Schematic overview: all dimensions

This page is a schematic overview of the main part of the book Meaningness. It briefly describes the various stances one can take to each of the dimensions of meaningness.

The meanings of the rows in the tables are explained in “The psychological anatomy of a stance.”

Meaning and meaninglessness

Stance	Eternalism	Nihilism	Meaning/ness
Summary	Everything is given a fixed meaning by an eternal ordering principle (Cosmic Plan)	Nothing is really meaningful	Meaning is nebulous, yet patterned; meaningfulness and meaninglessness intermingle
What it denies	Nebulosity; meaninglessness	Pattern; meaningfulness
What it fixates	Meaning	Meaninglessness
The sales pitch	You are guaranteed a good outcome if you follow the rules	You don’t have to care! Don’t get fooled again	Accurate understanding of meaningness allows both freedom and purpose
Emotional appeal	Certainty; understanding; control. Reassurance that if you act in accordance with Cosmic Plan, everything will be well.	Intelligence. Also, nothing means anything, so not getting what you want is not a problem.
Pattern of thinking	Deliberate stupidity; sentimentality; self-righteousness	Contempt; rage; intellectualization; depression; anxiety	Joyful realism
Likely next stances	Mission	Materialism
Accomplishment	Unify your self with Cosmic Plan	Total apathy	Wizardry
How it causes suffering	Action based on imagined meanings fails; narrowed scope for action; Cosmic Plan makes insane, harmful demands	Have to blind self to meaningfulness; undermines any practical action
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Difficulty of blinding oneself to manifestations of nebulosity, and submitting to Cosmic Plan	Difficulty of blinding self to manifestations of pattern, and abandoning all desires	Unappealing due to complexity and uncertainty
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Curiosity; realism; intelligence; enjoyment of nebulosity, meaninglessness, un-knowing	Enjoyment of pattern; recovery of passion
Intelligent aspect	There is meaning, and it is not merely subjective, so nihilism is wrong	There are no inherent, objective, or eternal meanings, so eternalism is wrong
Positive appropriation after resolution	Respect for pattern is a compassionate aspect of realism	Recognition of nebulosity is a wisdom aspect of nihilism; nearly-correct understanding of defects of eternalism

Unity, diversity, and separateness

Stance	Monism	Dualism	Participation
Summary	All is One	Everything is clearly distinct from everything else. Especially me	Reality is indivisible but diverse
What it denies	Differences, boundaries, specifics, individuality	Connection, dynamic interplay, unbounded responsibility
What it fixates	Unity; also over-emphasizes connection	Boundaries, separateness, limitations, definitions
The sales pitch	You are God	Clarity gives you control
Emotional appeal	I am all-powerful, all-knowing, immortal, invulnerable	I am not contaminated by other beings, and have only specific, limited responsibility for them
Pattern of thinking	Willful stupidity	Distrust	Engagement
Likely next stances	Eternalism, mission, true self, specialness	Can combine with either eternalism or nihilism
Accomplishment	Directly perceive all things as One	Perfect independence	Phenomena (including oneself) understood as neither distinct nor identical
How it causes suffering	Have to blind self to diversity of physical reality	Alienation due to being cut off from world and others
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Obviousness of diversity	Obviousness of connection	Difficulty of understanding the complete stance
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Appreciation of diversity	Appreciation of connectedness
Intelligent aspect	Non-obvious connections are common and often important; all categories are somewhat nebulous	The world is endlessly diverse
Positive appropriation after resolution	Provisional understanding of indivisibility	Points toward appreciation of diversity

Purpose

Stance	Mission	Materialism	Enjoyable usefulness
Summary	Only higher purposes are meaningful	Only mundane purposes are meaningful	All purposes are meaningful, when they are. Do things that are useful and enjoyable.
What it denies	Value of mundane purposes	Value of higher purposes
What it fixates	Value of higher purposes	Value of mundane purposes
The sales pitch	Find and follow your true mission, and the universe resonates with you	He who dies with the most toys, wins	There is no scoreboard
Emotional appeal	Exciting, personal, transcendent purpose lifts you out of mundanity	Get what you want
Pattern of thinking	Fantasy; non-ordinary methods for seeking the supposed true mission	Grim self-interest	Flow
Likely next stances	Eternalism; specialness, true self	Nihilism; ordinariness	Nobility, intermittently continuing
Accomplishment	Sacrifice all mundane purposes to eternal mission (saintliness)	Exclusive self-interest	Rennaisance person
How it causes suffering	Can never find your supposed true mission; neglect mundane aspects of life	Can never get enough; alienation from others and from authentic creativity
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Reasonable self-interest	Compassion, creativity	Is that it? No hope of completing purpose, so no hope for salvation or basis for self-congratulation
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Mundane purposes matter to me	I do care about others, and about creative work
Intelligent aspect	Higher purposes are valid; materialism is unsatisfying	Mundane purposes are valid; mission is a fantasy
Positive appropriation after resolution	Creativity and generosity are aspects of enjoyable usefulness	Material satisfaction and accomplishment are aspects of enjoyable usefulness

