Looking for Meaning

September 5, 2019 Cognitive Insights No Comments

Many bright people live in a world devoid of meaning. By avoiding the devoid, they even get more and more in a strut. How to get out?

This is an important text to me…

and to you, dear reader, for one plain reason: without meaning, there is no meaning… of anything.

Meaning is related to depth.

Meaning is related to the subconceptual.

At the purely conceptual level

there is no meaning possible. If one says: the meaning of concept Y lies in concept X, what is then the meaning of concept X? One keeps looking for meaning as in a look-up table. That would be meaningful if one would, for instance, end up at concept A which would be truly meaningful.

But then I would ask: why?

– “Because I say it’s meaningful.”

Why do you?

There is no way

of getting beyond concepts in purely conceptual thinking. And ‘meaning’-as-a-concept is just not about the conceptual, at least not as I’m using this term and as you might have guessed.

This meaning is being lost in many scientific domains because that’s a world prone to concept-ualize everything.

Conceptualizing is OK where it’s OK.

Conceptualizing may have bad consequences where it’s not OK. [see: “Other Consequences”]

So, how to get out?

Perhaps by using scientist’s schemes: conceptualizing the subconceptual.

Well, I’m trying to do so as much as I can. Still, I encounter scientists who are ‘resistant’ to anything that could open their house of concepts. Outside of that house, they feel very uncomfortable to the point of – almost – losing rationality itself.

So, how does one find deeper meaning?

By finding it, of course. Which is: by experiencing it. Eventually, one is the other.

Experiencing is a here-and-now event. It’s about poetry, about art, being in nature, being in relationships, etc.

Hm. For instance, physicians see lots of patients but what many of them really see too much are diseases, prognoses, etc.

No depth. No warmth. No meaning in the job. Burnout.

Meditation

is according to me a nice way to reach deeper layers of meaning.

A lot of different stuff is being called ‘meditation’. One of them – my take on it – is centered on deeper contact with oneself. That’s also the goal of the 1000+ AURELIS health meditations.

It is my attempt to bring some meaning.