Why Everything Feels Meaningless (And Why Facts Aren’t Enough)

Douglas Adams Saw It Coming  

Douglas Adams, in the prologue to his highly entertaining and insightful book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” prophetically highlighted the distinct features of our current meaning crisis. 

“The planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should have ever left the oceans.” 

Adams noted that we are all terribly unhappy and that no amount of money or technology can remedy our situation. Surprisingly, despite being an atheist, he blames evolution for getting us into this mess in the first place, questioning the wisdom of life forms leaving the oceans and coming down from the trees. Sadly, despite his warning, we continue to pursue bits of green paper and digital watches in the hope that they will make life more palatable. 

Atheist philosopher Stephen Pinker presents a more optimistic picture, arguing that material progress has allowed the better angels of our nature to take flight. However, despite his enthusiasm, Adam’s assessment remains closer to the truth because, instead of emotionally soaring, we find increasing numbers of people taking refuge in a hangar of anxiety and depression because of their fear of heights. Despite the vitality of our technology, our mental health is on life support, but instead of finding better ways to live, we ask physicians to assist us in dying.

We are in the midst of a pandemic of meaninglessness. We have become all too familiar with the symptoms: anxiety, loneliness, depression, addiction, and suicide, yet we still haven’t identified the disease-causing agent or developed an adequate treatment strategy. Unbelievable? attempted to bring some epidemiological clarity to this contagion by consulting two prominent metaphysicians: John Vervaeke, Professor of psychology and cognitive science, and poet and priest Malcolm Guite. 

The Great Divide

Vervaeke suggests that people find meaning when they experience “that sense of binding, that sense of connectiveness, that is deeper than their subjective experience, deeper than their objective attributions, but binds them together.” He notes that the “propositional tyranny” of our culture has severely damaged that connection, impoverishing our view of reality and leading to a crisis of meaning. His research shows that people struggling to find meaning in life want “to be connected to a more comprehensive and deeper sense of reality.”

Vervaeke argues that, contrary to modernist thought, propositional knowing accounts for only a small part of the connection they seek, whereas non-propositional knowing does most of the “heavy lifting.” Guite shares Vervaeke’s concerns and likens the cultural preference for propositional knowing to a form of “epistemological apartheid,” noting that this was the very problem C.S. Lewis encountered during his atheist days.

“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism’. Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.” (C.S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy)

Shrinking the world

Both men note that the reductive tendencies of Enlightenment thinking, which reduced knowledge to propositions, facts, and syllogisms, have impoverished our experience of the world. As Guite noted, “For all its undoubted benefits…what we might broadly call the Enlightenment Project has ended up taking us from a larger reality to a smaller one.” This has progressively shifted our perception of the world from the mind to the brain, to the neurons, to the neurotransmitters, and, in the process, has transformed meaning from living life to the full into better living through chemistry. True meaning can only be found with a bird’s-eye view of life. So, when our metaphysical wings are clipped, life is reduced to hacking our way through the wilderness, hoping to come out alive on the other side.

Interestingly, as our scientific lexicon has grown, our ability to perceive reality has diminished. Guite, however, is optimistic because the existential squeeze we feel as the world shrinks has prompted people to explore imaginative new ways to expand reality. We don’t abandon the language of science but expand our vocabulary to include myth, poetry, and verse. Guite powerfully summarizes the situation by quoting C.S. Lewis once again.

 “Reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

Hierarchy of Needs

Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that life consists of a hierarchy of needs that are satisfied in sequence, beginning with basic physiological needs and progressing through safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and finally to self-actualization, where meaning is found. Interestingly, this hierarchy moves from satisfying material needs to achieving immaterial ambitions, which helps explain why meaning can never be found in a materialist view of the world.

If Maslow is correct that this is our natural trajectory, why do we grow more anxious and depressed as we ascend, with many even choosing to take their own lives by jumping off before reaching the top? What makes this climb so perilous? I would say the problem arises when one tries to move from material needs to immaterial desires, because our “propositional tyranny” blocks the way, leaving us hopelessly peering over a fence at a promised land of meaning we cannot reach.