Self

Stance	The authentic, true, deep self	Selflessness	Intermittently continuing
Summary	The hidden, true self is directly connected to the Cosmic Plan, bypassing social constrictions	There is, or should be, no self	Selfness comes and goes; it varies over time and has no essential nature
What it denies	Nebulosity of self	Patterns of self; the self/other boundary; natural self-interest
What it fixates	The patterns of selfness; the self/other boundary	Discontinuity; absence of self/other boundary
The sales pitch	Your true self is much more exciting than your yucky regular one	You can get rid of your yucky regular self	The patterned self is unproblematic once its nebulosity is accepted
Emotional appeal	I’m much better than I thought I was	I have nothing to lose
Pattern of thinking	Romantic idolization of fantasy self	Willful blindness to continuity and self-interest	Humorous affection for one’s foibles; absence of anxiety
Likely next stances	Eternalism, monism, specialness	Nihilism, ordinariness	Nobility, enjoyable usefulness
Accomplishment	Authenticity in sense of living from true self instead of regular self	Egolessness	Conjuring supple, playful magic in the shared self/other space
How it causes suffering	Attempts to retrieve supposed true self fail; attempts to live up to it fail	Neglecting practical personal affairs
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Non-existence of true self	Manifestations of regular self	Fear of discontinuity; cannot repair or remove self
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	No essential nature, no coherent true self	I have much in common with who I was and will be
Intelligent aspect	Recognizes negative social conditioning & possibility of spontaneity	Recognizes lack of essential nature or durable continuity
Positive appropriation after resolution	Points toward power of nobility: we can be much more than we generally pretend	Points toward generosity of nobility

Personal value

Stance	Specialness	Ordinariness	Nobility
Summary	I have a distinct and superior value given by the eternal ordering principle	My value comes from being like everyone else	Developing all my abilities in order to serve others
What it denies	Shared humanity	Unusualness
What it fixates	Personal value	Personal value
The sales pitch	You are better than they are	Don’t put on airs	Be all you can be
Emotional appeal	Reinforces ego	No need to live up to potential
Pattern of thinking	Disdain; self-aggrandisement	Fearfulness, laziness	Impeccability
Likely next stances	Mission, true self	Materialism	Enjoyable usefulness
Accomplishment	Autoapotheosis	Baaaaaa	Heroism
How it causes suffering	Ego-trips; role anxiety; need for constant confirmation	Suppression of individuality
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Familiarity of experience; maintaining image is exhausting	Unusual impulses; cannot conform to herd	Selfishness; fear; laziness
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Recognition of shared humanity	Recognition of potential and uniqueness
Intelligent aspect	Recognition of potential and uniqueness	Recognition of shared humanity
Positive appropriation after resolution	Nobility does rise above the ordinary	Humility is an aspect of nobility

Capability

Stance	Total responsibility	Victim-think	Light-heartedness
Summary	We each create our own reality and are responsible for everything that happens in it	It’s not my fault and I am too weak to deal with it	Playfully co-create reality in collaboration with each other and the world
What it denies	Contingency, limits	Responsibility, capability, freedom
What it fixates	Responsibility	Overwhelming power of circumstances
The sales pitch	Perfect circumstances can be achieved with sufficient effort	You are oppressed and therefore blameless
Emotional appeal	Fantasy of control over future	No need to make any effort	No need for self-criticism or for anxiety
Pattern of thinking	Aggressive, paranoid	Fearful, depressed, emotionally manipulative	Effortless accomplishment
Likely next stances	Specialness, true self, mission	Ordinariness, materialism	Nobility, ethical responsiveness
Accomplishment	King of the Universe	Have all needs met by exploiting others’ pity	Effortless creativity
How it causes suffering	Hypervigilance; can’t meet infinite requirements with finite capacity	Resentment, depression, neglect of opportunities
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Obviousness of limits	Obviousness of opportunities	Hard to let go of need to be reassured about outcomes
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Letting go of fantasies of accomplishment; willingness to fail	Gratitude; letting go of payoffs; walking away; practical action
Intelligent aspect	Recognition of possibility	Recognition of limits
Positive appropriation after resolution	Experience depends more on our own perception & action than is usually thought	Because we have finite capabilities, we can cut ourselves some slack

Ethics

Stance	Ethical eternalism	Ethical nihilism	Ethical responsiveness
Summary	The Cosmic Plan dictates a fixed ethical code according to which we ought to live	Ethics is a meaningless human invention and has no real claim on us	Ethics is centrally important to humans, and is not a matter of choice, but is fluid and has no definite source
What it denies	Ambiguity of ethics; freedom; courage; creativity	Ethical imperativeness
What it fixates	Ethical code (rules/laws)	Absence of ethical absolutes
The sales pitch	Cosmic justice guarantees reward/punishment if you obey/defy the ethical code	Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law	Ethical anxiety is unnecessary
Emotional appeal	Avoiding blame; preventing others from harming/offending you	Take what you want; don’t let morality get in the way
Pattern of thinking	Self-righteousness	Arrogance	Light-hearted concern
Likely next stances	Religiosity, mission	Secularism, materialism	Light-heartedness, nobility
Accomplishment	Remorseless soldier of God	Sociopathy	Ethical maturity
How it causes suffering	Harmful actions are sometimes required by the supposed rules; beneficial ones may not be promoted	Without ethics, harmful actions are just rational self-interest
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Situations in which ethical rules are unclear or promote obvious harm	Natural concern for others	Requires close attention to particulars; no guarantee of blamelessness
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Allowing ethical ambiguity	Respecting ethical imperatives
Intelligent aspect	Recognizes the importance of ethics	Recognizes the ambiguity of ethics
Positive appropriation after resolution	Points toward nobility	Points toward ethical maturity

