(September 24, 2016 at 2:55 pm)InquiringMind Wrote:(September 24, 2016 at 2:10 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Of course, you'll have to define "meaning" for yourself in a cogent form. The way you're using it here makes me think you don't understand what it is for yourself, what with the scoffing tone and all.
It's possibly true that here I'm treating "meaning" as a commodity, and that I'm speaking of meaning using economic language, as if it could acquired, bought, and sold. But is this really unjustified given our zeitgeist, which largely uses economic models to describe human life? Everything from relationships and sex to religion and politics is spoken of in terms of "costs and benefits" and "supply and demand." In a world where behavioral economics is the "cutting-edge" model for explaining why people do what they do, is it really wrong to speak of maximizing my sense of meaning in life, and to compare whether I have more meaning than other people do?
I was speaking more to the way you slather "meaning" willy-nilly in your OP to things that don't necessarily have, or need, meaning.
It seems to me to be a form of equivocation.
Life can be meaningful without applying that standard to every tiny facet of it, I think.