Dark side of the moon

In the movie Contact, based on Carl Sagan’s book, atheist astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway detects alien radio signals from outer space and is chosen to travel through the cosmos to meet them in person. As she journeys through space, she encounters indescribable beauty that leaves her speechless until she finally tears up and mumbles the memorable line, “No words to describe – poetry - they should have sent a poet, it’s so beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful, - I had no idea.” Ellie recognized that her propositional scientific vocabulary constrained her ability to describe the universe and that only the non-propositional language of a poet could do it justice.

Astronauts from the United States recently completed a 10-day mission aboard the Artemis II spacecraft. One of the astronauts, Reid Wiseman, reflected on the moment when they reached the dark side of the moon, “I turned to Victor (Glover), and I said, ‘I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we’re looking at right now because it was otherworldly.’” Upon his return to Earth, he met with a Navy chaplain and had an unexpected experience, “I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything. So, I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in, I’d never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I broke down in tears.” 

Captain Kirk famously called “space the final frontier,” but it is a frontier that technology alone cannot explore. We can marvel at the finely tuned cosmological constants, but we must also explain why we hear the heavens declare the glory of God. Some things in life can only be explained by tapping into the ineffable. If we want to truly experience meaning as we ascend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we need to be prepared to let go of the scientist’s hand and let a poet or a priest pull us the rest of the way up.

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Religio 

Vervaeke, although a psychologist steeped in research, understands that science alone cannot bridge the gap between the subjective and the objective. He suggests that the way to connect the two and restore meaning is through religio.

Religio is a “Latin term that originally meant ‘conscientiousness’ or ‘obligation.’ It is derived from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘to bind’ or ‘to connect.’” (Etymology World Online).

Vervaeke characterizes religio as “religion that’s not a religion,” emphasizing practices over dogma. He worries that when we make creeds and doctrines the centerpiece of religion, we accede to a propositional form of knowing, which, as he and Guite noted, is the source of the meaning crisis. He wants to create a sacred space accessible to all, regardless of their secular or religious background, that helps restore meaning to their lives. Religio “reframes the sacred from ‘truths to believe’ to ‘realities to participate in,’ moving from a propositional-representational ontology to a participatory-transformational one.” 

In a past episode of Unbelievable? with Sohrab Ahmari, Vervaeke made a statement that has stayed with me ever since. He said the way to restore meaning to life is to “fall in love with reality.” Religio, therefore, could also be understood as the act of wooing reality. However, what if the love affair he seeks with reality had already been consummated long ago when God so loved the world? It seems to me that our relationship with reality should be more than an infatuation, but a lifelong commitment to the One who created it. 

Religio consists of an ecology of practices, which Vervaeke defines “as a purposeful arrangement (‘a logos’) of meaningful practices” that are “designed to stimulate your mental, spiritual and physical sense of connection…to yourself, to others, and to the world at large.” He groups these activities into dialogical, imaginal, mindful, and embodied practices noting that all the major legacy religions cultivate them to varying degrees. Vervaeke isn’t a COEXIST relativist but rather wants the various religions to set aside their doctrinal and creedal differences long enough to share their rituals and cooperatively establish best practices for meaning-making.

“I want to bring all of the traditions in which people have ecologies of practices, cultivating wisdom, enhancing religio, into that kind of resonant dia-logos with each other as a way of affording the advent of the sacred.” 

Vervaeke believes that the myths generated by each religion serve as the metaphysical glue binding the sacred and the secular and bringing people together to engage in meaning-making activities.

“Myth is the imaginal apprehension of the betweening, of that which fits the world and us together so we can fundamentally belong together. It is our meta-meaning system that makes all our individual meanings and all of our specific claims possible.” 

