A Meaningful Life

A different perspective...

Photo by Claudia Raya on Unsplash

I was recently asked:

For a while, I have been wondering about how people can lead a meaningful life and the answer hovers around service to others, dedicating oneself to something bigger than the self, etc. That begs the question - does that mean the people who are obsessively self-interested (i.e. Psychopaths) can not live a meaningful life? If yes, how so?

I decided to think on this a bit before answering, as this seems like something that requires consideration. I don’t think that “meaning” is the right word for it, because I think that meaning has a great number of assumptions attached to it. I don’t think that a person’s meaning in the world has anything to do with their emotions, or even having an understanding of what their meaning might be. When we are discussing what gives a person “meaning”, I think that what they really are doing is feeling that they have a purpose in the world, and that purpose is what gives them enrichment.

For instance, some guys are the type that you leave to go to the store, and when you come back, he’s built a den and deck. You have no idea where he got the supplies, but there it is. That is where he gets his purpose. He works with his hands to shape the world in which he lives. You might argue that is in service to someone else, such as his wife and family, but if this sort of man were left alone in the woods, he would still build, regardless. His life is driven by it, and he is fulfilled by it.

Without den man, the world would be a very different place to live. It is men like that who innovate new structures and ways to create our living and working environments. Alone or with others, his meaning changes the face of our existence, but the need to build is innate, and the person that it serves, is his internal world.

It seems to me that this is truly what is being discussed when the word “meaning” is brought about. What do you feel is your role in the world, and how do you work to fill that role? It seems to me that this internal drive is much like den man’s need to build. Building is his purpose, for others it is charity, and for others still, it is a need to understand the world that propels them forward.

Most humans need a purpose in order to be mentally well. They need things to strive for, and things to accomplish. You have to see yourself have mastery over something in order to grow as an individual. Challenging yourself in multiple ways is how you become a well-rounded and well-functioning person. Currently, there are many humans that have no sense of purpose. This is clear to me by the number of people that are mentally miserable. For many, they live in a world that rewards having nothing to strive for. Their world is both too easy, and stripped of purpose, seemingly by design.

The reason most people involve themselves in helping others is because of how it makes them feel. It can be argued that the good feeling that comes from helping others is a built-in leftover from tribal living.

Tribes function better when people are cooperative, so the brain gives you a dopamine hit when you do something that assists someone else. It helps with tribal function. As this was the mode of living for humans for thousands of years, it makes sense that it still hangs around and fires when you do good things. If the internal motivation for doing good things is that they make you feel good, that means that your motivation is inherently selfish.

Does that make it a bad thing? No. It makes the world better as a whole. You getting a little dopamine fix for being nice makes other people do the same thing, which is better than living in a world where everyone is at each other’s throats. Social cohesion is a good thing in many ways. It is better to live in a community than a warzone.

Psychopaths won’t seek out purpose. To us, purpose is life itself. Living in the moment and enjoying it. There isn’t a need for self-fulfillment and we cannot relate to the existential fear that many people apparently live with. There isn’t a drive to leave a mark in the world, to be remembered, to have people think of us fondly outside of their fondness making them more inclined to be amicable to what we would like. None of these things matter to us.

Psychopaths also do not get little dopamine hits from doing nice things for others. There isn’t something that drives us to do anything that isn’t interesting. We live for ourselves, and we are inherently self-focused. This is where we get into the argument of what it means to have “meaning” versus feeling that your life has purpose, and how one has nothing to do with the other. They are also often confused with one another as well. There are brilliant surgeons that are psychopathic. They didn’t go into the field because they had an inherent desire to help others. They went into it because it was interesting and it challenged them.

Does that remove the meaning of saving all the lives that they save over their career? No, of course not. Just as you guys getting a little dopamine hit from your altruism doesn’t negate any of the good tasks that you do. Purpose is an inherently selfish thing, but selfish doesn’t mean bad. A psychopath will never be fulfilled by the things that we choose to do, but we will never feel empty or without purpose either. There is no internal drive that seeks those things out, but we also have nothing holding us back when we see something that needs doing.

This is a discussion I have had numerous times. Required action. Something that needs doing. Psychopaths understand me straight away when I say it, but neurotypicals argue with me because they are unable to see action outside of motivation that is emotional. This becomes an endless circular explanation that many of them are never able to understand. Without an emotional reason to act, they cannot imagine someone doing so. We cannot imagine an emotional reason to act, or refrain from action, and cannot imagine that being the motivation for either choice. We end at an impasse.

Right action, or action that needs doing, is something that you do because you know that it needs to be done. It isn’t for adulation, it isn’t for kudos, it isn’t for gain. It is something that presents itself in front of you, and you take it upon yourself to do so. I often use the idea of a loaf of bread that has fallen into the grocery store aisle. You see it, and you put it back. No one is going to say, “hey, good job on putting that loaf of bread back”. It is just an action that you take to maintain the world in which you live, as we create the world that we want to live in through our actions regardless of why we undertake them.

