Let’s take a moment to reflect on this question
I’m a meaning creation kind of guy at this point in my inner evolutionary history.
And i also find meaning in community and in seeding a second renaissance
I generally follow Vervaeke’s theory of meaning:
Meaning-making is a biologically based activity of environmental scanning to pick out elements in the action arena relevant to survival and flourishing. Such scanning includes both threats and opportunities. The 3Rs/4Ps process is an ongoing process of adjusting cognitive filters for more adaptive scanning and sorting of environmental inputs. From that POV, “finding meaning” involves environmental scanning to pick out what is most relevant to existing framing. “Creating meaning” is 3Rs/4Ps processing to upgrade the framing itself. As for why I am “here” (in a 2R forum), in a nutshell: both. I use forums like this to source ideas needed to fill gaps in my cognitive-interpretive model of the world. I also look for affordances (like people I can partner with on various projects) or threats (like lines of reasoning that seem like complete time wasters and are better avoided). I supposed people might go through relatively distinct information gathering and information processing phases, but I tend to be doing all of that in parallel most of the time (at least while at a keyboard).
Interesting thoughts:
Is there a difference between “finding meaning” and “creating meaning”?
I feel “finding meaning” is more consumer-oriented. You can find lots meaningful. For example, watching videos while scrolling on Instagram/TikTok, but that feels like wasting time. Pushing this too far gives craving love without getting any. I think this is EROS, desire. It’s needed to find what you like. This feels GOOD.
I think “creating meaning” is more producer-oriented. It’s doing something good for others, letting people function through your actions. Pushing this too far is giving love without getting any. This is then AGAPE. Your successful actions have a positive impact on others. This is the TRUTH.
When you combine “finding meaning” and “creating meaning”. You’re in a combination of the spirit of EROS and AGAPE. You love the action while doing good for others. Pushing this too far gives you God. This combination feels like PLAY. Is this PHILIA? This appears like BEAUTY.
Conclusion: find meaning in creating meaning?
Thoughts to close: I find “creating meaning” hard to figure out. What actions effectively create meaning? What makes other people function well? Do we need to change our spirit to change the economy, or do we need to change the economy to change our spirit? Maybe a question for in the future
One of my current reads is Susan Greenfield, Mind Change: how digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Per that book, digital natives are quicker on search, but more prone to pursuing links irrelevant to the topic and less able evaluate the quality of any given result. Likewise, books on paper promote better attention and comprehension than books on screen. With respect to the topic at question here, “finding links” (or TikTok videos, etc.) is a dubious substitute for “finding meaning”. Of course, one can certainly find links to vastly meaningful content. But meaning, in general, requires an active meaning-maker to get beyond raw web scraping.
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In the end there needs to be a person or object to interact with.
I find it interesting that we can search for communities online, you can directly interact with people like yourself. The biggest barrier here is trust I feel, you mostly see text online and don’t feel the emotion. But after a couple meaningful interactions you start to feel the vibe. Also the community builders have an important role being the representatives of the culture through content.
Last night I attended an https://issa.org/ meeting and heard some hair-raising tales about how AI is spoofing humans. One major recommendation: “zero trust” is the way to be on the Internet. In this forum, I know one of the moderators face-to-face and have a multi-year, interactive online relationship to go with that. So by way of transitive trust, I’m willing to venture that other participants here are not bots either. With all of my other currently active online communities that is also the case - I’m had physical meals or at least very substantial small group interactive relationships with the principle organizers. In AI lingo, there is a “ground truth” process that allows me to translate symbolic communications to embodied personalities. As for the major commercial online platforms - assume false information, attempts to manipulate, hacking attempts, etc. are always lurking.