Finishing the story: how narratives affect the ways we live and think
Which narratives are influencing our beliefs about what is meaningful? Is it possible to introspect and uncover them?
“I don’t think life has meaning. How could life have one? There’s so much going on. We try to pick at coincidence and patterns, but there’s just so much. While we might interpret it one way, the next person might interpret it an another. You see people put a lot of weight on different things. Someone reads something and it resonates with them.”
- Priya (India/USA), 34, Kyoto
There are different reasons why someone believes life is or is not meaningful. Before I began formally researching the topic, there was a period in my life where I was in the latter camp of believing that life did not have meaning. Presently, I don’t hold definitive beliefs about if life has an “ultimate'' sense of meaning, nor do I think it’s necessarily the most pressing question. This might seem strange for someone who has spent years researching meaning, purpose, and other related topics. It’s not that these aren’t important, but rather we seem to be asking the wrong questions. “How are we thinking about meaning?” has more immediate power in uncovering the narratives that affect not only our individual lives, but our relationships with objects, others, and the world more broadly.
The universal narratives we subscribe to are one way we come to think about meaning. Used here, narratives are the stories that inform the way we think about the world and our individual and collective place in the world. There tend to be two dominating routes of narrative. The first is a narrative that the universe is a random, chaotic, and disorganized place. In this view, our existence is purely incidental and there’s no “bigger” reason why we’re here. However, this route exists in duality with the second. The second route takes us through a narrative that places greater emphasis on the fact that our universe has recognizable, recurring structures and patterns. It continues that the existence of intelligent life like ourselves is no accident and therefore might carry some cosmic significance. If we follow the narrative in the first route, there emerges a pull to believe that life has no meaning; if we follow the second, there can be an urge to discover why we exist.
This is a slight oversimplification. Each narrative can come in different forms and there are other perspectives that exist between and outside of these two. However, in the several hundreds of conversations I’ve had to understand how people think about meaning, these two narratives tend to be the underlying dominant poles that pull individuals even if not described exactly this way. Again, what matters isn’t which narrative is true but which narrative we believe. Whichever narrative you believe, it will shape many of your conscious and unconscious beliefs.
The distinction between narrative and meaning is not perfectly clear. There are times when narrative influences our approach to the meaning of life. For instance, when I believed the narrative of total randomness and chaos, I came to believe that life had no meaning and no possible meaning, an approach of “nihilism.” But there are also times when our approach to meaning shapes our narrative. The religious among us often have a meaning belief that includes within it a narrative of specific higher power who has correspondingly created an orderly universe.
“I think there’s no original meaning but it’s something individuals use to explain things to themselves.”
“If life doesn’t have meaning then what are we here for? It doesn’t make sense for us to exist without meaning.”
- Leon, 24, Hong Kong
- Sheryl (Singapore), 21, Seoul
Regardless of which narrative and approach to meaning you believe in, the two influence one another. They also give shape to how we perceive our own ourselves and our identities, the world around us, and how we interact in and with the world. As a reminder from our previous post, a Meaning of Life (MOL) includes many things, including those that give someone a sense of purpose, bring a feeling of understanding to our existence in the context of the universe, and inspire resiliency in the face of adversity. They are the central things we use to organize our identity, our values and motivations, (the bulk of) our time and efforts, and the act of living itself.
When I believed the narrative that the universe was entirely random and chaotic, I also believed that life had no meaning. I tried to embrace this nihilism, convincing myself that it was not only the more “accurate way” of viewing the world, but that I was better for having adopted this view. Admittedly and unexpectedly, there can be cynical pleasure in responding to something unfortunate with a “well, nothing matters anyway.”
It’s curious how this happens. There are times when we care so intensely about an outcome that the thought of it not working out the way we hoped feels devastating. That report, that job interview, that date–when it’s something we can attach a lot of significance towards, it can fill us with paralyzing anxiety and avoidance (sometimes manifested as perfectionism). In these moments, the thought of well nothing matters anyway can be a freeing relief in response to something that feels too important or too meaningful. Nothing matters anyway also gets repeated as our self-soothing response if something doesn’t go our way. Business meeting didn’t go our way? Does it matter? No, nothing does. An outcome doesn’t go the way we wanted–nothing matters. An outcome goes the way we wanted–nothing matters.
