My Search for Meaning
*last updated on January 23, 2026
My work has always revolved around meaning. Not meaning as something abstract or lofty, but meaning as something deeply human—something we constantly create, inhabit, defend, and suffer over. In Me, Looking for Meaning, I approach people as meaning-makers: beings whose minds are always interpreting, naming, and organizing the world. We do this not because we are foolish or naïve, but because this is how human cognition works. Meaning-making is not a flaw. It is part of our nature.
At the same time, much of what harms us comes from forgetting this. We often treat meanings as if they were natural facts—fixed, immutable, and beyond question—rather than as products of human perception, history, and context. When meanings harden into essences, they become sources of rigidity, conflict, and suffering. A large part of my scholarly work has been an attempt to show this: to reveal meanings as constructed, contingent, and therefore open to examination and change.
This way of thinking has been shaped by Western scholarship that focuses on meaning-making: constructivism, symbolic interactionism, cognitive science. These approaches differ in many ways, but they share a basic insight: humans do not encounter the world “as it is.” We encounter it through concepts, categories, narratives, and interpretations. Our brains constantly impose order on complexity. This capacity allows us to act, communicate, and cooperate—but it also creates blind spots. When meanings operate automatically, without awareness, they can control us rather than serve us.
Over time, I noticed something unexpected. As I was thinking and writing about meaning from this scholarly perspective, I found myself increasingly drawn to Buddhist ideas. Not because Buddhism offered better explanations of meaning, but because it approached the problem from a different angle. In Buddhism, the issue is not whether meanings are human-made. That is largely taken for granted. The deeper problem is our attachment to them—the way we mistake mental constructions for stable essences and then organize our lives around those mistakes.
What struck me was how closely this resonates with modern scientific views. Buddhism rejects the idea of fixed essence. It emphasizes impermanence, conditionality, and the absence of a solid, enduring self. In a different vocabulary, Western science says something similar: the self is not a single, unified entity; perception is mediated; experience is constructed. Both traditions, in their own ways, point to the same conclusion: meanings are necessary, but they are not ultimately real in the way we often assume they are.
For a long time, I held this insight alongside another idea that I had absorbed more quietly. It is often associated with Albert Camus, though I did not consciously think of it in those terms at first: the idea that the universe itself is indifferent. Camus describes absurdity as arising from the confrontation between the human search for meaning and the silent, unresponsive universe. Humans ask questions; the universe does not answer. Meaning-making, from this perspective, becomes a kind of heroic but ultimately futile effort—a rebellion against indifference.
Looking back, I can see traces of this view in my own writing. In my book Media Is Us, I compared the universe to the elephant in the story of the blind men: something vast, unknowable, and unconcerned with our attempts to understand it. I wrote about the brain as a machine for imposing order on chaos. I accepted, more or less, the idea that meaning is something we project onto a reality that does not care.
At some point, this stopped feeling true to me. Not because I suddenly arrived at a clear answer about the nature of the universe, and not because I abandoned the idea that meanings are human-made. That understanding remained intact. What shifted was something subtler: I no longer felt convinced that indifference was the most honest or adequate way to describe reality. The assumption that the universe is simply silent and unconcerned began to feel less like a hard-won insight and more like one interpretive frame among others—useful, perhaps, but not final.
I began to notice that I no longer experienced reality as a neutral backdrop onto which humans merely project meaning. This was not a conclusion I could defend with evidence, and I do not pretend otherwise. It was closer to a form of faith—held lightly, consciously, and without claims to certainty. An experiential shift rather than a proof. The universe did not suddenly reveal itself as meaningful in any clear or articulated way, but it no longer felt empty or exhausted by indifference either. Whatever meaning appeared was still filtered through a human mind—but it no longer felt like meaning standing alone against a void.
This is where spirituality entered my thinking, somewhat unexpectedly. Not as doctrine, and not as religion. I am still wary of how religions, historically, have often turned spirituality into systems of power, control, and exclusion. But spirituality, as I am coming to understand it, is not about belief in fixed truths. It is about orientation. It is about how one stands in relation to uncertainty, impermanence, and not-knowing.
From this perspective, the question is no longer whether meanings are real or illusory. We already know the answer: they are both. They are indispensable illusions—tools we cannot live without, but also sources of suffering when we forget what they are. The more important question is how we relate to this condition. Do we remain trapped in automatic meaning-making, reacting to the world as if our interpretations were facts? Or do we develop awareness of the process itself?
This is where my thinking about meaning connects to power and powerlessness. When meaning-making happens to us, unnoticed and unquestioned, it limits us. We are governed by our interpretations. But when we become aware of how meanings arise—when we learn to pause, examine, and loosen our grip—that same process becomes a source of power. Not power over others, but power in the sense of agency, responsiveness, and ethical attention.
Seen this way, spirituality is not an escape from meaning-making, nor a rejection of scholarship. It is a way of living with full awareness of how meanings function, without reducing reality to indifference or absurdity. It does not promise answers. It does not resolve uncertainty. But it allows for a relationship with the world that is neither naïve belief nor defiant despair.