Social authority

Stance	Reasonable respectability	Romantic rebellion	Freedom
Summary	Contribute to social order by conforming to traditions	Make an artistic statement by defying authority	Value social order as a resource; satirize it as an impediment
What it denies	Nebulosity of social order	Value of social order
What it fixates	Social order	Heroic status of the counter-culture
The sales pitch	Law’n’order	Death to the oppressors!
Emotional appeal	It’s safe	It’s sexy
Pattern of thinking	Emotional constriction	Confused romantic passion, testosterone poisoning	Political maturity
Likely next stances	Ordinariness; dualism	Specialness; mission; nihilistic rage; true self	Nobility, light-heartedness, kadag
Accomplishment	Pillar of society	Romantic martyrdom
How it causes suffering	Complicity in oppression; abandoning of responsibility and moral maturity	Opposes realistic action to ameliorate conditions; justifies violence
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Social conventions stifle expression and opportunity	Silly; doomed by definition	Urgency of social imperatives
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Who cares what they think?	I’m being silly and just striking a pose to look cool
Intelligent aspect	Recognizes value of social order	Recognizes arbitrary and restrictive character of social order
Positive appropriation after resolution	Points toward kingly qualities of nobility; society as a beneficial structure	Points toward warrior qualities of nobility; charismatically involving; makes splendid art

Sacredness

Stance	Religiosity	Secularism	Kadag
Summary	The sacred and the profane are clearly distinct in the Cosmic Plan	Sacredness is mere superstition; nothing is sacred	Because nothing is inherently sacred, everything can be sacred
What it denies	Nebulosity of sacredness; vastness	Sacredness; vastness
What it fixates	The sacred	Arbitrariness of perception of sacredness
The sales pitch	Avoid contamination through ritual purity	Freed from religion, we can get on with practical projects	The good bits of religion without the dogma
Emotional appeal	Personal superiority through religious conformity; minimize uncanniness of vastness by codifying it	Don’t have to think about that uncomfortable religion stuff; pretend you don’t see vastness and hope it goes away	Can neither dismiss nor grab onto sacredness
Pattern of thinking	Self-righteousness	Pretending not to care about meaning; apathy	Awe
Likely next stances	Reasonable respectability, mission, specialness	Materialism, ordinariness	Freedom
Accomplishment	Perfect ritual purity	Total inability to experience awe	Ability to experience anything as sacred
How it causes suffering	Paranoia about contamination; resources and opportunities wasted; tribalist vilification	Flatness of existence in the absence of the sacred
Obstacles to maintaining the stance	Obvious mundanity of religious forms	Spontaneous religious feelings	Innate reactions of disgust
Antidotes; counter-thoughts	Purity is a matter of perception, not truth	I do sometimes experience awe
Intelligent aspect	Recognition of sacredness	Recognition that nothing is inherently sacred
Positive appropriation after resolution	Sacredness matters	Narrow religion is harmful; something better is available

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Audio version

The audio version of this page is read by Matt Arnold.

