessness moments, moments when we are or may be deeply ashamed to call ourselves human, moments which show us man’s great inhumanity to man. I think that without the One, we could not experience the Other so profoundly.

William James said that the greatest use of life is to SPEND it for that which will outlast it. That is really something to ponder, I think.
Moments like this, this movie, or Hacksaw Ridge, or other real and vital moments in history when human beings have stood together in solidarity, to show such inter-connectedness, to save relative strangers rather than to destroy them ~~ are moments which bring profound meaning, real meaning into Life.

Sorry for my redundancy.

Emotion is tricky. Why? Because it too is a complex intertwining of genes and memes. Embedded along with reason in the even more primative components of the brain.

This part:

The primary structures within the limbic system include the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and cingulate gyrus. The amygdala is the emotion center of the brain, while the hippocampus plays an essential role in the formation of new memories about past experiences.

Now, there are actually folks here [I call them objectivists] who insist they have a full understanding of all of this. Not only are they able to encompass the either/or world for us but are in turn able to grasp the one and the only rational – natural – manner in which comprehend disputes that arise as a result of conflicting reactions to human behaviors out in the is/ought world.

Just don’t ask them to bring an analysis like this…

…out into the world of conflicting human behaviors.

After all, how would one go about demonstrating to others that they have an obligation as rational human beings to share the meaning assigned to the words in this ponderous intellectual contraption?

James

I am curious as to what you mean when you say:

How is it that one can discover the objective truth of what one is? I imagine this can only be done via reference . . .

Now if this can be done . . . how is it that the meaning of ones life would spring from the objective truth?

I am interested in an answer to this.

:-k

How does one discover objective truth about anything?

Try it and “discover the objective truth” about it. :sunglasses:

Hey encode,

Would I be laughed at or dismissed if I said meaning is in everything? That meaning is the foundation for things to exist?

My belief is that all reality is fundamentally information. In human terms, it is information expressed as matter. The question for me is: how to make meaning comprehensible? Many people look out at the universe and fail to find meaning–it all looks arbitrary and accidental, without purpose, without aim–and become nihilistic. But how would you distinguish true meaninglessness from incomprehensible meaning? They would look the same. Incomprehensible meaning is like hearing a foreign language: you know it means something but you can’t tell the difference between that and random meaningless babbling?

Yeah. :sunglasses: