Inspired by Arthur Gordon and Jason James
Is it all or nothing?
How do we find meaning? What is the recipe? A lot of thinkers are exploring this topic, notably John Vervaeke, who coined the phrase “The Meaning Crisis,” and yet it can still seem mysterious. Even if I want meaning and I’m willing to do what it takes to gain it, the right steps are not always clear. A number of pieces by O.G. Rose have taken various stabs at the question, focusing in on the subject of “beauty” and offering the advice that it can be useful to ask, “What do I find beautiful?” (because that can be a useful guide to determine what we find meaningful). Here, I will present another heuristic, which is thinking in terms of ritual, relevance, and risk.
I
Inspired by the Phenomenologists like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Dr. Vervaeke notes that knowledge for humans is mostly a matter of “grip,” by which Dr. Vervaeke means to say that we strive to know something to the point where we feel like we “have a hold on it,” and then we stop. I likely know about 1% of everything there is to know regarding this laptop I’m working on, and yet I don’t personally care to know anything else and frankly feel (wrongly) that “I know everything.” Why is this? Well, because I’ve “positioned myself” relative to the laptop to use it in a manner to accomplish my purposes. If something breaks, yes, I’ll likely work to learn more about the laptop, but for now I feel good to go. Because the laptop “works for me,” I feel like “I have a grip on it,” and as a result it feels like “I know the laptop.” And this logic extends to everything: rarely if ever do I achieve full knowledge about things, which is to say that basically all my knowledge is “virtual” (“a take on it”). Why does this “take” feel like knowledge? Because it’s all I need to know to get by in life. Thus, knowledge is what “works for me.”
This in mind, there is arguably no such thing as knowledge that isn’t to some degree pragmatistic. I myself am not a Pragmatist (at least not in the traditional sense), but the point is that things don’t tell me, in their being, when I’ve learned everything there is to know about them; rather, I have to make that decision for myself and then afterwards act like and believe the thing itself “gave me” that decision. If I didn’t feel that way, the decision might feel arbitrary; I would easily feel less confident in it, causing me to reverse course. To hold to my decision, I need to feel like I chose to stop learning about a thing at x point “for a good reason,” and if I feel like I made the choice simply in terms of pragmatics, it might be easy not to have confidence in my choice. Hence, I naturally perceive my decision as being “given to me” by the object itself, making it feel more authoritative and “object-ive.” But this is not the case: once I get “a grip on things” enough to make them “work for me,” I move my inquiring mind on to the next thing, even if my understanding of the thing is hardly 1%. A “grip” is enough to feel informed, and by what else can we go on?
Objects and “things in the world” naturally provide me a point at which I can feel like I have a “grip” on them, precisely thanks to their very facticity and material composition. I can lift a hammer, feel it, and gradually come to determine what it’s used for: the knowledge is “given to me” by the object itself. It might take time, but figuring the hammer out isn’t concealed; in a way, we could say the object “wears its use,” almost like a shirt, in its very shape and structure. But what about “me,” Daniel? How do I determine when I have a “grip” on myself? In facticity and matter, I have a body. Hands. Feet. Arms. Does any of this material composition — flesh, blood, bones — “give to me” the proper way to “grip” Daniel? Not at all, and so I have to decide what I need to know about “Daniel” to “get a grip on him/myself.” I receive no help from “Daniel,” while I indeed receive aid from the object of a hammer to help determine how to “grip” it. When it comes to “Daniel,” determining the “grip” is entirely up to me.
II
“Daniel” has a body, and certainly that body can help me get a “grip” on what I need to do to know “Daniel’s body,” but that is not the same as “getting a grip on Daniel.” When it comes to something metaphysical like a subject to itself, I must decide on principles to pursue by which I might develop “self-grip.” Please note that “self-grip” and “self-knowledge” are the same thing, then a reframing that I think might help with the problem is to note that when we talk about “knowing thyself,” we are talking about “getting a grip on ourself.” But how do we do that? Well, to start, I think we need to understand that we’re not merely searching for “propositional knowledge” — we’re looking for something far deeper.
