Incorporating Meaning is essential to the learning of any subject.

Readership: All; Men;
Theme: Awareness and Introspection; Rationality;
Length: 950 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Intro

A reader asked me to further define the concept of “Meaning”.

He wrote,

“Over the last few years, I’m seeing a lot of authors and content creators make reference to the idea of “Meaning”.

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I guess Jordan Peterson was the first to discuss this, or at least, he pushed it into mainstream awareness a few years ago.  Since then, I’ve seen it mentioned more and more, and a lot of their arguments are built around this concept.  But it’s still not clear to me exactly what it means.  I read your posts on the search for Meaning, and how it relates to Nihilism, and I thought maybe you could define this more clearly for me: What is the meaning of “Meaning”?

I know it sounds like a weird question.  But I really appreciate how you dive into the deeper concepts behind the meanings of words.

Thanks.

Being a professional educator, I’ll describe this concept as it is understood within the fields of Education, Learning, and Psychology.  I’m sure it has further nuances in the Social Sciences, but this should be enough to aid the reader’s understanding.

What is Meaning?

In essence, Meaning is the salient emotional awareness that is attached to the subject at hand.

More clinically, Meaning is the particular importance that an individual places on a subject, or certain aspects of the subject peculiar to the individual, that make the subject real, relatable, and useful to one’s understanding of the subject.

Meaning is affected by and/or induced by…

  • Beliefs
  • Desires
  • Motivations
  • Personal Values
  • Cognitive Biases
  • Past Experiences
  • Level of Ability and Skill

Now, this simple definition of “Meaning” is NOT sufficient to convey the full meaning of the concept of “Meaning”.  The remainder of this essay explains how this works through the lens of education and learning.

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The Difficulties of Learning

Many of the difficulties in learning a new subject are not inherent in or necessitated by the subject itself, but arise from the implicit challenges within a learner’s overall analysis, absorption, and exercise of the subject that is learned.

The most basic and obvious difficulty is that learning how to think properly about a subject requires diligent effort, study, time, and regular practice of the skills thereof.  The task of doing so requires self-discipline and is challenging, inconvenient, time-consuming, and even onerous to some.

A second difficulty is that learners will usually approach a new subject with some mental preconceptions and/or emotional attachments to certain words or ideas, which hinders them from evaluating the topic clearly and objectively, and from obtaining a precise inventory of the subject. IOW, they have already preassigned Meaning to the subject, and are then unable to attach a new or different Meaning. In the Manosphere, we call this Solipsism.

A third problem (related to the second) surrounding learning is that most people are not incisively critical of the information being presented to them, and are not capable of absorbing the material and using it as intended without extensive practice.

A fourth, more basic problem in teaching is the student’s inability to properly utilize the subject in a constructive way.

Every other question is a matter of how people interpret the subject.   The fact that people misconstrue or import inappropriate Meaning onto the subject is a problem of cultural lenses, personal values, and how the subject might be explained, interpreted, or understood in biased or loaded terms.

While these distractions may be inconducive to the learning and mastery of the subject, all these factors contribute to one’s perceived “Meaning” of the subject.

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Why is Formal Education Necessary?

A useful “Meaning” that is unique to one’s exposure to a subject is only found through applied purpose, human interaction, and/or a practical application.  Students won’t “Get It” until they face a situation in which they must recall and utilize the knowledge to solve a problem.

An educational social setting (such as a college education, co-op employment, a conference, an interactive classroom, or a laboratory) provides a venue in which a learner can find identity, discover Meaning, and learn how to utilize the subject in a personalized and Meaningful manner. Without this aspect, the knowledge cannot be absorbed and is merely information that will soon be forgotten.

In practical terms, this is why attending a University is necessary for a proper education, compared to book study or taking online courses.  It is not so much the attention given to the subject studied, but the atmosphere, the exposure to and interaction with the experts, learning how they think and how they do things, their various approaches to their areas of expertise, and their nuanced appreciation of that knowledge.  It is that intangible aspect of the field profession that is Caught, NOT Taught.

This is exactly why discipline and a structure of authority must be maintained in a learning environment, one which the learner can conform to and draw Meaning from, by faith.

This is also why a University education is valued much more highly than taking online classes.  It is because a University experience imparts an implicitly applied Meaning that cannot be obtained otherwise.

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Conclusions

To answer the reader’s question more concisely,

“Meaning” is the emotional awareness, often coupled with individual purpose, that is attached to the subject at hand.

“Meaning” is only understood through one’s personal emotional awareness, coupled with a cognitive intake of a subject.

“Meaning” must necessarily arise from one’s participation with an actual event, rather than fantasy or false notions.

These processes are necessary for authentic learning to occur. This is why we can never escape the task of applying ‘Meaning’, as troublesome as it may be.

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