What Is Meaning?

Becoming, Establishing, Reproduction, and Legacy

By guest author N.D. Wallace-Swan.

We are interesting creatures, without a doubt. Joseph Campbell once said that man is a strange mix of animal and God, that we have our heads in the clouds and our feet in the dirt. Our minds can, however, be blinded by these clouds and sometimes forget about our feet, our place in being.

At the same time, this blindness encourages us to seek meaning in our lives, imagining our reality as a tale playing out before us with a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes this comes in the form of the seasons we witness throughout the year, and in the ways in which we feel the cycles of the day and night. Like the ticking of a clock, we pace through time, in moments of astonishment, banality, and depression. But what is the point of all that, and what does it take to get from one end to the other, successfully? And why?

Why is an important question, and it is the origin for this piece. Many reading this don’t know their roots, their heritage, that which anchors them to the Great Chain of Being. I come from a long line of people who left their homes on the European continent — some first sons, but many second or third sons looking to find the space to author their own epoch. They went out and conquered uncivilized lands and built our world which we are so blessed to enjoy. This is true for most of us in America (both the USA and the rest). But now we are in a crisis of meaning, because we have forgotten. It is high time that we started to remember who we are.

We strain for meaning in our lives, and many of us break in the process. Let it not be unsaid: many of our lives are completely wasted. People move forward without pursuit, living what I feel is an animal life… only they are NOT animals. They feel this meaninglessness in their being; they know something is not right about their lives. But what? Where do we go wrong in our pursuit of this? How are so many lost along the way? I will break this into four sections, each building upon each other into a totality of “meaning.” These sections are: Becoming, Establishing, Reproduction, and Legacy.

Becoming

There is no being without becoming. The foundation of your birth is the fundamental relationship between your parents, their parents, and the rest of your ancestry. In short, we call this heritage. Many denounce a call to heritage as a “dog whistle” or “old thinking,” but this is nonsense.

Heritage must come before you are born, and although it is not necessary to go very far back for it to be a useful foundation of meaning, it must be understood. The further you can recall your ancestry, the better.

A plaque commemorating John Cowles — one of my own ancestors but also the ancestor of many Americans alive today

I define “lost heritage” as a person who didn’t know any of his four grandparents, and I define it having been partially lost if none of that person’s grandparents knew a single one of their own grandparents. Now, why?

Grandchildren are the legacy of grandparents. Their children, in contrast, are the products of parents. Direct products are of course important, but they carry a different quality than do the products of the products, as the latter indicate an established legacy, demonstrating that the subject has, through his or her being, left a lasting effect upon the world.

Birth is the next most important part of meaning, for without it, there is no being. As the product of your parents, the qualities of their own individual establishment will affect you, and will determine portions of your being. In many ways, birth and heritage are synonymous, as you do not have memories of very early childhood, even though they form the basis of what makes you you, rather than someone else.

We must grow. Growth is a layer in our life’s meaning, and there are few creatures who are disrespected more than adolescents. This is growth in the physical sense, and additionally in the sense of emotional and psychological maturation and development. Is the child sociable? Is the child learning about the world and himself? Is he making progress towards personal independence and capacity? Did you as a child maximize your growth potential through your own efforts? Did you have enough support?

Support, or education, comes in many forms. Manners, expectations, discipline, and balance all play a role in your development as a person. Balance is equally important to all the other concepts mentioned, because the difference between obsession and interest is one of degree. The difference between discipline and abuse is a matter of control versus a lack of control (itself a lack of proper discipline). The same can be said of manners and expectations, for when either is adhered to in an extreme manner, it produces a stiffness in attitude and sometimes self-destructive behaviour. Translated further, becoming quickly blends into establishing, which is a layer we build towards.

Establishing

Building upon education is the development of skills. Ideally, these skills are useful in life and not merely masturbatory in nature. This builds towards marketability, which brings confidence, allowing one to build himself up into something useful for both his family and society.

Such marketability and usefulness allow a person to make deeper connections to others, layering the social with the economic, ripening relationships, and in so doing, strengthening his sense of self, his sense of belonging to something greater than himself, and his sense of meaning. Someone in this state will find transitioning from the productive self into the reproductive self very natural.

Reproduction

Transitioning from a productive self into the reproductive self builds upon the previously established meaning which one has developed. In order to reproduce, one requires a mate, and the ability to attain one requires many of the earlier developed skills, such as sociability, balance, confidence, marketability, and health. Courting is the display of oneself as an embodiment of these things, while seeking out another who will complement these characteristics.

The goal of course doesn’t need to be said, though many aim for marriage. Once mated, this relationship typically produces offspring, establishing a permanent heritage in common for these children. It must be stressed that in choosing a mate, you are not only choosing her, but her whole family, her whole heritage, to be shared with yours. Many misunderstand this aspect of marriage, but it is true. You are intertwining your legacies via reproduction.

In doing this, you have taken on the task of imbuing your offspring with your experience, skills, knowledge, wealth, circumstance, being, and meaning. Your children will be the foundation of your legacy, and how you impact them will directly impact whatever you hope to leave behind that is good, or bad, in the world.

Legacy

The pinnacle of meaning, it might be said, is what you can look back upon and know you have left behind. It is the impact of your life’s being, the wake of your keel upon the waters of life. The accumulation of love, hate, forgiveness, contempt, failure, and redemption, all rolled into one teary-eyed splendour. The unexamined life is not worth living, it is said, but what does that mean? Do you look back on your life fondly? Knowingly? Or do you turn your head from the past, avert your eyes, and say, “I cannot look upon it, no more, NO MORE!”? Was all your suffering worthwhile? Was your hard journey fruitful? For some, to look back on their lives is very painful. If you always live in the now, there is a reason.

Such a wince of pain, not for physical injury, but mental anguish, merciless, the kind which damns you to suffer without abatement. A sort of torture to the point of tedious delirium where the past no longer exists, for every moment you remember it is like a knife carving at your soul. For many, this will drive them to drink. And can we blame them at that point? Yes. But I understand why they self-destroy, for their meaning is nothing. They have no legacy. It is as though they never existed, and they feel it! What impact did they make? Perhaps some, but who will remember? Sure, some can leave behind a legacy that didn’t come forth through their loins, but very few manage. The crisis of meaning does not emanate from our great inventors and visionaries, but from the average, everyday Joe. Failing to warn young people of this is criminal; it is a bewitching trick and travesty, sending men to their spiritual ruin. As Dostoyevsky notes in The Brothers Karamazov, the worst sin is to destroy and betray yourself, for nothing.

Legacy, as I stated earlier, is your grandchildren. They are the physical embodiment of your work and heritage combined into being itself. Your role then is enrichment, endowment, presence, gratefulness, mutuality, and encouragement. These children of your children are your love letters to the future. They represent both the culmination of your selflessness, and the physical embodiment of your sacrifice. They are the proof of the meaning within your life’s work and being. If you desire meaning, then let nothing stop you.