A Significant Life (Todd May)
OVERVIEW
Todd May, who previously tackled mortality and death anxiety, now turns his magnifying glass to meaning. As atheists, we don’t believe there is any god-given meaning, so is meaning a personal construction? Do we create and choose our own? If meaning can’t be found “out there” in the cosmos, can our lives really be meaningful in any objective way?
May’s goal in “A Significant Life: Human Meaning In A Silent Universe” is this: to demonstrate that a human life can be objectively meaningful, even without god or any cosmic guarantee. Not to say that there is a purpose to our living, but that there are more purposeful ways of living compared to other ways. To arrive at our destination, we’ll need to articulate what meaning isn’t, why we should replace meaning with meaningfulness, and what type of values we can express during our lives that may lend it that meaningfulness.
But first, we’d like to know, are atheists in some way meaning-impoverished by their non-belief? Would it be better for us if god existed? Let’s get this housekeeping out of the way.
God as the giver of meaning
Even if we could be assured that god existed (and further, that we knew which textual interpretation was accurate), god still wouldn’t solve the riddle of meaning. Here’s May’s two-part reasoning on this point:
1) If god prescribes meaning, then only god can decide what is meaningful. With that in mind, imagine if god revealed that the meaning of life was to collect seashells. Does this revelation feel satisfying? Does it help at all that the revelation came from god? No, it doesn’t. And if god can’t declare anything to be meaningful, if a declaration of this nature doesn’t make something meaningful, then it must be that god is not the prescriber of meaning.
2) But to round out the reasoning, could god ever prescribe meaning? If god itself is to be meaningful (and surely it is), then there must be some inherent meaning to which it is conforming. From that perspective, meaning is something underwritten by the universe, not assigned by god. God doesn’t create meaning.
It’s worth presenting this argument paralleled for morality: if god is good, then goodness must be something written into the fabric of the universe, not something god defines – and further, if god were to declare infanticide morally good, that wouldn’t make it moral from our perspective. On morality and meaning, god has no ultimate authority.
And so it is that, with or without god, we arrive back at our original predicament: is meaning some cosmic feature to be discovered, or is meaning an individual creation?
What meaning isn’t
We won’t linger on cosmic meaning… an argument for nihilism is probably unnecessary given this audience. As far as we know, meaning isn’t some embedded universal feature. There doesn’t seem to be any purpose to our existing other than luck and happenstance. (For an expansion on why we’re so driven to search for purpose in the first place, I recommend “The Belief Instinct” by Jesse Bering). We look out across the cosmos and find no satisfying purpose to our existence. On the question of meaning, the universe is silent.
Discarding that possibility, what is usually offered in its stead is that meaning is a personal creation, that we as individuals craft our own definition of meaning. For May, this perspective is still imprecise.
There may be no cosmic meaning, but it doesn’t logically follow then that meaning is something subjective that you as an individual can create or choose. If meaning were a personal choice, then what would be the point of it? If all that’s required is a personal declaration, then we could all proclaim our lives to be meaningful and that would settle it. But that doesn’t seem a satisfying answer, and it’s this felt dissatisfaction that suggests meaning is something objective that we are looking to access, something outside ourselves. A universally ratified meaning may not be on offer, but that doesn’t change what we want from meaning – for it to be an objective standard that we can measure our lives against. What might fit this bill?
What meaningfulness is
To start, May encourages us to discard meaning in favour of meaningfulness. Rather than our lives possessing meaning, it’s more that there are certain ways of living that are more meaningful than others. Meaning is a something, but meaningfulness is a someway – a how rather than a what. Meaningfulness is a manner of interacting with the world that lends our lives significance.
So what might our criteria for meaningfulness be? Here May turns to Susan Wolf’s book “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters,” which says our lives are most meaningful “when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” Subjective attraction speaks to the requirement that you feel involved in your life and its projects – absorbed, gripped, excited, interested, and engaged with or by them. Further, these need to be projects and participation that you feel matter/matters. Your projects capture your focus. The second criterion is objective attractiveness, there needs to be objective value. There must be some measure of objectivity to what is considered a “worthy project,” some standard to which our lives measure up or they don’t. But where Wolf worries how values can ever be objective, May is less pessimistic, offering one possible set of virtues that he’s termed narrative values.