Motivation for action does not change the impact on the world. If you leave behind you a wake of tragedy and terror, regardless of whether you thought you were doing the right thing, the impact on the world is no less damaging. Your intentions of doing something good that ends in nothing but strife and misery do not negate the outcome. By that same token, you may mean to do terrible things, but somehow end up doing something that is a net benefit for the world, you are not absolved of your intentions there either.

Valuable information has been gleaned from atrocious events such as Unit 731 and Nazi scientists, but those individuals that conducted those experiments are not absolved of their actions simply because they provided value to the human race after causing so much suffering. Many of these types of people would believe in what they were doing and think that their lives were meaningful, but clearly, their “meaning” was terribly detrimental to everyone that they laid their hands on.

Imagine two scenarios.

What if you have worked your entire adult life at a charity? You spent your days on the phone soliciting donations for what you considered an excellent cause, but after spending ten years there, it comes to light that this charity was a scam. Everything that you were able to bring in as donations went to the administrators and their paychecks. Not a single penny was given to the cause that you thought you were working to solve. Did your work there create a net negative, or a net positive?

In the second, there is a child that is born with profound mental and physical limitations. To many on the outside, this person appears to be nothing but a burden, but to their family, this child is the light of their lives. The child will never be able to contribute to the world past their own family, but the sister or brother of theirs is inspired to become a medical researcher because of their experience of their sibling’s impact on their lives and goes on to really benefit the world.

In the first scenario, the intention was a noble one, but the effect was theft and dishonesty. In the second scenario, there was no intention, but the result was human advancement and improvement.

Can you make the argument that the charity worker’s actions were better for the world because their intention was to do good? No. The outcome was negative. On the other hand, the child had no intention, but inspired greatness. Just because the charity worker felt a strong sense of purpose, that didn’t mean anything towards their actions being meaningful.

If you believe in a higher power, I’m not sure that you would be able to determine whether your life was meaningfully led. You are basically assuming your role in something that is so large it is incomprehensible to a human mind. What emotionally fulfills you may have nothing to do with whether or not your life has met the meaning that it was created for. You can certainly find purpose, but purpose is for the fulfillment of self, and may have nothing to do with what your soul was created for. Chances are, you would never know.

Something that I have realized over time in this world is that the impact an individual has is often unknown to that individual at the time. You might hear from someone later about how your involvement in their lives shaped the direction that they took, but were unaware of your importance. This could be either negative or positive. Some people are profoundly impacted by childhood bullies, but the bullies themselves have no idea that they are doing as much damage as they are. In contrast, someone that you helped in a moment, but didn’t think very much of your actions, may appear later to explain exactly how much that moment of your time changed their circumstances for the better.

For all we know, if there is a Creator, those moments that dramatically alter the course of someone else’s life are the meaning that you were created for. Likely not the bullying example, of course, but the second one. That moment that passed by with hardly a second thought might be the whole reason that you walk the earth, but you couldn’t know that because you cannot know the intentions of God. Even if you don’t believe in a higher power, I think to ascribe meaning to your own life is to see yourself as more important than others. It is a value judgment on other people’s lives and one that no one can really make.

There are a ton of people that really struggle in the world. It seems that every single bad luck option is what they are predestined for. There is a term for this, “Snakebit”.

snakebit adjective: having or experiencing failure or bad luck

It may seem that their lives are just a cascade of terrible events that don’t provide anything of value to the world which in many people’s minds would say that their lives are more or less “meaningless”. What if their meaning of their lives is to suffer and to get through that suffering? Perhaps those that believe in reincarnation are correct, and that every life is about learning something specific that is meant to propel you on your path. In that person’s life, the suffering is the meaning. It is the lesson that they must learn, and every time they come through a trial or tribulation, they are one step closer to fulfilling that meaning so they can move on to the next lesson. If that is the case, their meaning is hidden from the world, but present all the same.

Human existence and its meaning in the grand scheme of things is something that has been debated for years. I think the idea that we can define meaning isn’t from a place of knowledge, but rather comfort. The unknown is frightening to most people, and not understanding why you exist as a person can be very disconcerting.

For a psychopath, instead of any of these things occupying our thoughts, we have a different path. On our path, we have to learn how to be the best version of ourselves outside of the emotional inclination to do so. Without fear, guilt, or a desire to be a part of the collective tribe, but also with low impulse control, a general interest in entertainment, and not having emotional empathy, our choices can have a very large negative impact on the world. We have to learn to choose wisely for both ourselves, and for the people around us without there being the reward of emotional gratification for those choices.

This comes back to motivation. Does a person’s motivation to live a life that fulfills their need for purpose somehow outweigh a person’s motivation to challenge themselves because that is what they are entertained by if the outcome is a net positive for the world regardless?

That is something that each person has to answer for themselves.