Meaning Crisis, or Meaning of X, or ....

I spoke to a friend this past weekend who recently took the package from a federal agency, and is likely going to have trouble finding new employment. This raised a question, he is a dear friend who has shaped my thinking deeply, but he offered aloud: "I had such high expectations of myself in getting something accomplished in my life, but I'm basically a run-of-the-mill human, not really contributing that much.

What has me pause about this is the orientation that we in the US have toward exceptionalism as a goal or norm.

With AI booming, you are a lot more likely to hear something like, "What is a human to do if a machine can do EVERYTHING better than any of us can?"

I can feel the pull of anxiety in this question as well, but I pause and reflect. When I pick up the guitar, do I aspire to be the best gosh-darned guitar player of all time? Do I stop playing as soon as I realize that I'll never be Eddie Van Halen or Segovia? 

Being the best in the world, or changing the world doesn't make sense as a bar of "is something worthwhile or not?"

I look at the squirrels in my yard, and watch them climbing the trees and clucking at each other between vigorous chases. Does any of them think: "Shoot, I'm just no good as I squirrel, I haven't added anything of note to squirrel-kind."

Jordan's recent SubStack post about 'Meaning Revolution' as an alternative phrasing to 'Meaning Crisis' had me thinking about this question more deeply (as did Sara Ness's post  regarding whether having children is selfish). This ability to apply a linguistic label that also acts as a valence filter to everything we do is kind of messed up. The internet, social media, influencers, and AI are amplifying this leverage of language a bunch in a very short period of time.

I have an unusually high setpoint for belonging and worthiness compared to most people that I know. It took me a while to realize this, because I just assumed that everyone is fundamentally okay. Even so, I have my moments and situations where I get very self-conscious or insecure about my capabilities. Through Relateful and other relational practices I've realized that a lot of other folks are conscious of insecurity a lot more than me in general. But lately, I'm starting to feel this pressure to be more, do more, influence more than I ever did previously. 

It feels like a kind of existential panic. We frogs (or canaries) are starting to look around nervously, "Is it me, or is this water warmer (or is the air a little staler) than it was five minutes ago?"

Is it me, or did the meaning straight-jacket get tightened one more notch.

Speaking of Meaning, all this has me recalling Victor Frankl and "Man's Search for Meaning." A key takeaway for me is not to pin "hope" on something random I don't have any control over (if I can just wait until the next election...). I remind myself to pay attention to the things I can change, and to change my perspective to look inward, feel my breath, enjoy a hug, etc.

Not all tightenings are the result of pathology. Try to empathize with you as a nearly full term embryo starting to notice that heels, knees, elbows and fists don't have as much wiggle room as they used to. If that pre-born had our language skills, it might think: "This is unsustainable, I'm going to have to significantly change my habits, it's clear that I'm stressing the momma and that can't be good for her either."

The more I contemplate these alternate narratives, the more I realize that modern civilized human beings have been living with the ever-stricter constraints of the consequences of separate-sense-of-self. 

Amazingly, evolution has solved problems like these and many others even harder. Winner take all is a philosophy with an past-due expiration date. Drinking from that stream will only give curdled milk. We have no idea what deep co-sensing on a full planet scale will be like when we collectively let go of being steward-as-dictator, and return to just another species climbing the tree and clucking at one another.

Meaning Revolution? I don't know, that still sound like some could take it as an invitation to civil unrest.

How about polyvolutional harmonization?

I know, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but the meaning of these words: twisting and turning in lots of new and different directions, maybe we can start to trust some of that junk DNA that we've been ignoring, even more than our left-hemisphere's obsession with zero-sum balance sheets.

Who is up for a new kind of game? The stakes can still be high, but I wanna find the others who are excited to play.

May it be so.