Book contents

Table of contents
Why meaningness?
Informally introducing the central themes of the Meaningness book.
- An appetizer: purpose
  Five confused attitudes to life purpose, as an introduction to meaningness.
- Preview: eternalism and nihilism
  Two stances that don't work: “Everything has a definite meaning” and “Nothing means anything.”
- What is meaningness?
  Meaningness is the quality of being meaningful or meaningless.
- Misunderstanding meaningness makes many miserable
  Mistaken attitudes toward meaning create unnecessary psychological/spiritual/existential suffering.
Stances: responses to meaningness
The overall conceptual framework: “stances” are simple patterns of thinking and feeling about meaningness.
- Stances trump systems
  People think they approach meaning in terms of religions or philosophies, but in practice, "stances" matter more.
- Stances are unstable
  Stances—responses to meaning—are unstable thought-patterns. Often we adopt several contradictory ones in rapid succession.
- Nebulosity
  Meaningness is cloud-like: nebulous. It is real, but impossible to completely pin down.
- Pattern
  Brains automatically find meaning and pattern; we need them to act. Unfortunately, brains also find meaning and pattern where there are none.
- Fixation and denial
  Fixation and denial are the two simplest ways of refusing to deal with the nebulosity of meaningness.
- Confused stances come in pairs
  Wrong ideas about meaning come in mirror-image pairs, which fixate and deny opposite aspects of reality.
- No middle way
  Polarized pairs of confused stances cannot be resolved by compromise. There is no middle way between them.
- Accepting nebulosity resolves confusions about meaning
  Confusions about meaning can be resolved using a method for looking at ways nebulosity affects the subject matter.
  - Not a general dialectic
    The method for resolving confusion about meaning through accepting nebulosity is not a general dialectic, or logic for resolving all false oppositions.
- Confusion, completion, misery and joy
  Properly understanding meaning eliminates needless suffering. An application: ethics.
- Meaningness as a liberating practice
  A practice of replacing confused, dysfunctional patterns of thinking and feeling about meaning with accurate ones.
- The psychological anatomy of a stance
  The key aspects of a stance toward meaning, and how to use them effectively.
- Adopting, committing, accomplishing, wavering, appropriating
  Concerning relationships one may have with stances: basic attitudes toward meaningness.
- The Big Three stance combinations
  Dualism, nihilism, and monism are the three main approaches to fundamental questions of meaning. This book proposes a better, fourth alternative.
- Schematic overview: all dimensions
  A complete summary overview of all the dimensions of meaningness, with all the common stances one can take to them.
Meaning and meaninglessness
Eternalism fixates meaning; nihilism denies it. Recognizing that meaning is both nebulous and patterned resolves this false dichotomy.
- The puzzle of meaningness
  What is the meaning of an extra-marital affair—or any relationship? A philosophical short story illustrates the puzzle of the nebulosity of meaningness.
- Meaningfulness and meaninglessness
  Some things are meaningful, and others aren't. This is obvious; yet most confusions about meaning begin by denying it.
- Extreme examples, eternalism and nihilism
  Claims that everything is meaningful, or that nothing is, are motivated by fears: fear of the opposite.
- ⚒︎ No cosmic plan
  Great confusions about meaningness stem from the mistaken assumption that there must be some sort of eternal ordering principle.
- So how does meaningness work?
  We have a choice of explanations: ones that are simple, clear, harmful, and wrong; or ones that are complex, vague, helpful, and approximately right.
- Rumcake and rainbows
  Meaning cannot be either objective or subjective. But meaning does exist: as interaction.
- Schematic overview: meaningness
  A schematic overview of eternalism and nihilism as confused responses to meaningness.
- Eternalism: the fixation of meaning
  Eternalism is the wrong idea that everything has a definite meaning, fixed by an external ordering principle.
  - I get duped by eternalism in a casino
    Gambling, religion, and addiction: a personal story.
  - The appeal of eternalism
    Eternalism promises everything you could want from meaning: safety, support, certainty, reassurance, and control. Solid ground!
    - The promise of certainty
      What we want most from meaning is guarantees. Religions, political ideologies, and other eternalist systems promise certainty; but they cannot deliver.
    - The illusion of understanding
      It’s deluded to think we mostly understand issues of meaning (ethics, purpose, value, politics). Ideologies deliberately create and sustain that illusion.
    - The fantasy of control
      Eternalism promises complete control over life—but that is an impossible fantasy. Influence through collaboration and improvisation are possible, however.
    - The wheel of fortune
      Eternalism promises answers about good and bad—the meanings we care about most—but cannot deliver.
    - Eternalism as the only salvation from nihilism
      Eternalism's final promise is to keep nihilism at bay. There is a better alternative to both!
  - Eternalism is harmful
    Eternalism—belief in fixed meanings—makes promises it can't keep. It makes us do stupid, crazy, evil things. And we still love it and keep going back for more.
  - Eternalist systems
    Systems such as religions and political ideologies reinforce eternalism. They dispel doubt by denying nebulosity.
  - Vaster than ideology
    When you discover you are owned by an ideology, you can escape. Better, you can become a larger space.
  - Accomplishing eternalism
    Accomplishing eternalism would would mean knowing the meaning of everything, and acting accordingly. This is impossible, because there are no fixed meanings.
  - Exiting eternalism
    Learning skills for escaping the grip of eternalism—the delusion that everything is meaningful.
  - Eternalist ploys and their antidotes
    Ploys—ways of thinking, feeling, talking, and acting—which stabilize eternalism; and antidotes to use against them.
    - ⚒︎ Imposing fixed meanings
      Forcing fixed meanings on experience always eventually results in unpleasant shocks when reality refuses to conform to your pre-determined categories.