If we treat this outlook like our panacea, if we apply it enough even as a balm, it can quickly reveal itself as a harmful opiate. A perspective of general meaninglessness tends to not remain isolated. You can’t switch from telling yourself nothing matters in response to an unwanted outcome to telling yourself things do matter in response to a desired outcome that you’re working towards. When we repeat to ourselves nothing matters enough times, then we begin to believe it. This belief robs us of the ability to discern what matters from what doesn't. We are robbed of the chance to learn from outcomes that don’t go our way, from how to navigate our anxieties around things that do matter to us, and even positive outcomes become infused with a sense of detachment that craves longing.
When we adopt that perspective the explicit MOL approach, it accompanies by all sorts of negative outcomes. There is a reason why feelings of meaninglessness and purposelessness are associated with worse mental and physical health outcomes. In my own experience and from those whom I’ve had conversations with during my research studies, there seems to be an identifiable pattern of depression, loneliness, and frustration that replaces our initial cathartic release of overwhelming burdens. During my own nihilistic period, I found myself retreating to feelings of misery, isolation, and irritation. It turns out that when you start to tell yourself that nothing matters, you begin to question if you matter. You can even begin to question if the people around you matter and if the various stories that are preoccupying and driving their day-to-day concerns matter.
Hold on, you might say. A report, a job interview, or a date–all of these seem too small to hold any universal narrative for someone to consider them as an approach to the MOL. How can we compare them to something like nihilism, which is so broad? When we zoom out, does any given report, interview, or date really matter? Again, set aside the cosmic level. That’s not what we’re most immediately interested in. We’re more immediately interested in how thinking about meaning affects us personally and the contexts we live in. So, consider these, or any specific events, in the context of the totality of your own life. Then do these things matter? There’s probably not a simple answer beyond, maybe. But the question of why these things might matter remains.
“There’s nothing meaningful at the beginning. We are not in a life with inherent meaning, you have to find something to make it interesting. That could be a lot of things. One meaning of life could be to be moral or good to people. Other people could think it is to learn a lot, or maybe give something to their children. Everyone needs to find meaning to be satisfied with their life at the end.”
- Camille (France), 26, Seoul
Here, it might be useful to introduce the idea of existentialism (different from the word “existential”). Existentialism is the word philosophers use to describe a stance that life has meaning on a personal level, but that an individual must choose that meaning for themselves from a range of possibilities. This is in contrast to believing that the meaning of life is something that is divinely ordained. People pick all sorts of things as their existential source of meaning. It could be a pure artistic or creative pursuit, professional success, a nuclear family, worldly pleasure, charity and aid, acquiring knowledge and making scientific discoveries. If we observe those around us, we might notice that people have existentialist approaches to meaning without even using words like “existentialism” or “meaning.”
Nobody thinks a single job interview or date will be the thing that gives their life existential meaning. Rather, we think the outcome of the interview or date, a job or a relationship, will. There are many kinds of outcomes people pursue with an expectation and hope that it could fill a void that would otherwise lead to nihilistic emptiness and maybe even bring us a deep, deep sense of happiness and fulfillment. These outcomes include anything from starting a business, having children, traveling the world, or other things entirely. Many times, these do feel meaningful. However, the point is that our belief that they will be meaningful, and the corresponding actions we take reflect a narrative, a story we’ve told ourselves about the world and our place in it. If we told ourselves different stories, then we would expect meaning to come from different outcomes and therefore take different actions. Maybe that job or that relationship isn’t that meaningful after all? But how do we adopt the narratives that they will be meaningful in the first place?
Perhaps the most obvious ways that narratives spread and become beliefs are through things that we already actively consider to be stories in our cultures. These take many forms, from movies, music, literature, and even social media, among many other examples. However, there are other elements of culture that inform our narratives too, like rituals, traditions, or familial and peer influences. There are also things considered tangential to culture, such as political and economic structures. Citizens of two different governments and economies can have very different narratives of what is meaningful as it relates to their political and economic participation. There are also things that we consider to be biological that carry their own influence. These can include things that we’ve grown to consider as relevant to evolutionary survival, such as mating and reproduction, accumulating resources, social bonds, and others.