In my opinion, the heuristic guides of “risk,” “relevance,” and “ritual” can go a very long way to helping us gain “self-grip.” We must ultimately choose what metaphysical principles we live according to in search of “self-grip,” seeing as “Daniel” does not have direct facticity which can provide principles for me, and I think these three are particularly valuable. We could alternatively choose to prioritize “preserving memory,” or “having fun experiences,” or “gaining status” — all of these are metaphysical and non-physical principles as well, but I don’t believe we will feel like we have a meaningful life if our direct goals are memories, experiences, and status (to make three random examples). Sure, it’s not inherently bad to gain these things, but if we gain them at the expense of risk, relevance, and ritual, I think we might survive it.
If we never feel like we risked anything in life, I think it is hard to feel like we ever did anything meaningful. At the same time, if we take a risk regarding something we don’t think is relevant, it’ll feel like a stupid risk. And if we only take a “relevant risk” once in our life and never again, versus say in the form of a regular ritual, then the feeling of meaning we may have gained from that “relevant risk” can easily fade with time. Similarly, if we regularly engage in activity that we believe is relevant, but that action never feels like it risks anything, we can begin to wonder if we lack courage and the spirit to “rise to the occasion.” Furthermore, a ritual we engage in everyday, like a nine-to-five job, that doesn’t feels risky or relevant is likely to feel dehumanizing and alienating. Thus, we need all three — risk, ritual, and relevance — just as truth, beauty, and goodness are all needed at all times. One will not cut it, and in fact one without the other two can prove pathological.
In my discussions with Raymond, we explored the topics of Logos, Eros, and Thymos, and noted that without all three, we end up in emptiness and with “a deformed soul” (by classical standards). If we have a society that masters Logos and Eros but ignores Thymos (as arguably occurs in Neoliberalism today), we end up in a “Meaning Crisis” (which leaves an opening for responses like we see in Dugin and Putin), and we similarly end up troubled if we have Logos and Thymos but no Eros, and so on. It often seems if with these triads, rather what we see in Lacan, Alexander Bard, or others, that if we don’t have all the parts, it’s practically as if we have none of them, and I think that applies also with ritual, risk, and relevance. For us to live meaningfully, we need all three: we need to feel like we’ve taken a risk (Thymos); we need to feel like it was relevant (Logos); and we need to partake in it regularly (Eros). Without this triadic practice, life will feel like it is missing something.
III
If we cannot “get a grip on ourselves,” it going to be hard to feel like we have any meaning, because we can’t even know if there is someone there to “mean.” Where it feels like “nothing is there,” it will certainly feel like there is no meaning either, for, indeed, “nothing is there.” Now, personally, I think humans are ontologically “lacks,” so “getting a grip on ourselves” will entail “getting a grip on a lack,” but that is still a form of “grip,” and so “getting a grip on ourself” and meaning are connected. And it has to be in the same act of “knowing ourself” that we also feel “that we are meaningful,” as it is in the same act of reading a word like “cat” that we also get the meaning of the word. “Meaning” and “knowing” must be united or they will not be there, and it is by knowing ourselves through risk, relevance, and ritual that I think this can be accomplished. It is the context we need to have meaning, like the word cat has definition — whole and entire in the act of apprehension.
To take a risk means we try something that might cost us, and to do something relevant means we have determined, according to our own values and standards, that something matters and is worth doing. “Relevance” tends to correspond with “intrinsic motivation,” and I do think it is hard to “regularly and ritually engage in risk taking” without “intrinsic motivation” (which begs the question of how that is generated, as discussed often in O.G. Rose). Ritual is then the practices and habits which keep us in a state of “regular, relevant risk-taking,” which then begs the question of how we go about forming habits (as discussed by James K.A. Smith, which I like to discuss in the context of Hegel). None of this is “given” or self-evident, but critically it should be noted that all of this is not merely something we can know but something we must do. And once “Daniel” is someone who regularly takes risks doing something that he finds valuable, I can start to feel like I know how to “get a grip on him.” He does x. He risks y. He regularly does z. Knowing x, y, and z, I hence “have a grip on Daniel.”
If I go to church every Sunday, I am taking a risk regularly, for what if God doesn’t exist? If I write a book and awaken early every day to work on it, I ritualistically take a risk, for what if nobody reads the book? I wouldn’t work on the book if it didn’t matter to me, and so in the practice of writing we can see risk, relevance, and ritual at play. The same could apply with starting a business, a family — we need the whole trinity. And so, if life feels meaningless, perhaps we could ask the following questions:
Am I taking a risk?
What do I find relevant?
Do I have any regular practice?Am I regularly practicing a risk for something I believe matters?
If we answer “yes,” we’ve “gripped ourselves” — captivated and captivating.
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