Existentialism has been a hard topic for me to grasp, but this excerpt from an essay by Richard Beck as he was riffing on Tillich struck me and some thoughts, like very polite guests, came and introduced themselves to me. Finding a meaningful life through the courage to be just became a little clearer.
How did the dimension of depth become lost? … The loss of the dimension of depth is caused by the relation of man to his world and to himself in our period, the period in which nature is being subjected scientifically and technically to the control of man. In this period, life in the dimension of depth is replaced by life in the horizontal dimension. The driving forces of the industrial society of which we are a part go ahead horizontally and not vertically…
Modern life is characterized by great technological and scientific power accompanied by an existential vacuum. Life feels devoid of any greater purpose or ultimate meaning. Human experience lacks depth. Here’s how Charles Taylor describes it in A Secular Age:
Almost every action of ours has a point; we’re trying to get to work, or to find a place to buy a bottle of milk after hours. But we can stop and ask why we’re doing these things, and that points us beyond to the significance of these significances. The issue may arise for us in a crisis, where we feel that what has been orienting our life up to now lacks real value, weight…A crucial feature of the malaise of immanence is the sense that all these answers are fragile, or uncertain; that a moment may come, where we no longer feel that our chosen path is compelling, or cannot justify it to ourselves or others.
There is a fragility of meaning…[T]he quotidian is emptied of deeper resonance, is dry, flat; the things which surround us are dead, ugly, empty; and the way we organize them, shape them, in order to live has no meaning, beauty, depth, sense…[We now experience] a terrible flatness in the everyday.
Dimension of Depth
What does he mean that “The driving forces of the industrial society of which we are a part go ahead horizontally and not vertically…”? We’re not asking deep questions about the meaning of life and searching for answers to those deep questions. We are content with being distracted in the shallow. And we are content to spread our attention outward rather than diving deeper inward. Because that seems nerdy or foolish. We are letting opportunity to spread out have our attention rather than searching for answers with meaning. The industrial society, the culture of production with scientific and technological breakthroughs is at the forefront of distracting us from discovering meaning to our lives, as they offer that they are the meaning we seek.
By allowing ourselves to believe that we can find meaning in the here and now, what new and exciting things technology offers us, one upping our neighbor, trips to exotic or high status places, the neighborhood we live in, the job we have and so on, we live with the anxiety that grows as we begin to see the thin veil covering all this and realize that behind that veil is meaningless stuff and activity and our suspicions become more and more affirmed that after gathering all these trappings and showing them off to our neighbor, we will feel even more empty than the present emptiness we feel that is driving us to reach for these things.
The terrible danger behind this is that as humans we are fragile. And that fragility means that we can drive ourselves to despair. We can come to the conclusion that life itself is meaningless and nothing that we do matters. We are comfortable living outside social norms because in despair, there are no norms, there is no right and wrong, we’ve gone to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and there is no fruit to eat, there is just a snake waiting to trick us.
Seeing Past The Lie
Perhaps it is our search for meaning that gives our life meaning. That search starts with developing determination. What is that determination? Not to be fooled by the “realm of Maya”. Rooting ourselves in the belief that we are deeply spiritual beings. Even calling ourselves “human beings” rather than spiritual beings is a deception that we have conceded to. Perhaps the only way to live a full and meaningful life is to go inward. Then keep asking ourselves, “What is really going on here?”.
Looking beyond what we see and seeking what we cannot immediately see. What if we look for the purpose beyon the function of our profession? Whether I am a heart surgeon saving lives, or a rocket scientist putting men on the moon or a teacher showing 5 year olds how to use crayons and scissors, the importance of what I am doing has nothing to do with my occupation, its all just roles that we are playing.
Our Costumes
What happens when we take the costume off? Where do we go then? Who are we without that costume? Are we looking for another role to play? Are we trying to find meaning in the role we play and the costume we wear? Have we been tricked into believing our costumes are the only place meaning exists? How foolish actors and actresses would look if they lived their life in character rather than being themselves.
Is that perhaps how foolish we look trying to find meaning in the role that we play rather than the life we get to live? Perhaps the actors and actresses that we exalt has having everything that we seek to give our lives meaning – looks, riches, fame, influence are just playing another role, a role that deceives us into thinking that those things will give our lives meaning and if we strive for them we too will live a full meaningful life.
Be Your Own Brand
And the Kim Kardashians of the world,not to pick on her but she is the quintessential role model. She tells us the secret to a meaningful life is to decide who we are and then craft an image reflects that to the world. But just because our image seems to be living an enviable life, doesn’t mean that we will feel fulfilled. In fact, we just go deeper into despair when we realize that our image is living a better life than we are.
To Be Or Not To Do
If prolonging life through heart surgery is meaningful to us, then heart surgeon is a role we should play. Yes we may have saved someone’s life. But really we have just staved off the inevitable. But what if heart surgery is a portal for us to glimpse what is beyond our life. Yet it is perhaps no better a portal than teaching five year olds how to color and use scissors. That is if teaching five year olds how to do that helps us see better. Helps us see that this world of science and technology that seems black and white is really an illusion. Maybe its an infinite spectrum of colors blended together. Revealing meaning as we learn how to use our scissors and know what to cut away that obscures it.
I a great article on Eric Hyde’s blog concerning the three anxieties that Tillich says underlay all our anxeties.