Part of the fundamental problem we have as biological beings is the gap between our values and the production of meaningful solutions to the novel situations which we encounter. We know what actions are “good” yet the situations we encounter are difficult to discern as to what constitutes the optimal pathway for us to take. Our general mode of being and manner of operating in the world is dependent upon schemas of action that are responsive (adequately or not) to the multitude of situations we encounter in our environment. These situations elicit the manifestation of a schema through our assimilating the situation to the schema, and given that each situation (each present moment) is novel, we then have to accommodate that assimilated schema to meet up with reality in a manner that works for us. If we can intelligently adapt to novel situations, our schema likewise undergoes a modification that can adequately meet the challenge of the moment. Often times these schemas, which are always significant and hold our developed values in them, aren’t adequate, and for those situations, we have the ability to consciously manifest our values, in accordance with what we know, towards the production of a viable solution. In this manner we move through successive steps, albeit miniscule ones, in the manner Jean Piaget describes as genetic epistemological advancement. It is only when we reach an equilibrium between the assimilating and accommodating functions that our operations are adequately able to intelligently adapt to novel situations. This, as a requisite, is dependent on fleshing out the value structure that makes up the framework of the actions that are schematized.

Arising of the Existential question

Existential inquiry arises in every individual once he reaches the intellectual stage of being able to abstractly contemplate the nature of his own Being. This, for most people, begins at around the age of 12-14, and continues throughout life, constantly resurfacing. With the emergence of the problem of our own Being, and our place in the world, we seek for answers. We can find many of these answers in our values, which dictate those schemas which orient us in the world, and can prove of being better or worse at providing the fulfillment we strive after in life. The more effort, time, structure, discipline, and intellect one commits to the organization of one’s life towards a meaningful path will determine the amount of progress he is able to achieve in pursuit of the things he values, and the wellbeing extracted from such pursuits. Environmental factors, genetic disposition, culture, society, education, character disposition, all are relevant factors which contribute to the individual’s pursuit of meaning, and the amount of progress he is able to make.

Necessity of philosophy in evaluation

As always, we must live first, then philosophize. But in order to maximize our potential, in the directions we desire, we must philosophize, and we all do this, to a lesser or greater degree, whether it’s made explicit and regarded as such or not. Not only do we all philosophize, we can be better or worse at doing so, and the results of our philosophy are fleshed out in the experience of our lives, in the manner we live, in our subjective experience, in our relationships, and in how we tackle the present moments arising. We must seek to orient ourselves around a value system which can lead to the most desirable future, implying and necessitating an articulate defining, organizing, and implementing of actions in alignment with what we believe to be most important. Our time management and effort must be in accordance with the system of significance we place upon the values, rather than allowing ourselves to be carried along by the river of desire without receiving the potential wellbeing available to us through psychological integration and meaning optimization.  While many values are inherent, those which we most seek to manifest oftentimes succumb to the temptations of others, unconsciously. The goal here is to philosophically uncover, organize, and optimize our lives towards the pursuance of a more meaningful life.

If Value’s Aren’t Regulated

If our value system goes unregulated, and we remain unaware of its effect on our lives, we run the risk of our lives being hijacked by things which serve to promote societal and biological desires, rather than the individualized desire which fulfills us. The assent to values which are of less importance and significance than those which we consciously can uncover as promoting wellbeing and providing meaning is the error we wish to correct for, for the benefit of our own psyche, and everyone else in our expanding circle of influence.

Given the potentiality of ideological possession, and the ever growing instantiation of ethics corrupting societally provided value structures, and the cultural importance placed upon material gain, our value system is becoming more vulnerable to the effects of powers outside our control, and less effective in providing the meaningful basis for a competent, efficient, creative, and fulfillment providing life. The question we must ask is whether we want our lives to be ruled by tyranny, do we want to be the slaves to our society and to our biology, or do we want to impose our will upon the content of our own lives, and by recognizing and optimizing the content herein, form a life which represents who we truly have the potential to be? Do we want to fulfill the potential we contain at being a competent, moral, beneficial human, or do we want to be swept along on the waves of misfortune produced by external and biological influences?

Conservation of the old

We should seek orientation of that which is available rather than throwing out the old system in its entirety, this problem of shedding off the traditional spiritual underpinnings was stated by Nietzsche as that which led to the nihilism and evil present in the 20th century after the scientific worldview become dominant and, in a causal sense, necessitated the potentiality of the “Death of God”. Novel explanatory conceptualizations of values aren’t impossible, just as novel “creations” aren’t impossible in any other domain, we just have to recognize that as with anything, the new necessarily contains the old, it stems out of it, in evolution and in technology, in morality and in science. The causal link between the datum of experience and potential values we have at our disposal is a link that cannot be sundered. As the value structure necessarily gives rise to what we place an importance on and what we pursue, it is an integral process of the mode of being which underlies all manifestations in our actions and experience.

