Hofstader explains how meaning arises from meaningless elements, through a process of recursion and self reference, in the book Godel Escher Bach- an extraordinary work that I must confess I only finished by reading through large sections that I did not understand, and could not work into the Whole of his idea. Too much algebra for me. But the basic gist is that we generate meaning, within ourselves, and it is a natural process of nature- consciousness itself, a natural process of nature (obviously, but-) I often feel like consciousness is a separate thing FROM nature, an entity in a spiritual sort of realm, removed from this earthly plane yet tethered to it somehow.
The knowledge that it IS natural, and an obvious part of THIS world here, is…disenchanting. I find most knowledge to be disenchanting, ultimately. Most Truth seems to lean more towards the Lovecraftian Horror genre than the Righteous Truth, synonymous with Light, synonymous with God, genre of the Abrahamic culture from which I self constructed a person.
Meaning is born in people by the things that recur in their lives, and reference them intrinsically. But it can also spread to others- a phenomenon that has boggled me for many years. A person can acquire meaning for something- an object, a symbol, an idea, whatever- and another person can be infected by meaning for the same object, by way of…something. Love, empathy perhaps. The people that mean something to us- what matters to them, ends up mattering to us. For me, the things that matter to people often end up mattering more to me than them, even though it’s through them that I acquired the meaning in the first place.
If you’ve ever loved someone who had a dream, and worked with them to see that dream fulfilled, and then over the course of time the dream dies off, or becomes outgrown by the other person while you delusionally cling to the idea of working towards it, realizing last of all that you’re the only person who still cares, you know what I mean.
It’s heartbreaking to witness. It makes you want to both never involve yourself in the tender painful beauties of other people’s innocent inner children, and also protect and nurture and prop up all of the ones you must suffer beyond the scope of personal choice. Caring about people is painful and costly, and ultimately fuels a paradox of not caring about them at all, at the same time.
Hofstadter talks a lot about paradoxes, their inherently cyclical nature seems to be a natural energy source for the cosmos- like little mini ideological (and often physical) spinning reactors. “The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence is false.” I feel like there is something to being empathetic in a genuine sense, with the capacity to love and love deeply in a genuine sense, with an equally deep misanthropy, often for the very same people (randos).
The knowledge that nobody cares about anyone, in a social system, except for themselves, is disenchanting. The people who pretend to care for others the most are the most obnoxious. I often fit this bill. Since the only value anyone ever finds in anyone is what that person makes them feel about themselves. The universality of this is condemning. It means that everyone you ever talk to, friends, family, acquaintances- none of them care about you or your perspective one iota. None of them have any need or interest in knowing who you are independent of how it might reflect on them.
No one will construct an objectively thorough and accurate construct of who you are in their own minds. Everyone will shape you into something that fits enough with what you project, but more importantly with what the person observing you needs you to be. We exist as a million similar but different strawmen in the minds and memories of our peers, almost never who we really are.
Lovers are a different story. Special, sometimes. Sometimes, more of the same.
Another sort of paradox for another day perhaps.
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