Narrative values – themes that make life meaningful
May thinks that when you ask “is my life meaningful?” what you’re really asking is “has my life as a whole been meaningful?” Lives are trajectories, a “thickness of time through which our living happens,” and so it feels intuitive to May that our approach to meaningfulness should be a narrative one. What lends more meaning to the trajectory of our lives is, therefore, the theme(s) of those lives’ trajectories. May calls these themes narrative values, the virtues or characteristics that we display over the course of our lives that make them more meaningful. Examples include steadfastness, sincerity, intensity, integrity, adventurousness, creativity, courage, and intellectual curiosity. Narrative values are not about what you feel, they are about what you express – how you engage with your activities and the manner by which you live. A pause here to underscore the importance of this distinction: while an emotion like happiness might be something you feel, meaningfulness is not about feeling, it’s about expressing and living. Living meaningfully by way of narrative values is something you do.
May argues that narrative values fulfill Wolf’s requirement of objective attractiveness because their desirability is widely accepted; they don’t arise according to individual or collective whim. These values are not underwritten or ratified by the cosmos, but they are not arbitrary or capricious. Narrative values are not ultimately assured, but neither are they subjective. And so, looking back from our deathbed, having lived a life that was marked by courage, selflessness, personal integrity, or perseverance, we will say that it was more meaningful than it might otherwise have been – that living this way was worthwhile, and that it lent our lives more significance than if we had lived them differently.
May is clear that narrative values are only one type of possible value system, and that there are certainly others, like aesthetic values (living a life of beauty) or moral values (living a life of goodness). But while morality is often seen as an obligation, living a courageous, a generous, or a spontaneous life is not compulsory; courage, generosity, and spontaneity are voluntary virtues, thematic expressions of living that make those lives feel more worthwhile. May allows (and even hopes) that there are other frameworks of meaning, but the web of narrative values is one that fulfills our criteria (and one is better than none!)
So meaning is not an inherent cosmic feature to be discovered, nor is it a personal creation. Rather than meaning being something we possess, we should instead consider meaningfulness as something we express, a way of living that lends our lives significance (though by no means is the only way). Because our lives are trajectories, it seems fitting that our standard of meaningfulness should be found in the theme of those trajectories, what May calls “narrative values,” like courage, curiosity, generosity, and integrity. Unlike moral values, living our narrative values is not obligatory, but doing so imbues our lives with a kind of richness. Narrative values are a way to “illuminate styles of lives that are worth living,” a way in which a human life can be meaningful.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
To come to the end of our lives and feel contented that they were meaningful, we should frequently consider the narrative values we are (or aren’t) living (we’re going to set aside May’s argument that your life can be objectively meaningful even if you don’t feel satisfied that it was, and that it’s possible to expressive narrative values without realizing it).
We have only a certain amount of time allotted to us, and while our search for some unified “meaning of life” has been fruitless, there are ways of living that are more meaningful than other ways. It’s this gradation we’re after – considering what kind of life, what theme, might make the ending less bitter, might make the story feel more significant than it could otherwise have been. For me, the most useful way to guide your living is to consider your dying: the “deathbed test.” What style of living would leave you with the fewest regrets? Would a life of adventure or a life of contemplation feel more worthwhile? Maybe your raison d'être is creativity, or intensity, or gracefulness, or steadfastness. Whichever style(s) of living resonates most with you, take notice and engage.
A final note, May argues that moral values are different than narrative values because living morally feels mandatory (while living meaningfully, though recommended, seems optional). That said, immorality has a way of devaluing meaningfulness. Suicide bombers may be objectively living the narrative value of courage, but few would say they were living meaningfully. So while meaningfulness is a matter of gradation, immorality like nothing else has the ability to subtract from meaningfulness. Therefore, expressing moral values like honesty, fairness, respect, and kindness, can’t be divorced from the quest for meaning.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? Yes.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? An iterative thought experiment that builds to how a human life can be meaningful without god or any inherent purpose to the universe.
Who should read this book? Atheists and nihilists concerned with meaning.