This Project
What is a website?
Simply put, this website was created as a resource to read about different philosophies of life and its meaning. “What is the meaning of life?” is the quintessential philosophical question, now a hackneyed way to parody philosophers and their superfluous musings. Its cliche stems from both the ubiquity and ambiguity of the question. It is a question that everyone has asked but there exists no universally accepted answer. Even the interpretation of the question can be expressed differently from questions of origin to purpose, value to identity. My project does not seek to provide an answer, say what is right or wrong, or assert an opinion. I am not here to finalize the meaning of life and reveal the ultimate truth of the human condition. Rather, this site is designed as an archive to spark conversation, thought, and reflection. To ask any more of such a deeply abstract concept would be doing a disservice to the complex farrago of scientific, religious, and spiritual deliberations on the subject.
How should this website be used?
As mentioned previously, this is not intended to answer the question it poses. It exists to be helpful, to provoke thought, and pay homage to the various ways people view their lives. Maybe someone will find something inspiring or compelling. For me, creating the website has given me clarity not in how I define meaning but in the agency I take in continuing my search for meaning in my studies, my career, and my activities.
Why make THIS topic your archive?
As a philosophy and history major, I am inspired by the ways humans determine meaning. Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been confronted with the uncertainty of our existence. Every known society has developed a pedagogy of exploring the meaning and purpose of humanity. Overtime, meaning has manifested itself in quests for power, religious pilgrimages, symbiosis with nature, and wars over ideologies. Explanations vary by geography and culture and evolve through societal progression, yet the fundamental question remains. Today, our technological innovation is remarkably useless in the quest for innate purpose and thus we are stuck with the same question as our ancestors.
Finding higher purpose is an elemental human tendency. This is evident in powerful religious institutions, the $300 billion-dollar mental health market, and the tradition of declaring a New Years Resolution. Whether your goal is to pray more, be happier, or become the best version of yourself, the search for meaning in life is a shared path that diverges at various intersections. Arguably, nearly everything that exists is a testament to humanity desperately trying to establish its purpose.
When you look around, you probably see a lot of things. Everything that we have created has a purpose to serve a larger purpose. What I mean is that we have created and shaped the modern world to provide us greater comforts, more free time, enhance our physical wellbeing, and, ultimately, to survive. Everything is connected to these integral cornerstones of the human experience. We decided that staying alive was important, so first, we foraged for food, then created feudal agricultural lands, and now have Trader Joe’s to meet our nutritional needs. We believed that physical health was necessary, so we held gladiator competitions in coliseums and now have a Soul Cycle in every trendy city. Seeking amusement and pleasure, alcohol has been widely consumed for millennia. Transcending time and place, we have molded the world to fit an idealized existence. Every time we take Lexapro, gain a promotion at work, or decide to have a baby, we are responding to the intrinsic human desire to find some semblance of meaning in a world that can feel devoid of it. I believe everyone is connected by a shared desire to find higher meaning.
Why did you choose this medium for your archive?
Philosophy is woefully inaccessible to the masses. Where philosophy is often housed, in long-winded academic articles and ancient leather-bound books, is a testament to its exclusivity as a discipline. Often, the intelligence of academicians is detrimental to the subject by preventing its dissemination.
I wanted to present philosophy as something simple, accessible, and democratized. The scrolling feature replicates that of social media to improve readability and impact. It is a clean format designed to inspire, provoke, and guide. There is nothing consummated, as depth is not the intention. The addition of information would only serve to convolute the message. Instead, I found it important to emphasize the breadth of possibilities, not the nuanced extent of each theory. The simplicity of information and design is deliberate, as I hope the website serves as a resource for all.
Because of its simplicity, I have created a “Further Reading” page with four other titles if the viewer is so-enticed. For some, the small snippets of information may be enough to provoke thought. For others who crave a deeper understanding of philosophical, historical, and cultural ideas behind the information, I wanted to make that available. Again, the list of reading is by no means exhaustive, but I have read the books personally and would wholeheartedly recommend them. If I stumble across other resources, I will add them.
In addition, I added a “Big Ideas” section in order to categorize the information by type of meaning. I believe this further democratized and simplified the ideas in its presentation.
What was the impact of this project for you?
Ultimately, as much as this serves as a resource for others, it is my archive. In the vast collection and subsequent abridging of information, I developed something that was quasi-therapeutic. In my penultimate year of college, I am at an inflection point. Never before have I felt the pressure of tremendous change and uncertainty. This is, arguably, customary for young adults beginning to navigate the realities of moving away from home, getting a job, finding love, paying rent, and so many other ‘firsts’. The last few years have been a frenzy of planning and decision-making. Exacerbated by current events, the world exhibits a volatilite tendency toward rapid change. Facing an increasingly unpredictable future, I have been considering the meaning of my life. I seek a future in which my goals in life are satisfied and my pursuits are purposeful. Finding the intersection of intellectual passion, financial comfort, and global altruism has become the trifecta for how I gauge my trajectory. Is what I am doing conducive to a comfortable, happy life that serves both myself and others? In establishing this motive, I looked beyond my values into something much deeper and more transcendental.
Creating this project has also given me a more altruistic look upon the lives of others. Frequently, we pass judgment on others’ choices under the framework of our own personal values. The classic college major debate, as I wrote about in Writing Project I, illustrates this well. The choice of major is something I once believed spoke volumes about a person. I believed that business majors were greedy, fine art majors unmotivated, and engineers too focused on the material. But I have come to understand the breadth by which people evaluate opportunities and how values, belief systems, and ideologies inform meaning. In this project, I deliberately chose to dissect the “Eastern'' and “Western” philosophies of life’s meaning. I found profound differences between how each valued unity and individuality, with Eastern philosophy favoring the former and Western the latter. Eastern philosophy believes in the recurring and eternal, Western the material and logical. In the United States, freedom of individual choice is the most significant principle of politics and society. The “live free or die'' creed is hailed as the unequivocal essence of American life, emulating a sort of national “meaning of life” adoption. But this view is not shared by the rest of the world and understanding cultural relativism in the context of adopted principles is imperative to formulating global consciousness. We are directly products of our perspectives on the meaning of life. An understanding of the variation in theory has opened my eyes to the complexity of the existential “decision-making” processes. I hope that this external altruism will reflect inward so that I may look upon my future path with acceptance and affirmation. I don’t know what the future may hold but in further uncovering the purpose of my life, I hope to guide my choices in the vision of this meaning.