The Paradox of Happiness and Meaning
A Link Between Worlds — Surfing the Collapsing Wave of Meaning
As humans, we all desire happiness. And especially nowadays, with trends like mindfulness and different approaches of positive psychology, our focus has shifted more and more towards eliminating suffering. Yet happiness is not the same as a sense of meaning of life. How do we go about creating a meaningful life, not just a happy one?
According to psychoanalytic thinker Viktor Frankl, the meaning of life lies in finding a purpose. By having a clear “why” we can face all the “how” questions of life.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
A purpose can be presented by different types of goals that transcend the current moment towards a specific goal (becoming a boxing champion or a millionaire, catching every Pokémon) or a condition of fulfilment (being sportive, spiritual enlightenment, being in love). The perceived purpose in life depends strongly on the goals and the expected rewards. Once a long term goal is achieved but the expected emotional reward is missing, one can find himself in a serious crisis of meaning.
The gap between expected and experienced reward can create a lack of orientation and motivation. This phenomenon is also observed when training animals like dogs or dolphins and can play a crucial role in their learning behavior.
In his book “Steps to the Ecology of Mind”, Gregory Bateson, the famous anthropologist, describes how he studied learning and communication among dolphins. In his research he discovered first evidence of creativity among dolphins.
A dolphin named Malia was selected as the subject in a public show on “the first steps of dolphin training.” As the name implies, this show was designed to show visitors the principles of dolphin training. In order to repeat the presentation of learning behavior to the visitors, Malia had to be trained a new trick every show. As soon as the dolphin mastered the trick (e.g. a salto, jump through the ring,…) in each show, she was rewarded with a fish.
In the next show, there was no reward for the already mastered trick. The dolphin had to learn a new trick in order to get fed fish. This pattern of learning new tricks was repeated 14 times in three days. After a while the trainers ran out of new behaviors to reinforce and train.
In the 15th show and thereafter, Malia suddenly and spontaneously began to perform new tricks and novel behaviors it hadn’t been shown before but had developed by herself.
Malia demonstrated an intellectual leap. The dolphin had learnt that learning, not fixed behavior, is what gets rewarded. A lecture, that most of us humans still have to learn.
As humans we were mostly trained by our childhood experiences about “good” behavior that promises us rewards and “bad” behavior that might lead to punishment. Yet we rarely reflect our deep patterns of behavior and learned “tricks”.
Our laboriously built identities are mostly based on such stagnated behavior patterns that we learned in our youth. We identify as intellectuals, businessmen, sport professionals or artists because we once learned this behavior gets us rewarded. Yet this fixed mindsets and identification can lead to myriads of conflict and suffering if not adapted well to the circumstances of our life.
In our not so ancient past, humans were by far not nature’s predator number one. Put a tiger, bear or even a random snake into a cage with a human. The poor human could not take any chance in physical strength or speed. Therefore, the humans survival as hunters and gatherers in the past was greatly dependent on our sneakiness, meaning knowledge about the environment and ability to find creative solutions to the lack of physical evolutionary fitness.
Our knowledge about the environment is represented in complex mental models about the world. These representations are created by interpreting raw data from our senses. E.g. Color does not exist in nature, it is just the mental representation of a certain wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum. We cannot know how the world really is, but we create mental models of it that depend on our perception, our needs, certain innate conditions and previous mental structures. Understanding something means finding a suitable representation of it in form of a mental model. The human brain evolved to build models.
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”— William Shakespeare
Our immense and slimy biocomputer that is our human brain became so performant at modelling its environment that we forgot that the simulation is not the real world. Our simulation of the world became our truth and our self-image was mistaken as our soul. We forgot that all is merely a theater of thoughts, sensations and feelings playing on the screen of our awareness. We got trapped into our own simulation. Just like Neo in the Matrix, who in the end is still trapped because he thinks that he is the Chosen One.
Self-images create meaning and personal value in our life, yet exactly these self-images also give birth to suffering. When identifying as a successful artist, programmer or manager, there is a strong urge to maintain this role and push harder every day to fulfill the theater role.
“ I can’t get no satisfaction
’Cause I try and I try and I try and I try”— The Rolling Stones
We are confused and dissatisfied because we want to maintain or reach our self-images. It is basically like getting lost in a movie. When the main hero in a horror movie is fleeing from zombies, we also feel stress and fear. Sometimes to that end that we can’t stand it and have to leave the cinema. In this moment we forgot emotionally that we are not hunted by undead humans and got completely identified with our experience of the movie.
When we are getting lost in the construction of our identities, we forget that these are not fixed souls, yet merely they are everchanging clouds of meaning and associations. In the same way our roles in society are constantly evolving. Some of these roles and purposes in our awareness are more stable than others. Their stability depends on factors like emotional conditioning, our sense of self and the fluidity of our world. When our purposes are falling away due to success, failure or reevaluation, this can lead to a feeling of being completely lost. In these situations, we can find ourselves in deep suffering and grief. Especially when part of our constructed identities were built up on this lost purpose or goal.
Also, in biological evolution we can find that no purpose is final. The purpose of early wings in dinosaurs was not flying, rather probably to astonish the potential mating partner. Yet natural selection has no goal, it simply happens. When the environment and therefore selection pressure changed, the new purpose (flying) for wings increased the survival rate of certain animals and this enabled a whole new branch of animals, sometimes called birds.
