what's the meaning of life? jw

Feednet is a quarterly-ish news roundup on technology, community organizing. Read old versions here.

Notes on Feednet: the meaning of life?

Hello — Hope you are feeling less ragged this week.   I have been spending a lot of time thinking about cycles — cycles of narrative, cycles of social change. How things that felt totally out of the realm of possibility a week ago even are now not just possible, but reality.   Which brings me to a question that I’ve been thinking about since I asked everybody about their favorite personal narrative TV — what meaning is. And, you know… I guess that’s the big question throughout the milennia.   Ernestina’s reading a book about the Salem Witch Trials where the author describes Puritans as consumed by ”the search for meaning — which meant everything was divine, driving flamboyant individual sin.” (Same!) In spite of the infinite inquiry into this topic throughout millennia, as a child raised by atheist social workers all of my textual guidance comes from social work, for better or worse.   David Kessler, one of the grad students that worked w Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in identifying and establishing stages of grief, wrote a book right before the pandemic started, finding meaning: in it, he talks about his own struggle over the years to grapple with the cyclical nature of grief. He shares a seventh stage — making meaning from the experience.   A weird reversal with the same conclusion, also based in grief, is from mortician Caitlin Doughty, in her book From Here to Eternity. She writes that action — rituals, tasks, even chores — after tragedy are what create purpose, integral to finding meaning: “A sense of purpose helps the mourner grieve. Grieving helps the mourner begin to heal.”  So the first thing that feels possible to know about what meaning is, is that it’s self created, something each person (or collective, movement) does for themselves. that feels real right now, with a wave of prison abolition scaling to a new level + more people than ever before, using the tenets established by long time black women organizers to (hopefully!) define abolition looks like in their own lives.  The idea of self created meaning — takes me back to fiction, from Brave New World to The Stranger. “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.”   What a fun DIY project.   Next time: why are instagram wellness influencers obsessed with Joseph Campbell?   - H  PS — if you haven’t seen 8 to abolition and you’re interested in what prison abolition is or talking to more people about it, check it out.  ** why did so many people I’ve talked to read the stranger in high school? Maybe something was up in 2006 to 2009 post Iraq War Pre recession. Or my sample is disproportionately nerdy + existential (both sound true).