On the Path of Meaning
The question is, what does this existence mean?
Pursuit of this question is no reason to reject the work of science, though science can never answer this question. The problem is not with science itself but with the people who treat science as the religion of the day. The problem is with people who act as if science has answered questions it is not equipped to ask. I suppose we can forgive them. They are, after all, arguing with the people who think religion has answered science’s questions.
Now, faced with this question of life’s meaning you might turn to a religious teaching for an answer. That is a reasonable place to start the search but not to end it. Religions are like anthologies of other people’s answers to this question. Meditation on these answers might give you useful ideas for formulating your own but ultimately, the only valid answer is the one you create for yourself.
That meaning you’ve forged for your life leads inexorably to how you live your life. Morality proceeds from meaning. This is the meaning of that phrase, “by their fruits shall ye know them.” The meaning that a person is living out can be understood by how they are in the world, regardless of whether or not they have taken responsibility for this.
Nietzsch E. Coyote 
Objectively existence doesn’t mean anything. Subjectively, of course, our lives only have meaning when we acknowledge the mythology we’ve given them.
These questions of identity, these fruitless searches for meaning – they stall. Rather one should engage in the art of determining one’s own place and carving out significance. It won’t ever fall from the sky. The sky is never falling.
[/absinthe]
Yes.
Thanks for sharing this post.
Certainly each of us gives our lives meaning subjectively through whatever framework we choose to live by (and, I would add, through the way in which we respond to others).
Strangely, ‘contemporary culture’ (vague term, sorry) tends to look past the importance of subjective meaning by either fooling itself into belief in objectivity, or by simply overlooking meaning altogether through a kaleidoscope of distractions. And, I agree, while there is no need for a ‘rejection’ of science, there is a need to understand science and its place in the world. Science, while capable of answering questions of ‘what’ and ‘how’ and utilizing its vast material successes as its own justification, can never answer questions of ‘why’ (e.g. why do we exist?).
Seeking out the ‘whyness’ of our existence seems to be the ‘cross to bear’ for persons living in our ‘modern’ world, and it is in the search and its subsequent results that, as you point out, morality is born. From what I can tell, the path of meaning is the only path toward a genuine human being, and it is a path that we stand on even in its denial or ignorance (lack of meaning, nihilism, etc. is still a framework or meaning of its own). Anyway, thanks again for sharing. Always heartening to come across folks thinking about this stuff.
I think that part of the problem is that people expect the Why to be given. They want to be told Why not to figure it out for themselves. Ultimately, we must DECIDE why we are.
i think the question´s ultimate answer would be so subjective as to make it meaningless on any level other than the personal one.
“Meaning” is inherently subjective. Everyone has to answer the question for themselves.
If _Meaning_ is so inherently subjective then we would not be having much of a repartee ?
I have no idea what you are saying.
Take time. If /it/ had anything in common with the meaning of existence, then “how they are in the world” would have less do with the distinction between subjective and objective understanding. The problem of transmission of this understanding would not be considered a “hard” problem.
The concept of objective is an intersubjective spook created as we create everything, through negotiations with each other in the context of past negotiations (known as “culture”). Our understanding of each other is always an approximation. We think we have it when pattern regularity holds.
For me “meaning” is a bit of a code word. Why do I take this action? The Why is the meaning of the What. The Ends. The mechanics of that What is the How… the means. The questions are along separate axis though they do have a relation.