    - ⚒︎ Smearing meaning all over everything
      Monist eternalisms—the New Age and SBNR, for example—say everything is meaningful, but leaves vague what the meanings are.
    - ⚒︎ Magical thinking
      Magical thinking—hallucinating causal connections—is powerfully synergistic with eternalism (the stance that everything has a fixed meaning).
    - ⚒︎ Hope
      Hope is harmful in devaluing the present and shifting attention to imaginary futures that may never exist.
    - ⚒︎ Pretending
      Eternalist religions and political systems are always partly make-believe, like children playing at being pirates.
    - ⚒︎ Colluding for eternalism
      Because eternalist delusion is so desirable, we collude to maintain it. To save each other from nihilism, we support each other in not-seeing nebulosity.
    - ⚒︎ Hiding from nebulosity
      Hiding from nebulosity is a ploy to preserve eternalism by physically avoiding ambiguous situations and information.
    - ⚒︎ Kitsch and naïveté
      Eternalist kitsch is the denial of the possibility of meaninglessness. This leads to willfully idiotic sentimentality.
    - ⚒︎ Armed & armored eternalism
      When nebulosity becomes obvious, eternalism fails to fit reality. You can armor yourself against evidence, and arm yourself to destroy it.
    - ⚒︎ Faith
      Privileging faith over experience is an eternalist ploy for blinding yourself to signs of nebulosity.
    - ⚒︎ Thought suppression
      Thought suppression is a ploy for maintaining faith in non-existent meanings. It leads to deliberate stupidity, inability to express oneself, and inaction.
    - ⚒︎ Bargaining and recommitment
      When eternalism lets you down, you are tempted to make a bargain with it. Eternalism will behave itself better, and in return you renew your faith in it.
    - ⚒︎ Wistful certainty
      Wistful certainty is a ploy for reinforcing eternalism based on the thought that there must exist whatever it takes to make eternalism seem to work.
    - ⚒︎ Faithful bafflement
      Faithful bafflement is a ploy for maintaining the eternalist stance that remains committed but begins to doubt.
    - ⚒︎ Mystification
      Mystification uses thoughts as a weapon against authentic thinking. It creates glib, bogus metaphysical explanations that sweep meaninglessness under the rug.
    - ⚒︎ Rehearsing the horrors of nihilism
      Reminding yourself and others of how bad nihilism is can help maintain the eternalist stance. This is the hellfire and brimstone of eternalist preaching.
    - ⚒︎ Purification
      Purity is an obsessive focus for dualist eternalism. It mobilizes emotions of disgust, guilt, shame, and self-righteous anger.
    - ⚒︎ Fortress eternalism
      In the face of undeserved suffering, is difficult not to fall into the stance that most things are God’s will, but not the horrible bits.
- Nihilism: denying meaning
  Nihilism is the wrong idea that nothing is meaningful, based on the accurate realization that there is no external, eternal source of meaning.
  - You’ve got nihilism wrong
    Whether you think you are a nihilist, or think you are not—I think you are mistaken. Nihilism is impossible—but so is avoiding it.
  - Cold comfort: the promise of nihilism
    Nihilism promises you don’t have to care, because nothing means anything. But you do care—and you can’t escape that.
  - The emotional dynamics of nihilism
    Nihilism relies on three emotional strategies to deny meaning: rage, intellectualization, and depression. It also causes anxiety.
  - What is it like to be a nihilist?
    The end-state of nihilism is not suicide, but catatonia.
  - Nihilism is black magic
    Nihilism has a taboo allure of forbidden power—because everyone knows eternalism is wrong.
  - Sexy cynicism and nihilist elitism
    Recognizing meaninglessness requires unusual intelligence, courage, and toughness. Nihilist elitism renders you stupid, cowardly, and helpless, though.
  - The nihilist apocalypse
    A world of total license: the catastrophe some fear if nihilistic views become widespread.
  - “Nihilism is OK” is not OK
    “Nihilism is inevitable, but not a problem.” This is mistaken: it makes you miserable and ineffective, and erodes social and cultural capacity.
  - ⚒︎ Nihilistic rage and clarity
    Nihilistic rage wants to destroy whatever has meaning, and whoever points to meaning.
  - ⚒︎ Nihilistic intellectualization and understanding
    When desperate to deny all meanings, we use absurd pseudo-rational, pseudo-scientific, intellectual arguments to justify nihilism.
    - The uncanny absence of nihil –ism
      Nihilism, like botulism, is not an ideology or conceptual system. It is a stance: an emotionally-charged way of being.
    - 190-proof vs. lite nihilism
      Nihilism says nothing means anything—but no one actually believes that. Lite nihilism weakens the claim, to make it plausible.
    - ⚒︎ Qualities of nihilistic thought
      Nihilistic thinking is slow, repetitive, abstract, general, meta, vague, arrogant, and absolutist. It exalts rationality but violates basic logic.
    - Nihilistic reasoning errors
      The many justifications for nihilism rely on a handful of mistaken patterns of reasoning.
    - Lite nihilism, on the way to completion
      Lite nihilism includes a valuable, accurate analysis of the failure of eternalism.
      - Not really meaningful
        “Nothing REALLY means anything” sounds plausible when you feel nihilistic. What does “really” mean, though?
      - No extra-special fancy meanings
        Nihilism rightly denies objective, ultimate, transcendent, absolute, cosmic, and eternal meanings. What is left?
      - No absolute meaning
        Are you adult enough to accept that the world offers no absolute guarantees?
      - No transcendent meaning
        If meaning lives only in Neverland, we can’t make much use of it. Fortunately, it’s here, now.
      - No ultimate meaning
        “Ultimate” means “at the end of a scale.” What is the scale of meaning? Should you want to be at the end of it?
      - No eternal meaning
        Meanings come and go; they are not eternally stable—and that is fine.
      - No cosmic meaning
        Intuitions of “cosmic meaning” root in hunger for personal significance, and in encounters with vastness.
      - No objective meaning
        While the meaning of “objective” is nebulous, learning to relate to meaningness more objectively is possible and worthwhile.
        