Biological influences in particular are treated as immutable and undeniable parts of ourselves. But this isn’t the case. We see time and again, people do things contrary to what would be in their interest based on evolutionary survival goals. We die for causes, we forgo reproductive opportunities, we sacrifice our health. Some might make the argument that our evolutionary goals in these situations shift to adapt to new social and cultural environments. In either case, the natural line of question then becomes “when is the evolutionary narrative a true, inescapable biological imperative and when is it the function of social transmission?” There’s probably no objective answer. Whatever the context, biological or not, which narratives are we bound to and which ones do we have the freedom to control and shape? Again, there are probably no clear answers. The line of questions I’ve been most interested in: are there narratives, or even approaches to meaning, that we should follow–that would be beneficial to us as individuals, societies, or even as a species? I’ve come to believe that some of these questions might have an answer, but we’ll have to save this line of questioning for a future piece.
In seeking to explore the influence of these narratives on ourselves, we tend to introspect. There’s a kind of introspection I’ve noticed a few people (myself included) take when they are either contemplating or experiencing a major life transition. I’ve found this type of introspection to be particularly fascinating because it’s seen almost as a duty to oneself. During this, it seems people are trying to uncover which parts of their narratives “feel” more honest and which feel unauthentically adopted. Or authentic or not, the narrative may just no longer serve much value to them anymore. There might be certain career, family, relationship, or personal expectations that we no longer identify with. These might actually be holding us back from the self-actualized, authentic version of ourselves we desire to be. This introspection can be a productive undertaking, if it allows us to recognize which ideas of meaning we have adopted into our narratives, and if we want to continue carrying them with us. However, there are two immediate recognizable limitations.
For one, it’s impossible to truly uncover which narratives are “authentic” to ourselves versus which ones we’ve adopted. The idea of an “authentic” narrative uninfluenced by external factors might itself be an illusion. And even if these “authentic” narratives exist, it might be impossible to actually uncover them. When we enter periods of introspection, there are some narratives that are sacred. We refuse to question them, believing that if we shed them, we may lose the identities and stories that we do feel confident about. It makes sense. After all, truly discarding all prior narratives can make us feel dangerously close to the nihilistic sentiments of emptiness and nothing being true. Yet at the same time, these defense mechanisms can inhibit the true value of this type of introspection, since the person would fail to challenge the narratives that they otherwise should. As a result, we might not make the changes that would actually be crucial for us to live authentically meaningful lives, instead only making changes that fit into our predetermined goals. If the introspection is done well and if those goals really are what we’d find fulfilling, then we return to them. And if these aren’t the goals that we’d really find fulfilling, that means immediate change that is more painful but ultimately results in less regret and long-term dissatisfaction. But the aversion to pain and the possible nihilism stops us from getting there.
These themes and explorations are interesting in their own right but are inextricably tied to what it means to be human. They are tied to desires of wanting to improve mental wellbeing, minimize regret, and even obtain a sense of flourishing. The logic here is that following certain narratives and approaches to meaning can make the difference between cognitive states of depression, states of baseline functioning, and even states of flourishing. The mission of netproject.org isn’t just to explore these ideas for the sake of intellectual thought experiments, nor is it to publish psychology and philosophy research that might have an impact on the fields several years later–if at all. We actively want, and are working on interventions that we hope can have a demonstrable, large-scale impact sooner rather than later, because we believe that building a meaningful and flourishing world shouldn’t only be a theoretical and intellectual exercise. Among other tools, our platform will allow users to introspect and understand the narratives in their own lives in a uniquely insightful way. A meaningful, fulfilling life should be something that can be achieved by us today–but only if we want it. We’re incorporating an original approach to what we’re developing, backed by our own innovative research ideas that we’ve been exploring for years, as well as ideas from other researchers and thinkers.
Narrative affects all of us–share this article with someone you know to start a conversation about what narratives they believe. If you want to get involved to join our team or help to fund us, reach out to us at future@netproject.org. For a list of our current team needs, visit our openings page. Subscribe to our email list for relevant philosophical topics we’ll be tackling in future posts, product updates, and to hear about our private beta launch.
Dictionary
Narratives: Used here, are stories that inform the way we think about the world and our individual and collective place in the world
Existentialism: The word philosophers use to describe a stance that life has meaning on a personal level, but that an individual must choose that meaning for themselves from a range of possibilities.
