Bill’s Blog

While wandering around the web the other day, I came across this post. The author, Phil Villarreal, writes:

As time continues to speed up and death draws closer, I become more and more convinced that TV sports and video games are a waste of time, and that by spending time staring at a TV in anger over an ultimately meaningless game people a thousand miles away from me are playing, or zoning out with a guitar-shaped controller in my hand, failing for the 30th time in one hour to get pass one song I’ll never have a chance of conquering, I’m squandering what little time I’ve been given. And yet as I age I’m even more drawn to piddling distractions, as if they’re safety blankets I grasp and cower under in order to shelter my senses from the inevitable.

This got me thinking about the nature of meaning. What makes something meaningful or meaningless, and how much of my time should I be spending on meaningful endeavors?

The nature of meaning

First, let’s define the term. Dictionary.com has several definitions of meaning, but the ones I like for my purpose here are “the end, purpose, or significance of something” and “something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance”. So for something to have meaning, it must be significant in some way or have a purpose or an end. This immediately leads you to another question - significant to whom? These concepts all rely on a relationship with a conscious entity. Only an individual consciousness can assign significance, a purpose, or an end to something.

Phil brings up sports in his post, and that serves as an interesting example. I’m not much of a sports fan. I watch the Cowboys when they’re winning, like they are this year, but that’s about it. You could definitely say that I generally don’t find much meaning in sports. But millions of people watch sports almost religiously. They talk excitedly about the latest games and their favorite players. Some games even result in riots. Hollywood makes an endless stream of movies based on the inspiring story of an athlete or a sports team. Clearly, many people find sports very meaningful.

Video games are another good example. I do enjoy many video games, and it would not be a stretch to say I find them meaningful. For example, I tend to play roleplaying games where I can be a powerful wizard or warrior. In these games, I play a key part in world-affecting events, and I go around changing things for the better. It’s a satisfying contrast to the real world, where I find it difficult to have any real effect on people.

I would say that one’s knowledge and experience around a certain thing ultimately determines whether the thing is meaningful to that individual. I’ll use Contra III, another video game, as an example. In isolation, I don’t find much meaning in this game. You basically just run through the whole thing shooting aliens. My friend Jeremy and I played this game at a time in my life when I was not very happy. We played it so much that we had our moves coordinated perfectly with each other. We would go through the game flipping over each other and swinging across obstacles in choreographed perfection, leaving an army of dead aliens in our wake. Thinking of Contra III always brings back some really good memories from a time that wasn’t very good overall, and this gives it special meaning to me. The people who are into sports probably have their own personal experiences that lend meaning to the games they so love to watch. Personal experience provides context which lends meaning.

Meaning as a goal or value

In our brief lifetimes, we all hope to have some sort of lasting positive effect on the world, if only through the impressions we leave on our friends and family. But how should we balance our time between doing things that are meaningful to others and doing things that are “ultimately meaningless” to others? If I spend time on something that is meaningful to me personally, but meaningless to others, does that mean that my time could be better spent on other things?

I consider myself a student of Objectivism, which holds that the highest moral purpose of one’s life is one’s own happiness, and that long-term happiness is achieved through a rational hierarchy of values. So the question becomes: does doing things that are meaningful to others contribute more effectively to my long-term happiness than doing things that are meaningful only to me? This question doesn’t have a simple answer one way or the other.

For instance, one could argue that by doing something to promote my values in a way that is meaningful to others, I have a better chance of moving more people towards my own viewpoint, which would increase my own long-term happiness. But if I make meaningfulness to others a primary value, that implies that I should ignore my own values and just do whatever others will find meaningful. That would clearly have a negative impact on my long-term happiness.

I think the real answer here is that I should focus on achieving my own values, and if I happen to find a way to do that in a way that’s meaningful to others, great. The question of whether to achieve a value should not be dependent on its meaningfulness to others - only the question of how to achieve it. And even then, meaningfulness to others should be, at most, a peripheral concern.

Conclusion

We can’t spend every hour of every day on productive action, actively trying to achieve values. We all need periods of rest, and those are the times when most of us watch sports or play video games. In these periods of rest, I think one should focus on activities that have meaning in line with one’s own values. If you no longer find sports inspiring, or video games just don’t seem as rewarding as they used to, then you should probably find other interests. But I don’t think meaningfulness to others should be a major concern. Ultimately, you’re responsible for achieving your own happiness, and if you make that dependent on the values of others, you may end up being sorely disappointed in the result.