        Some other varieties of objectivity
        Nihilistic claims about subjectivity, inherent meaning, universal meaning, and scientific objectivity do not hold up.
      - No meaning without justification
        The rationalist theory of justified action leads to nihilism. Understand your activity as a vivid, variegated landscape instead.
      - No meaning of life as a whole
        Misunderstanding “a life” as an object leads to the complaint that, although meanings exist, life is meaningless overall.
      - ⚒︎ Not enough meaning
        Perception that life is not meaningful enough may involve an unrealistic standard; or ways of increasing meaningfulness may help.
    - Reason your way out of 190-proof nihilism
      Nihilism defends itself from the obviousness of meanings with spurious intellectual arguments. Here’s how to dispel them.
      - No meaning without proof
        A stubborn nihilist can always just refuse to admit that anything is meaningful.
      - ⚒︎ Scientific rationality has proven: everything is meaningless
        An event everyone thinks they remember, but never happened. Science disproved religious theories of meaning, but not meaning itself.
      - No meaning from the Big Bang
        Everything was meaningless at the moment of the Big Bang. What could add meaning after that?
      - No meaning for mortals
        Your future death does not make your present meaningless.
  - ⚒︎ Nihilistic depression illuminates the shadow
    Realizing that eternalism will always fail can result in anguish, pessimism, depression, stoicism, alienation, apathy, exhaustion, and paralysis.
    - ⚒︎ Miserabilism tastes like nihilism
      “Miserabilism” is the stance that everything is awful. It's confused with nihilism because both entail rage and depression.
  - ⚒︎ Nihilistic anxiety opens into play
    Anxiety is a natural reaction to uncertainty. In nihilism, pervasive loss of meaning makes everything uncertain; existential angst is a response.
- ⚒︎ Sartre’s ghost and the corpse of God
  Existentialism, a hopeful alternative to rigid meanings, makes wrong metaphysical assumptions, and cannot work. It collapses inevitably into nihilism.
- The complete stance
  Meaning is nebulous, yet patterned; meaningfulness and meaninglessness intermingle. Recognizing this frees us from metaphysical delusions.
  - The appeal of complete stances
    Resolving problems of meaning by recognizing inseparable pattern and nebulosity will improve your life.
  - Peak experiences
    Peak experiences and the complete stance are similar in texture, but differ in intensity, conceptual content, and causes.
  - Obstacles to the complete stance
    Meaning and meaninglessness, pattern and nebulosity all obviously exist—yet we resist recognizing and admitting this. Why?
  - ⚒︎ Observing meaningness
    How to catch meaningness in action; ways of watching confused and complete stances.
  - Finding the complete stance
    The fundamental method for resolving problems of meaning: by finding nebulosity, pattern, and their inseparable relationship.
  - Textures of completion
    Patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting in the complete stance, which resolves problems of meaning.
    - Wonder
      Wonder at the vastness, beauty, and intricacy of the phenomenal world: a texture of the complete stance.
    - Open-ended curiosity
      Open-ended curiosity gives you the freedom to interact with the world without metaphysical presuppositions.
    - ⚒︎ Humor
      Recognizing the inseparability of nebulosity and pattern gives experience a texture of good humor, and the funny sort too!
    - ⚒︎ Play
      Playfulness, which recognizes the mingled pattern and nebulosity of meaning, is a characteristic texture of activity in the complete stance.
    - ⚒︎ Enjoying the dance of nebulosity and pattern
      Enjoyment of the intertwining dance of nebulosity and pattern is a characteristic texture of the complete stance to meaning.
    - ⚒︎ Creation
      Creation is the characteristic activity of the complete stance; its densest texture.
  - Stabilizing the complete stance
    Going beyond resolutions of specific problems: consistently maintaining an accurate stance toward meaningness.
Unity and diversity
Stances concerning connection and separateness: monism, dualism, and participation.
- Schematic overview: unity and diversity
  Schematic overview of the stances concerning connection and separateness: monism, dualism, and participation.
- Monism and dualism contain each other
  Monism and dualism are opposites. But because each is obviously wrong, each turns into the other when cornered. Sneaky!
- Boundaries, objects, and connections
  Errors of monism and dualism: denying and fixating object boundaries and connections.
  - ⚒︎ Non-existence: Scarlet Leviathan
    Confusing nebulosity with non-existence is a common, sometimes harmful, source of conceptual confusions.
- ⚒︎ Monism: the denial of difference
  Finding the specifics of life unacceptable motivates the escapist fantasy of monism: the stance that All is One, denying diversity.
  - ⚒︎ Critiques of monism
    Monism can be criticized from the points of view of dualism, nihilism, or the complete stance.
    - ⚒︎ The dualist critique of monism
      According to dualist gloss eternalism, monism is wrong because it falsely claims that it is possible to achieve union with God.
    - ⚒︎ The nihilist critique of monism
      The nihilistcritique of monist eternalism is that it is factually false.
    - ⚒︎ The complete stance’s critique of monism
      From the point of view of the complete stance, monist eternalism fails on its own terms. It cannot deliver what it promises.
- ⚒︎ Dualism: the fixation of difference
  Fear of contamination by the messiness of reality—always changing and ambiguous—motivates dualism, the stance that denies connection.
- ⚒︎ Participation
  Participation is the recognition that both boundaries and connections are both nebulous yet real; neither objective nor subjective.
Selfness
Abandoning selflessness and egoism equally, we can play with the ambiguous self/other boundary; supple, skillful selfing for successful, satisfying interaction.
- Schematic overview: self
  A schematic overview of stances regarding the meaningness of the self: non-self, True Self, and intermittently continuing.
- ⚒︎ A billion tiny spooks
  Representationalism tried to exorcise the ghost in the machine, but succeeded only in splitting it into innumerable tiny ghosts.
- ⚒︎ The true self
  Monism and dualism both offer concepts of the supposed true self as a coherent entity.
- ⚒︎ Selflessness
