Confused on ‘life is meaningless’

[Thetruthseeker]

Just getting confused on this ‘life is meaningless’ if anyone can help. 
 

I understand that in the external world objects have no absolute meaning, cars, people, situations, houses, etc. But it’s the meaning that we construct onto them that makes the meaning to us itself 

but I’m getting confused when it comes to values from a values list. The values seem more internal. So values of independence, creativity, authenticity… etc, am I really constructing them? Or are they inherent to each individual? 
 

because if I was completely constructing choosing abstract values from a list, how would I ever choose? Whereas I feel like I have an innate set of values that don’t really change, and it was obvious to me when looking through a values list what was important to me 

[Gnosis]

If you're referring to Spiral Dynamics Memes, from my experience these are exaggerated for the sake of differentiation.

I like to think about every two SD stages as a single cognitive stage with two expressions. For me this hits closer to home.

The behavior of people start to make much more sense, when you consider Red-Blue as a single stage, Orange-Green as a single stage, and so on.

In some sense, only an Orange person can have Green ideas. It's harder for a truly Blue person to have Orange ideas, because that in a sense requires him/her to construct an entirely new sense of self.

 

Whether "you have" "an innate set of values" is a non-issue, considering you are similarly constructing "yourself".

"Life" is not "meaningless", considering you are similarly constructing "life".

Or more abstrusely, the "values" and "yourself" refer to the same activity of construction and appearance; the "meaningfulness" and "life" refer to the same activity of construction and appearance; and all these stand on equal ground.

 

There is no "list".

The reason it conceptually appears to you that the activity of constructing values involves "choosing" from a list is because you're not giving "values" and "yourself" equal footing when it comes to construction.

You're not realizing that relative to the activity of constructing and cognitive development, these terms are identical.

[tsuki]

1 hour ago, Thetruthseeker said:

I’m getting confused when it comes to values from a values list. The values seem more internal. So values of independence, creativity, authenticity… etc, am I really constructing them? Or are they inherent to each individual? 

The Self is a natural occurrence, by that I mean that it exists by necessity. The image of the Self, that I denote here as lowercase self, is a by-product of Self-awareness that humans posses. It is an abstraction, it does not "do" anything. The self is a figure of speech.

The "values" you speak of, are an interpretation of behavior that is then classified to form "spiral dynamics". There are no "values" as such, in of themselves: only interpretation exists. There is no tiny human in your head that has a list of values which are acted out through the levers that grow inside of your skull.

Edited July 6, 2021 by tsuki

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, Thetruthseeker said:

I feel like I have an innate set of values that don’t really change

A value is like a thought story compressed into one word. To see it just ask yourself for example: "Why do I value authenticity?" and out comes the story. All values are like this, there are many aspects to them. In a sense the word used for the value has no absolute meaning,  something like "love" is just a placeholder for a whole story about love. You could replace "love" with "excitement" and some of the elements of both those values would overlap. Because they are just stories, your "authenticity" would be slightly different from someone else's "authenticity" - it's all relative.

Meaning comes from emotion and identification with something. We say something is meaningful if it contains some truth or has some sort of emotional charge behind it. When you have a value of "being kind" for example, it's not because it's innate but because you have an emotional response to the story of "being kind". And, because you have the positive emotional response you identify with it. Maybe you imagine being kind to a person and it makes them happy, and you get a good vibe from this thought story, and then that makes it meaningful to you.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Thetruthseeker said:

Just getting confused on this ‘life is meaningless’ if anyone can help. 
 

I understand that in the external world objects have no absolute meaning, cars, people, situations, houses, etc. But it’s the meaning that we construct onto them that makes the meaning to us itself 

but I’m getting confused when it comes to values from a values list. The values seem more internal. So values of independence, creativity, authenticity… etc, am I really constructing them? Or are they inherent to each individual? 
 

because if I was completely constructing choosing abstract values from a list, how would I ever choose? Whereas I feel like I have an innate set of values that don’t really change, and it was obvious to me when looking through a values list what was important to me 

You are confusing two different things.

Meaninglessness is one thing

Your personal values are another thing.

Even if your personal values are 100% determined by your genetics and you cannot change them, they are still meaningless.

Values are things your psyche has a bias towards. All these biases are meaningless and selfish in the absolute sense. But in the relative sense you cannot live life without biases and values.

Your values are definitely not just invented out of thin air. Your values are shaped by your genetics, childhood, culture, education, strengths, weaknesses, personality type, etc. If you want, you can think of values as deep subconscious aspects of your psyche which you must discover through a process of self-exploration. You are not born knowing your values or your own psyche -- just as you are not born knowing your own face. You must bring your likes and dislikes to the forefront of consciousness, making them explicit and crystal clear. This is done through self-reflection. It is like looking in the mirror as a kid to study your own face.

[Thetruthseeker]

@Leo Gura Thank you!