I’m reminded of St. Paul’s discovery in Athens of the altar to the Unknown God, dedicated to a deity specific enough to inspire spirituality yet vague enough not to alienate those burdened by religious baggage. Vervaeke appears satisfied with any religious myth as long as it offers a fitting altar for an ecology of practices.

I realize that Vervaeke aims to provide therapeutic tools for all people, regardless of religious affiliation, but it seems to me that without a solid doctrinal or creedal foundation, any myth could be appropriated for almost any practice. For instance, what if child sacrifice were an ecology of practice embraced by a particular myth? Does a framework, without doctrinal guardrails, have enough authority to condemn such a practice?

Language link

Vervaeke appropriately treats the space between the subjective and the objective as sacred but leaves the spiritual topography vague. Guite, on the other hand, believes that Christianity has thoroughly mapped it out and made it properly navigable. 

Guite argues that this sacred space calls to us because God spoke it into existence, and we listen because, as image bearers, we understand Lingua Dei (the Language of God).

Guite bolstered his case by quoting a few lines from Samuel Coleridge’s poem Frost at Midnight.  Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach  Himself in all, and all things in himself.  Great universal Teacher! he shall mould (My emphasis)

Guite believes that part of the meaning crisis stems from our no longer seeing or hearing “The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters.” Sadly, Enlightenment science left us with a clockwork universe that ticks but doesn’t talk.

Vervaeke, while not fond of this example, tips his hat to the idea by noting that “You are always presupposing that the grammar inside your cognition… and the grammar of how reality realizes itself participate in the same principles and patterns.” Grammar, however, is only relevant if there are words to be properly organized, which makes a God speaking creation into existence so appealing.

Guite believes that a God who speaks is a powerful antidote to our meaning crisis. He cites a conversation between Samuel Coleridge and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson was experiencing a crisis of faith and told Coleridge, “I have no idea anymore of the divine.” Coleridge responded, “My dear Clarkson, don’t worry for the moment about whether you have any idea of the divine, but never forget that you’re a divine idea… and the logos has not finished speaking Thomas Clarkson into the world… try not to become an impediment in the speech of Christ.” It is a powerful story that reinforces the idea that our lives are meaningful because they were knit together in the mind of God and then deliberately spoken into existence. Our meaning, therefore, is found in ensuring that what He spoke does not return to Him empty.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and we know exactly what they say. But it gets even better. The Word becomes flesh, sealing the material-immaterial deal. C.S. Lewis realized that myth alone couldn’t make his life meaningful; he needed that myth to be fact. I fear that Vervaeke’s ecology of practices, while a valiant attempt to link the subjective and objective, will remain a pipe dream unless it puts divine boots on the ground. Is it possible that the only truly efficacious “ecological” practice is the eucharist, where we are reminded that the immaterial and material were reconciled in the body and blood of the God-man, Jesus?

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoy the work of Vervaeke, but I worry that in Christian circles, we have become overly enamored with intellectuals who are merely Christian-adjacent. Incredibly smart people who circumnavigate Christ but never make port. Academics who like to warm themselves by the Christian fire but do nothing to keep it burning. Of note, we have Douglass Murray, who describes himself as a “Christian atheist”; Jordan Peterson, who believes the Bible contains remarkable metaphysical truths but won’t commit to the way, the truth, and the life; and Iain McGilchrist, who thinks Christianity has the best story ever but doesn’t want to get bogged down in historical details. Even Richard Dawkins loves Christian culture despite not believing a word of it. We can learn a great deal from these men, but we must remember that their metanarratives remain tenuous unless their myths become fact.   

Interestingly, just after outlining the planet’s problem in the prologue, Douglas Adams made a casual reference to Jesus. 

“And, then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to ta tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting in on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.” 

Unfortunately, Adams believed Jesus’ significance lay in teaching kindness rather than in uniting heaven and Earth. While we may never know what the young lady in Rickmansworth figured out, it doesn’t matter, because two thousand years ago God gave us the answer when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. 

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com