  Several views of selflessness, in different religions and philosophies.
- ⚒︎ Intermittently continuing
  An optimistic view of the self as incoherent, but not non-existent, and not necessarily problematic.
  - ⚒︎ Neither objective nor subjective
    Meanings are interactions: neither inherent in external objects nor merely mental. They are on-going, collaborative activities.
Purpose
Dividing purposes into higher and mundane, mission pursues higher ends and rejects pragmatism; materialism seeks only selfish goals. Both are mistakes.
- Schematic overview: purpose
  A schematic overview of stances toward purpose: mission, materialism, and enjoyable usefulness.
- Mission
  It is attractive to think that we each have a unique, transcendent, ultimate purpose in life. Unfortunately, this belief is both false and harmful.
  - Mission: defects and obstacles
    The delusion that you can find your true, unique personal life-purpose causes only suffering and failure.
  - What should I do with my life?
    Just discover your unique talent, follow your passion, and success is guaranteed—this is terrible advice!
  - ⚒︎ Politics make for mediocre missions
    Taking political activism as a personal mission usually messes up your life, and messes up politics too.
  - ⚒︎ Antidotes to fixating higher purposes
    How to let go of attractive, mistaken idea that you have one ultimate purpose in life—without falling into nihilism
  - ⚒︎ Antidotes to denying mundane purposes
    How to come to grips with the mundane messes you've made while pursuing a grand mission, so you can clean them up.
- Materialism
  Materialism says that only mundane purposes like money, sex, and power count. It wrongly rejects higher purposes—but those too are not ultimate.
  - Rejecting materialism
    Common critiques of materialism, from religion, political idealism, personal idealism, and nihilism.
  - ⚒︎ Materialism: defects and obstacles
    Materialism fails on its own terms. It cannot deliver the satisfaction it promises.
  - ⚒︎ Antidotes to fixating mundane purposes
    Ways to find freedom from the compulsive need-driven quality of mundane desires, and enjoyment free from grasping.
  - ⚒︎ Antidotes to denying higher purposes
    How to recover compassion and creativity when in the grip of self-centered materialism.
- Mission and materialism mingled
  Mingling mission and materialism attempts to gain both self-indulgent and self-justifying goals—but loses both enjoyment and empathetic joy.
- ⚒︎ Enjoyable usefulness
  Recognizing the nebulosity of purposes frees us to enjoy life and be useful to others.
  - ⚒︎ Want what you like
    Discovering what you actually like can be surprising, and supports enjoyable usefulness as your purpose in life.
⚒︎ Personal value
Agonizing over whether you are ordinary or special—or feeling smug about one or the other—can be resolved by choosing to be noble instead.
- Schematic overview: value
  A schematic overview of stances toward personal value: specialness, ordinariness, and nobility.
- ⚒︎ Specialness
  Specialness is a sense of having been picked out for destiny by the Cosmic Plan. That causes you and others much trouble.
- ⚒︎ Ordinariness
  If we could just manage to be ordinary, we would not have the responsibility of living up to our potential. Fortunately, ordinariness is impossible.
- ⚒︎ Nobility
  Nobility is the aspiration to manifest glory for the benefit of others.
⚒︎ Capability
Resolving a false dichotomy between unrealistic views: being a helpless victim and being totally responsible for your circumstances.
- Schematic overview: capability
  A schematic overview of stances regarding issues of capability.
- ⚒︎ Total responsibility
  The delusion that we are, or can be, totally responsible for reality is prevalent in some religious and psychotherapeutic circles.
- ⚒︎ Victim-think
  Victim-think is a strategy for denying all responsibility—on the part of individuals and social groups.
- ⚒︎ Light-heartedness
  Playfully co-create reality in collaboration with each other and the world.
⚒︎ Ethics
Available ethical theories are either eternalist or nihilist; both are useless. We must recognize that ethics are both nebulous and meaningful.
- Schematic overview: ethics
  A schematic overview of fundamental stances regarding ethics.
- ⚒︎ Ethical eternalism
  An ethical system that reliably delivers correct moral judgements is a wishful fantasy. No such system is possible.
  - ⚒︎ Utilitiarianism is an eternalism
    Utilitarianism promises to eliminate ethical uncertainty, but instead replaces a difficult, messy problem with an impossible, tidy one.
- ⚒︎ Ethical nihilism
  Ethical nihilism is the denial of all ethical rightness and wrongness.
- ⚒︎ Ethical responsiveness
  Ethics is centrally important to humans, and is not a matter of choice, but is fluid and has no definite source.
⚒︎ Authority
A better alternative to the dysfunctional stances of mindlessly opposing authority and mindlessly obeying.
- Schematic overview: authority
  A schematic overview of stances toward social authority.
- ⚒︎ Reasonable respectability
  Reasonable respectability: the sheep's stance to social authority.
- ⚒︎ Romantic rebellion
  Romantic rebellion does not seriously try to overthrow the system; it is faux-heroic posturing. It can be harmful, but also inspires great art.
- ⚒︎ Freedom
  Value social order as a resource, satirize it as an impediment.
⚒︎ Sacredness
Resolving the twin delusions that nothing is sacred and that the only sacred things are those designated by some authority.
- Schematic overview: sacredness
  Schematic overview of stances toward sacredness: religiosity, secularism, kadag.
- ⚒︎ Religiosity
  Religiosity is the confused, eternalistic view that the sacred and profane can be clearly separated.
- ⚒︎ Secularism
  Secularism is the stance that sacredness is mere superstition; nothing is sacred.
- ⚒︎ Kadag
  Kadag: Because nothing is inherently sacred, everything can be sacred.
Meaningness and Time: past, present, future
The problems of meaningness we face now are dramatically different from those of the past. We also sense new opportunities, and have new resources.
- How meaning fell apart
  Over the past century, systems of meaning gradually disintegrated, and a series of new modes of meaningness developed.
  - A gigantic chart that explains absolutely everything
    This chart is an overview of Meaningness and Time: the past, present, and future of culture, society, and our selves.
  - In praise of choicelessness
    The choiceless mode of understanding meaning has no “becauses.” Explanations are unnecessary because you are unaware of any alternatives.
