Jungian Archetypes
The Most Important Question
Fact and Meaning
One of the most natural questions to ask is, “What is the meaning of life?” Why are we here on this planet, existing as living beings with the abilities to have conscious experiences, learn about the Universe, and make choices about how to act in the world? What is the purpose of our existence? This question is near and dear to us because we are built to focus our lives around a purpose, and we have a primal craving for that purpose to be as worthwhile as possible.
When we speak of “meaning,” there are three possible definitions. The first has to do with communication. When one person wants to get an idea from their head to someone else’s, they use words or non-verbal signals, and we say that these signals carry meaning. I have imbued every sentence on this blog with this kind of meaning, with the hope that you will receive it when you read it. The second kind of meaning is the wake of physical signs that are left after an event or series of events. If you walk into a room and see balloons and streamers in disarray, tablecloths with stains, and paper plates with crumbs, it means there has just been a birthday party in this room, and no one has cleaned it up yet. This kind of meaning is what detectives look for at crime scenes, and what scientists look for in experiments and observatories.
The meaning we are interested in for this discussion is the third kind, the sense of meaning, which we get when we feel our choices and efforts are in line with a worthwhile purpose. At the center of our natures, what we humans want to do more than anything else is that which is meaningful. That’s why I sacrifice time that could have been spent playing video games to write blog posts and stories. Writing itself doesn’t give me much pleasure. In fact, coming up with the next words can be uncomfortable, or even painful if I really push myself. But when I get something finished and ready to present to the world, the sense of meaning it gives me is worth every moment that could have been spent on things that would have given me immediate gratification.
We humans have sought purpose and meaning from outside of ourselves for as long as we have been around. We have looked to the Earth, the Universe, and the metaphysical nature of Reality, in the hope that we can find some principle or message woven into the fabric of existence that will give us a purpose that is so noble that we will perpetually be driven toward it and our lives will be constantly awash in meaning. However, my thoughts on the matter have led me to conclude that when we do this, we are looking in the wrong place. Meaning of the third kind comes from acting in accordance to purposes that resonate with our own instinctual natures, and are not determined in any way by the facts of our environment or our world.
To support this claim, I argue that the sense of meaning is different from the first two kinds of meaning, both of which depend on external facts. First, we observe that simply acting as you are told does not necessarily give us a sense of meaning, whether the person we follow is a parent, a ruler, or even a God. You might say that if God writes our natures into us so that we find following his instructions to be meaningful, then the meaning of life is found in God’s commands, but this is not correct. Even in such a scenario, our sense of meaning still comes from our actions lining up with the purpose found within our nature, not from the content of God’s commands.
As for the second kind of meaning, following trails of evidence can teach us facts about the world, past events, or future possibilities, but we can always ask, “so what?” At the smallest level, the building block particles of reality behave somewhat like particles and somewhat like waves. So what? Gravity is the bending of space and time. So what? Dumping waste chemicals into rivers can kill fish and make people sick. So what? Facts by themselves don’t give us purpose, they only show us how effective our actions will be at furthering our purposes. Therefore our purpose-oriented sense of meaning cannot be the same as the second definition of “meaning.”
From this point on, when I use the word “meaning,” it is understood to be the third definition, the sense of meaning that comes from aligning one’s actions with one’s instinctually inspired purposes.
Some people say the Universe has no meaning. This is not correct; in fact, as they say, it is not even wrong. Meaning and fact are completely separate realms of existence, so trying to talk about the meaning of something that can only be described in factual terms is nonsense. Meaning exists within us, when the messages we hear resonate with us, giving us energy and driving us toward a noble purpose. This is what we mean when we talk about having a meaningful life.
The separation of fact and meaning leads to a very unfortunate dilemma regarding a very important word: truth. Most people take for granted that if something is true, it is both factual and meaningful. But we have just shown that fact and meaning are uncoupled, independent of one another, so there is no guarantee that what is factual will also be meaningful, or that what is meaningful will also be factual.
In the face of this dilemma, some people use “truth” to describe that which is factual, and not necessarily meaningful. Many scientists and science-enthusiasts hold this view. The problem with this is that “truth” has a feeling to it, a ring of purity. Truth is supposed to be a good thing, supposed to set you free. In a fact-only view of truth, there are many things that are true, but knowing them would only bring suffering.
Others use “truth” to mean that which is meaningful, and not necessarily factual. Professor Jordan Peterson, whom I look up to as a role model in many ways, is one of them. The problem with this view is that it can be used as an excuse to declare things to be true without much justification. When two people with sizable followings declare contradictory “truths” in this manner, it can create conflict, which, in the more extreme cases, can become violent.
Others simply refuse to separate fact and meaning. This leads to problems, because they prioritize intuition over evidence, and it can lead to rejecting important, well-supported facts, like that humans are influencing the Earth’s climate, and that we are part of the same tree of Evolution as all other living things on Earth. What these people fail to realize is that these facts do not dictate what our purpose should be, rather they inform us how best to live in accordance with our purpose. In denying well-supported facts, they sabotage their own purpose, making it harder for them and those around them to live meaningfully.
Still others decide to throw out the word altogether, claiming there is no truth, which, as you may imagine, does not sit well with anyone who holds a different view. My own tongue strains with derision toward these people, so I will decline to comment further about this view today.
My own way of dealing with the fact-meaning gap is to simply say there are two kinds of truth, that which is factual and that which is meaningful. We can call these literal truth and metaphorical truth. “Most snakes have fangs” is a literal truth, whereas “we are filled with snakes” is a metaphorical truth, signifying the side of human nature that runs counter to our nobler purposes. If we understand that there are two kinds of truth, it is not very hard to figure out from the context which is which.
There is a good chance that you do not like the conclusion that fact and meaning are separate. I know I don’t. Deep inside of ourselves, we want facts to be meaningful. After all, one of the most powerful ways to show meaning is by telling stories, which come in the form of a bunch of fact-like statements. But as any good storyteller knows, there is a reason why scientific papers are boring, but science fiction novels are gripping, even if they explain the same facts. That reason is because well-written stories tickle our senses of beauty, empathy, and archetypal resonance. We wish the same thing were true for reality, but we do not have to look very hard to see that Reality is not like stories. Tragedy strikes with no bright side. Patterns seem to appear and lead us nowhere. Ultimately Reality behaves exactly as we would expect if it were governed by clockwork mechanics and probability, not by human archetypes.
Meaning exists. It is not found in the facts of science, but in our own actions. As living beings, we are driven to do things, to devote our lives to projects and responsibility. Some life projects are extremely meaningful, others less so. What determines this is not the nature of the Universe, or how we have come to be as we are, but how well our actions resonate with our internal unconscious drives. The more our actions and drives are in harmony, the nobler we perceive our purpose to be. On the other hand, we find ourselves in a world made of facts, which put conditions and constraints on how we can go about our purposes. Meaning and fact are separate, but they are both important. Our sense of meaning points us toward purposes worth pursuing, and facts tell us how best to pursue our purposes.
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