I do not claim to know what the universe is. I do not claim that it has purpose, intention, or design. What I am trying to describe is more modest than that, and more personal. The search for meaning continues—but it no longer unfolds against the assumption that the universe is fundamentally indifferent. Meaning remains human-made. But the space in which meaning arises no longer feels empty.
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At the same time, much of what harms us comes from forgetting this. We often treat meanings as if they were natural facts—fixed, immutable, and beyond question—rather than as products of human perception, history, and context. When meanings harden into essences, they become sources of rigidity, conflict, and suffering. A large part of my scholarly work has been an attempt to show this: to reveal meanings as constructed, contingent, and therefore open to examination and change.
This way of thinking has been shaped by Western scholarship that focuses on meaning-making: constructivism, symbolic interactionism, cognitive science. These approaches differ in many ways, but they share a basic insight: humans do not encounter the world “as it is.” We encounter it through concepts, categories, narratives, and interpretations. Our brains constantly impose order on complexity. This capacity allows us to act, communicate, and cooperate—but it also creates blind spots. When meanings operate automatically, without awareness, they can control us rather than serve us.
Over time, I noticed something unexpected. As I was thinking and writing about meaning from this scholarly perspective, I found myself increasingly drawn to Buddhist ideas. Not because Buddhism offered better explanations of meaning, but because it approached the problem from a different angle. In Buddhism, the issue is not whether meanings are human-made. That is largely taken for granted. The deeper problem is our attachment to them—the way we mistake mental constructions for stable essences and then organize our lives around those mistakes.
What struck me was how closely this resonates with modern scientific views. Buddhism rejects the idea of fixed essence. It emphasizes impermanence, conditionality, and the absence of a solid, enduring self. In a different vocabulary, Western science says something similar: the self is not a single, unified entity; perception is mediated; experience is constructed. Both traditions, in their own ways, point to the same conclusion: meanings are necessary, but they are not ultimately real in the way we often assume they are.
For a long time, I held this insight alongside another idea that I had absorbed more quietly. It is often associated with Albert Camus, though I did not consciously think of it in those terms at first: the idea that the universe itself is indifferent. Camus describes absurdity as arising from the confrontation between the human search for meaning and the silent, unresponsive universe. Humans ask questions; the universe does not answer. Meaning-making, from this perspective, becomes a kind of heroic but ultimately futile effort—a rebellion against indifference.
Looking back, I can see traces of this view in my own writing. In my book Media Is Us, I compared the universe to the elephant in the story of the blind men: something vast, unknowable, and unconcerned with our attempts to understand it. I wrote about the brain as a machine for imposing order on chaos. I accepted, more or less, the idea that meaning is something we project onto a reality that does not care.
At some point, this stopped feeling true to me. Not because I suddenly arrived at a clear answer about the nature of the universe, and not because I abandoned the idea that meanings are human-made. That understanding remained intact. What shifted was something subtler: I no longer felt convinced that indifference was the most honest or adequate way to describe reality. The assumption that the universe is simply silent and unconcerned began to feel less like a hard-won insight and more like one interpretive frame among others—useful, perhaps, but not final.
I began to notice that I no longer experienced reality as a neutral backdrop onto which humans merely project meaning. This was not a conclusion I could defend with evidence, and I do not pretend otherwise. It was closer to a form of faith—held lightly, consciously, and without claims to certainty. An experiential shift rather than a proof. The universe did not suddenly reveal itself as meaningful in any clear or articulated way, but it no longer felt empty or exhausted by indifference either. Whatever meaning appeared was still filtered through a human mind—but it no longer felt like meaning standing alone against a void.
This is where spirituality entered my thinking, somewhat unexpectedly. Not as doctrine, and not as religion. I am still wary of how religions, historically, have often turned spirituality into systems of power, control, and exclusion. But spirituality, as I am coming to understand it, is not about belief in fixed truths. It is about orientation. It is about how one stands in relation to uncertainty, impermanence, and not-knowing.
From this perspective, the question is no longer whether meanings are real or illusory. We already know the answer: they are both. They are indispensable illusions—tools we cannot live without, but also sources of suffering when we forget what they are. The more important question is how we relate to this condition. Do we remain trapped in automatic meaning-making, reacting to the world as if our interpretations were facts? Or do we develop awareness of the process itself?
This is where my thinking about meaning connects to power and powerlessness. When meaning-making happens to us, unnoticed and unquestioned, it limits us. We are governed by our interpretations. But when we become aware of how meanings arise—when we learn to pause, examine, and loosen our grip—that same process becomes a source of power. Not power over others, but power in the sense of agency, responsiveness, and ethical attention.
Seen this way, spirituality is not an escape from meaning-making, nor a rejection of scholarship. It is a way of living with full awareness of how meanings function, without reducing reality to indifference or absurdity. It does not promise answers. It does not resolve uncertainty. But it allows for a relationship with the world that is neither naïve belief nor defiant despair.
I do not claim to know what the universe is. I do not claim that it has purpose, intention, or design. What I am trying to describe is more modest than that, and more personal. The search for meaning continues—but it no longer unfolds against the assumption that the universe is fundamentally indifferent. Meaning remains human-made. But the space in which meaning arises no longer feels empty.
About this project: Start page