  - The glory of systems
    Systems of society, culture, and the self were the foundation of the modern world. Their glories have passed.
  - Invented traditions and timeworn futures
    Invented traditions and timeworn futures are ideological time-distortion strategies. Highly effective in propaganda.
  - Systems of meaning all in flames
    How and why modernity failed. All systems of meaning—religious, political, artistic, psychological—began to fall apart. Nihilism seemed the only alternative.
    - The collapse of rational certainty
      Modernity was built on certainty in science and mathematics. That was revealed as delusional during the early 20th century.
  - Countercultures: modernity’s last gasp
    The hippies and the Moral Majority both tried to rescue systematic eternalism—and failed. We live amongst their wreckage.
    - What makes a counterculture?
      Countercultures defined as new, alternative, universalist, eternalist, anti-rational systems: there were two in the late 20th century.
    - Hippies and Evangelicals: monist and dualist countercultures
      The hippie counterculture was structurally and functionally similar to the Moral Majority Christian Right counterculture a decade later.
    - Renegotiating self and society
      How—and why!—countercultures sought to reform psychologies and polities: to counteract alienation, anxiety, and anomie.
    - Rejecting rationality, reinventing religion, reconfiguring the self
      The 1960s-80s countercultures abandoned rationality because they believed it negated all meaning. They were wrong.
    - The personal is political
      The 1960s-80s countercultures dissolved the boundaries between self and society, ethical and political—setting us up for decades of culture war.
    - Rotating politics ninety degrees clockwise
      In the 1960s-80s, American politics shifted from economic to sacredness issues. This damaged public discourse, but created a new two-track class system.
    - ⚒︎ Countercultures: modern mythologies
      The Religious Right and New Age Left both promoted time-distorting meta-myths—imaginary past golden ages and implausible future utopias—to hide their defects.
    - Fundamentalism is countercultural modernism
      Fundamentalism is not traditional; it is a modern, countercultural movement, opposed to tradition and to post-modernity.
    - ⚒︎ Counter-cultures: thick and wide
      The hippie and Moral Majority movements both developed broad, deep cultures, with innovative approaches to every aspect of life, from music to dentistry.
    - Why both countercultures failed
      Failure to find new foundations for meaning, to recognize diversity, to provide community, and to transcend opposition: all doomed counterculturalism.
    - Wreckage: the culture war
      The culture war, political polarization, Baby Boomer bafflement: the unending zombie slugfest pairing the two countercultures of the 1960s-80s.
    - Completing the countercultures
      At root, the culture war is not about abortion, gay marriage, or marijuana. It is about shared misunderstandings of the nature of meaning.
  - Subcultures: the diversity of meaning
    The subcultural era (1975-2000) recognized the diversity of meanings, and provided a new type of supportive, voluntary social group.
    - ⚒︎ Subcultures: meanings at play
      With no responsibility to justify universal norms, or for solving social problems, subcultures were freed to play with meanings.
    - ⚒︎ Subsocieties: urban tribes
      Subsocieties, close-knit social groups organized around subsocieties: a possible model for positive future social oganization.
      - ⚒︎ Archipelago: subcultural politics
        “Archipelago” is a political model in which everyone can choose what social system to live in. It’s impractical, but points to better solutions.
    - Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution
      How muggles and sociopaths invade and undermine creative subcultures; and how to stop them.
  - Atomization: the kaleidoscope of meaning
    The global internet atomizes cultures, societies, and selves into tiny brilliant shards. Meaning has lost context and coherence. Now what?
    - Not a good decade for thinking
      Cultural atomization—the widespread loss of conceptual coherence—has made serious intellectual work much more difficult in the twenty-teens.
  - ⚒︎ Fluidity: a preview
    Fluidity addresses the atomization of culture, society, and self with ships that sail the sea of meaning: collaborative, improvised, intimate, and playful.
  - Modes of meaningness, eternalism and nihilism
    From fundamentalism to atomization, different modes of relating to meaning overemphasize pattern or nebulosity.
- Desiderata for any future mode of meaningness
  A positive and realistic vision for the future of society, culture, and self, drawing lessons from recent history.
- ⚒︎ Sailing the seas of meaningness
  Social, cultural, and personal fluidity create vessels to navigate the ocean of atomized meanings, steering between nihilism and eternalism.
  - ⚒︎ Fluid self in relationship
    Fluidity recognizes that you have selves, rather than being a self, and that the self/other distinction is nebulous though patterned.
    - The Cofounders
      The path from professionalism to a deliberately-developmental relationship: a tale of startup cofounders.
  - ⚒︎ Fluid society
    A fluid society ideally provides the benefits of tradition, modernity, and postmodernity, while avoiding their defects.
  - ⚒︎ Fluid culture: metamodernism
    Metamodernism resolves the modernity/postmodernity conflict in favor of reconstruction, collaboration, ambiguity, and engagement.
Appendices
A series of appendices, including a glossary and suggestions for further reading elsewhere.
- Appendix: Glossary
  Definitions of words I've used in technical or non-standard ways in Meaningness.
- Appendix: Further reading
  Explore the ideas of Meaningness in greater depth by reading the books that inspired it
- Appendix: Terminological choices
  The Meaningness book gives some words distinctive technical meanings; some definitional choices could be misleading.
  - Terminology: Complete
    I borrowed “complete,” as a term for stances that allow both nebulosity and pattern, from Dzogchen.
  - Terminology: Emptiness and form, nebulosity and pattern
    Why I use “nebulosity” and “pattern,” rather than the related Buddhist terms “emptiness” and “form.”
  - Terminology: Non-dual
    I avoid the term non-dual because it is used to mean several different things, causing confusion.

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