“To find yourself, you first need to decide if at
(Arthur Brooks, “Three Paths Toward the Meaning of Life, The Atlantic, 11/2/23)
your core you are a discovery theorist or a
creation theorist: whether your essence already
exists, but you need to discover and understand
it — or whether it has yet to come into existence
and you need to create it through your choices,
beliefs and actions.”
“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
(benjaminikuta, Reddit.com, 2016)
Really sounds like Hitchhikers.”
For those of you who have been paying particularly close attention to my blog
(I suspect that there are at least three or four of you), you’ll recall that just one month ago I published an essay (“What’s It All About, Alfie?”) that dealt with the meaning of life. It, of course, in my usual, inimitable fashion, delivered the final word on the topic. I’m certainly exaggerating a bit here, but I did give you quite a lot to think about, amirite? Not to blow my own horn (toot, toot), but I really thought I had said all I wanted to say on the matter.
However, what normally seems to happen for me is that when I’m working on a particular topic or area of interest, additional information about it seems to keep coming to the surface and finding me. One of the items in particular that found me just a few days ago was an article in The Atlantic by columnist Arthur Brooks (“Three Paths Toward the Meaning of Life.”) As I began to read the piece, I realized that while I had dealt with the meaning of life from one perspective, perhaps there were other justifiable ways to approach it as well.
Essentially my goal in the last essay was to offer up a variety of ways that we could look at life’s meaning and what it might mean to each of us. There were many offerings. Was the true meaning of life:
•. Helping and caring about others?
•. Improving things for future generations, leaving the world a better place?
•. Just being alive?
•. Whatever you make of yourself?
•. No meaning but what you create?
•. Not one meaning for all, but a personal meaning for each of us?• Your destiny, different for each individual?
Now, in this wonderful article by Brooks, he proposes that the meaning of life is basically whatever your “essence” is: “The inner ‘you-ness’ of you — what makes you you. What Aristotle defined as ‘the what it was to be.’”
Among other subjects, Brooks has written on and has some familiarity with business topics. As an analogy to his discussion of life’s meaning, he notes that:
“At business schools, scholars of entrepreneurship generally follow one of two basic theories of how enterprises start. The first, called the discovery
theory, holds that the universe is filled with opportunities, and that entrepreneurs are
the ones who discover and exploit them. The
second is called the creation theory, and holds
that opportunities are created by the actions of
the entrepreneurs themselves. So either a
pocket-sized computer always existed in theory
and Steve Jobs discovered it and called it the
iPhone, or Apple’s development-and-
experimentation process was what created it.”(Brooks)
So, if we follow that analogy, the author suggests that to identify your essence you have to come to a decision about the approach you take in “finding yourself.” Exactly who are you, what does your life mean and what are you supposed to do with it? If you are of the belief, or at least leaning in that direction, that a person’s essence precedes a person’s existence, then religion might be a way to “discover” your essence. Many faiths feel that your essence is pre-ordained and your life’s work is to discern it, embrace it and accept it. In addition to religion, evolutionary psychology is another way to get there.
Now, you may feel that your existence precedes your essence, and that first you are a living, breathing person, and then you need to create your essence. To support this approach, Brooks quotes Sartre who said: “We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.” Even the great American essayist and philosopher Ralph Emerson began his most famous essay, “Self Reliance,” with: “Do not seek anything outside of the self.” (Brooks)
I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to decide if you’re a discovery theorist or a creation theorist, when it comes to determining a clear sense of your “true self” — as well as the meaning of your life. Going back once more to my recent essay (“What’s It All About, Alfie?”), two of the introductory quotes from that piece seem to support the idea that our existence comes first and then we create our own essence:
“Whatever we are, whatever we make of
(Philip Appleman)
ourselves, is all we have — and that, in its
profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.”
“A wise man was asked: ‘What is the meaning
Unknown)
of life?’ He replied: ‘Life itself has no meaning.
Life is an opportunity to create meaning.’ ”
For me, I come down strongly on the idea of the discovery theorists. I’ve always felt that our “you-ness” has been pre-ordained. That we are who we are from — if not before — the moment our life begins. I’ll conclude and end with a quote from an essay I published a year ago that is consistent with the discovery approach (“Random Thoughts, Deep and Otherwise…”). My feeling is that certain key fields of knowledge and information in life exist, and have existed, independent of — and not reliant upon — the invention or creation of man:
“I have long believed when it comes to disciplines
such as mathematics, the sciences and music, that
they have always existed somewhere in the ether. Suspended, independently and primordially, just waiting to be ‘plucked’ by a resourceful (or lucky ) human being.” (Fasano)
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Resonance 