Evolution plays the long (hopefully infinite) game, which is basically a set of millions of subgames. Each behavior evolved with a different purpose. The same is true for the evolution of our Selfs. There is not just one single game in our life, but we are playing in order to increase the number of possible future games.
For this “Meta-Game”, the game of multiple games, we have to hold onto our purpose, yet stay open for change and transformation. Like the action of walking: one foot grounded on meaning, the other one floating in creative vagueness. This rhythm enables personal evolution and carries our energy further into future adventures.
Invite and Invent
Improvisation theater was recognizing this principle and teaching it since many years. If an actor does not care about the scene or the story, the information presented to him will not be perceived as important and so his subconsciousness will not process it that deeply. The actor must be emotionally involved in the game, in order to facilitate his whole intelligence. Yet, due to its improvisational character, other actors might have other distinct goals for the direction of the story in mind. So, you can’t stay focused on your idea for the story. You must stay open and transcendent enough to adapt to the ideas and feelings communicated by your fellow players.
While surfing on the constantly collapsing wave of meaning, you are inviting new information and inventing new meaning.
“Most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz”
— Robert Christgau
A child’s play represents an open relaxed state that is constructing meaning while being open for new information. In a playful mind we can test, transform our knowledge about ourselves and the world.
When talking about open-mindedness, we should not confuse the flexibility of our worldview with not having any worldview at all. When playing any game, we need a partner that plays along and has an overlapping set of perspectives and identifications. For example, when you are standing on the stage of your improvisation theater with a partner that does not accept your played reality that you are in a spaceship, you can construct neither story nor meaning.
If a family member does not identify as being part of the group, he or she will not invest much energy into the wellbeing of the family. Identification gives meaning and motivation. Without any identification, there is nowhere to go.
In this way, self-transcendence is a concept, sometimes misunderstood as letting go of all identifications (and therefore attachments). Unfortunately this happens especially in some Buddhist traditions. In such traditions, meditation is used to deconstruct our perceptions in order to dissolve any feeling of emotional weight, as well as our sense of self. Such sets of meditation techniques are designed to go beyond all meaning and finally feel at peace with the universe. Indeed, recent research finds more and more evidence that it is possible to deconstruct our mental representations and identifications, so that the mind of an ambitious practitioner of meditation, can become very peaceful. Yet this peace is always a trade-off with meaning, since meaning is understood as a collection of perceptions. In this way, some forms of intensive meditation deconstruct old meaning without adding a new one. In this void of meaning, the body and mind can relax without being disturbed by any perception.
In contrast, for a mind which was not trained in such ways, the mental and emotional tension between desired goals and the current situation can create suffering. This suffering can be a source of energy and motivation to resolve the gap between the person and the goal. When you are worrying about your family member, your conscious and subconscious mind will work as hard as it can to find help. Besides suffering, passion represents another massive emotional drive for acting and reacting in our lives. A mind which is not emotionally involved will not process the events in life with the same energy. In order to find happiness in emotional involvement, we need to find a balance between reactive impulsivity and detached peace.
“Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves — mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.”
— Alan Watts
When a mother wants to help her crying child, neither complete self-transcendence nor complete involvement of emotions is helpful. The famous Buddhist middle way skillfully applied, where the balance between involvement and transcendence is constantly shifted, might provide a bridge between meaning and peace.
Due to the everchanging nature of reality, staying balanced in life requires a constant reevaluation of our purposes and goals. Reevaluation means recognizing the unique and sometimes subtle shifts that present themselves to you in your current stage of life. These shifts are opportunities for discovering new facets to your purpose and motivation.
Our perceived knowledge about the world is a function of time and context. Therefore, impermanent in its nature. In this dynamic world, knowledge is not passively received through the senses, but is actively constructed depending on the current state of the observer. This knowledge construction can provide balance when each old meaning is constantly updated and therefore transcended with new meaning.
In this sense we can recognize transcendence as the awareness and embodiment of impermanence and constructive nature of our identifications. Furthermore, this awareness demands a continuous flow of transcendence. Because no transcendence will ever be final, it might be better understood as a verb, rather than a noun. Transcending as enacted knowledge of impermanence.
A Koan from Zen-Teacher Linji Yixuan, warns us about craving and clinging, even to spiritual goals:
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
— Linji Yixuan
If you meet Buddha on the road, he is actually already dead. The Buddha you meet is a perception, and every perception is processed and therefore is constructed information. Merely an old and dusty narrative in our mind that needs to be transcended again. Yet if this narrative allows our current personal meaning to stay flexible, it keeps our mind open for future narratives. In this way, the definitions of Meaning and Transcendence merge into one single function. A bridge into the future of our interconnected lives.
Recognizing Meaning as just a recursive bridge to the next Meaning. A Link to the Past, to the future, to the next Meaning. The Adventure of Link is the adventure of playing the long game. A game that creates the possibility for future games.
This approach to our meaning creation requires us to stay present and keep an open awareness. To be sensitive to the subtle shifts of meaning in our lives. Not being dogmatic about our world and identifications yet also not completely detached from it.
A healthy psychological or spiritual practice trains us to surf the waves of rising and passing identifications. It reminds us to see meaning and purpose as tools for transcendence.
We shall keep tickling and shaking our perspectives in order to start experiencing life as a great divine play full of meaning and joy.
“He who understands me,” says Wittgenstein finally recognizes as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it) …new obstacles appear which require new ladders.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
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