Recharting the American meaning map
There was inevitability to the men with guns inside the Michigan statehouse, and somehow also surprise. Paradox. I love a good paradox, but once in a while, one leaves me staring at my shoes like a batter caught looking at a nasty breaking ball.
Those who are old enough to remember 9/11 likely frame it similarly to those who are old enough to remember December 7, 1941. Both were singular events that forever altered worldviews. In hindsight, both seem at once surprising and inevitable.
The protests in Michigan did not rise to that level, but the events that have transpired since the pandemic began a year ago, when considered in totality, have a similar effect. What is the salient lesson? For me, it’s that pre-2020 worldviews no longer accurately represent reality. As we emerge from the pandemic, we have an opportunity to update our maps, and to choose how we reintegrate.
Mass confusion
The pandemic, the protests, the election, and the race for a return to normal revealed the limitations of my own sense- and meaning-making abilities. The events also revealed pain, which jolted the legacy media, the new media, and the hearts and minds of Americans. Some, perhaps many, were and are perturbed by the physical pain of sickness, and the mental anguish of feeling directionless, left behind, depressed, and enraged. For the purpose of this essay, this breakdown of mental coherence and and physical order, which came to a head in 2020, is what I and others are calling the meaning crisis.
For most of the afflicted, this feeling of directionlessness is unacceptable. People have an inherent sense of value and orient themselves toward better. Sense is preferable to senselessness. Ease preferable to pain. Meaning preferable to meaninglessness. To those ends, 2020 presented us with choices:
Stasis: Double down on our standard ways of making sense, which is viable when you ignore conflicting signals.
Revert: Fall back on reductionistic ways of making sense, such as tribalism, which often values an in-group to the detriment of the out-group.
Synthesis and synergy: Integrate the new information and transcend, creating new ways of making sense, which is viable if you can entertain paradox and uncertainty.
Revert
Historically, religious revivals have followed or coexisted with periods of social turmoil. Superficially, we’re living in an increasingly irreligious age. I say superficially because I’m increasingly convinced that American politics, especially on the extremes, have become an occultic religion.
We can trace the thread back to Martin Luther, who in creating a direct line between the individual and God also wiped out institutions of self-transformational wisdom, such as the monastery. Laudable in some ways, detrimental in others.
What filled the void? As John Vervaeke explains, politics, the state, and capitalism. We outsourced our wisdom- and meaning-making, since salvation under Luther was no longer a participatory process, but a matter of God’s “unearned regard.” We’re quite resourceful in how we outsource the fulfillment of our spiritual needs. Trumpism and the radical left simultaneously scratch the spiritual itch and provide people with a sense of belonging. Capitalism, a byproduct of the Protestant work ethic, provides us with a metric for and signal of God’s regard: in this case, dollars earned. Finally, the byproduct of capitalism, consumerism, becomes a potent intoxicant.
Stasis
It’s hard to do nothing in the face of an existential and meaning crisis. But modern American life certainly gives us sufficient ways to tune out or numb out. We might not have meaning or coherence, but we do have work, content, stuff, and fast food.
A mass confusion has arisen from our choosing to stay the same. Vervaeke describes it as a confusion between the being mode and the having mode of existence. The having mode consists of necessities such as food, water, and shelter, all essential for survival. Things that fall into the being mode are psychological needs, such as coherence, significance, and purpose -- all at the heart of the meaning crisis.
The confusion arises when we try to meet being needs with having needs. We confuse fulfillment of the need to be with the need to have. An example: I want to be mature, so I get a relationship. I want to be wise, so I get books on philosophy. American consumerism is an effective being-having shortcut, allowing us to slip into the warm embrace of a Netflix binge while the world is on fire.
Staying the same can also take the form of a doubling down on one’s existing worldview, a tightening of one’s grip. This phenomenon is visible throughout the political spectrum: From Lincoln Project Republicans who harken to the supposed good old days of ‘90s Bush/Regan conservatism and political centrism, which left many out in the cold, to the borderline nihilistic legacy of postmodernism, which continues to fan the culture war flames. While both may have saved us (temporarily) from a descent into a repeat of 20th century history, we need something more to advance. The void of self-transformational wisdom still stares back and through us.
In summary, we face the following in America:
Physical and emotional pain associated with the pandemic, the political climate, and social issues
Psychological distress caused by a breakdown in coherence, significance, and purpose as old meaning-making methods fail, or as people tighten their grips on existing meaning-making methods
This has resulted in:
Reverting: People seeking the historical comforts of religion and tribal belonging by looking to the state as savior and/or joining the political extremes
Stasis: People turning to the having mode to address the needs of the being mode that would otherwise arise in the face of such a crisis, or doubling down on their existing worldviews: Consumerism as a way of numbing out, or grip-tightening on obsolete political and social views
It seems tidy and reasonable to me, but even this is a low-resolution map of the American meaning crisis. A recent Clubhouse session revealed this to me.
Intellectual knowing vs. embodied knowing
The conversation began along the aforementioned lines, but as people outside my immediate social network started to participate, I began to feel and know -- in a more participatory and embodied way -- how race, gender, and socioeconomics factor into the meaning crisis. Intellectually, I know these things. I had not, however, felt them in a live, unstructured arena since my undergraduate days.
It seems obvious to write this now, but reading is no substitute for feeling. It would seem that I have walled off intellectual knowing and emotional/visceral/embodied/participatory knowing. Ironic for a martial artist.
Yes, politics as a religion, tribalism, and being/having confusion are components of the meaning crisis in America. But these amount to intellectual abstractions of real, visceral human experiences. The abstractions form to yet another low-resolution meaning map.
In light of this recent Clubhouse conversation, I’m mentally underscoring that there is no substitute for direct experience, for participatory knowing. The direct experience of the Clubhouse conversation (which admittedly was somewhat indirect) was a pain takeover, an empathic resonance that everyone I spoke to post-conversation also felt.
Once again, my worldview has shifted. I thought I had some grasp on what’s going on in America, and once again, I was wrong, at least partially. All I can do is avoid clinging too tightly to what I know. Do so, and I end up with broken fingers -- and there are a lot of broken fingers in America right now.
So, we’ve covered drawing on the past and staying the same as ways of coping with the meaning crisis. What about looking to the future?
Synthesis and synergy: Recharting the maps
This is perhaps the most difficult option because it’s the one that’s shrouded in the most uncertainty. It’s also the most necessary. It involves some substantial work in that we must remake our maps and improve our ways of making sense of the world.
How do we integrate and transcend the experiences of the past year? What should we do with these lessons? I won’t presume to tell you what to do, but I’ll tell you what I’m doing.
I’m going back out into America. I’m participating in America. Soon the streams here will be teeming with trout. You’ll find me there, freezing, and trying to catch a few fish. In the fall, you’ll find me in the woods, trying to keep the freezer stocked. You’ll find me savoring experience -- especially the experience of fatherhood -- learning, and basking in the warmth and challenge of conversations that can only flow from the depths of embodied community. Most importantly, you’ll find me striving to participate in and build community. Listening -- really listening -- especially to the things that are difficult to hear.
The denouement of the pandemic offers us each an opportunity for new direct experience, but we can’t forget its lessons and its pain. The years ahead are an opportunity to open ourselves to the rawness of being -- especially modes of being, ways of knowing, and ways of feeling that are not our own. It’s an opportunity to do, and it’s an opportunity to not do. It’s an opportunity to sit among the American baggage and feel what emerges, using the experience to rechart the American meaning map.