Bottom Up Understanding of the Value System

One must first identify their value structure as it is built up biologically, in its embodied form, and secondly, in the conscious articulation of how it manifests itself consciously. We have an embodied perceptive system, that is built up from our genetic material upon conception. This perception seeks, from the first moments of an organism’s life, to “digest” and “filter” incoming datum through sensory receptors, which is mediated based upon, in the first case, genetic instruction. The schematic underpinnings that dictate our ability to do so, are encoded with reflexive abilities, and have the “ability” to perceive with the “meaning” of it being valuable to the continuation of the genetic material that instantiated it.

The perceptive ability of our Being is in itself our initial evaluation system, it discerns content in relation to the significance it has to us, and directs our nervous system towards mitigating and responding to stimuli, both external and internal. Two separate mechanisms take place in this initial evaluation of stimuli, on the one hand, our perceptive system is oriented around discerning content in our perceptible environment that has significance for us, which is one manner of saying that everything “naturally” has value to us. If things didn’t have value to us, we wouldn’t focus on them, and content wouldn’t ever be discerned and arise in consciousness. On the other hand, that very perception which selects significant content in our environment for filtration occurs based on our own perceptive systems modification by our value structure.

The system of perception is modified in infanthood, and onward, through its environment, and the causal nature of that which is available to influence us. That which is available to be perceived, is filtered by what the biological system believes would be most optimal to the propagation of the genome, which is the starting point of our values, and generally what they are “subservient” to. Such imperatives hold background significance throughout life. While this is the groundwork of evaluation, in biological imperatives that imply the continuation of the survival machine towards puberty in which the organism can propagate the genetic material, the value and method towards which it achieves inbuilt biological aims is modified by the cultural, environmental, and interpersonal relations of the individual. These effects modify the value structure which modifies perceptions towards that which is useful to react to, and in such reactions, optimize the “wellbeing” or “beneficiality” of response in regard to novel situations.  The biological system that is modified through life in filtrating perceptive data, is integrally tied up with our conscious experience, and its contents enter consciousness.

As we biologically intuit datum which sensory receptors “discriminate” as being useful to perceive, so too does our Being intuit which perceptions arise into conscious awareness, based on the same desire and imperatives which run towards the optimality of the organism. The contents of consciousness are in alignment with these desires, as they are modified by the environment and totality of our Being in relation to what the individual comes to understand, and believe, and intuit, or know, is the optimal aim towards which to guide himself. Whether or not it actually is, is irrelevant. What matters is that one’s values, regardless of conscious recognition or not, guide the individual’s moment to moment conscious experience, as well as his bodily reciprocity to the situation one finds oneself in in the moment. We always are operating under this basic low resolution conception of the value system, arising from the bottom up, from perception to consciousness.

Top Down Directing the Value System

Every moment is necessarily supported by an inherent biological value system, and the contents of consciousness as well as our embodied reaction to the moment are products of it. While the bottom up description explains the initial instantiation of our value system, it does little to aide us from where we’re at in top down influence. We ought to be able to give assent to our values consciously, and consciously direct ourselves towards values and aims which are our own authentic expression. What is important to you? What currently is taking up your time, mental space, and what are you currently actively pursuing? The answers to these questions may never have been made conscious, or we might not know exactly where they currently are at.

There is a concrete difference between what one’s actions show to be valuable to the individual, and what one believes to be valuable. Firstly, we wish to analyze what actually composes the individual’s life, and how it compares to what ought to compose the individual’s life. We must take an honest account of our time, and an honest account of our beliefs about what we desire to be doing, who we desire to be, where in our career we desire to be, where in our environment we desire to be, what kind of skills we wish to improve, what knowledge we would like to obtain, what character traits we would like to embody, and what psychological state we would like to have. In answering these questions as to where we currently are, we can find answers to what our unconsciously acted out belief system denotes as being our current value structure. In answering these questions as to where we would like to be, we can define what our consciously formulated value structure actually is. The gap between what is manifesting as an inherent value pursuit, and what we actually value will determine the difficulty in aligning the two. The goal, broadly speaking, is to bring the two into alignment so that our actions and time spent represents what our consciously formulated value structure is. In uncovering what is important to us, we can create a list of things we value, and in their evaluation, to the best of our ability, discover what it is that would provide us meaning.

Purpose of Uncovering Values

We must seek to uncover the values inherent in our deterministic biological nature, and in discovering their potentialities, consciously decide which we wish to embody and to which degree we wish to pursue their manifestation. The “creation” of values is necessarily a pursuit which is only possible with the addition of experience, and in fact, isn’t actually a creation. It is more a development, a modification, of inherent values imposed upon us through genetic and environmental influences. As far as our values as we find them in the moment, none can be created, but they can be altered through conscious direction towards novel experiences (all experiences). The prioritization, embodiment in actualization, and modification of what we value can be consciously directed. The derivation of meaning and importance allocated to the potentiality of value is what is “in our control”. While the values themselves are inherent, their discovery, and the systematic recalibrating of our actions and Being in alignment with them, or to modify them, is something possible to be directed consciously. The expansion of knowledge and experience exposes us to novel situations, of which we always are judging, and placing a value of importance on. This content of experience is the datum from which we have to work with in informing how to hierarchical order our values. We cannot value that which we do not know, or what hasn’t been integrated into our psyche as something holding value. This process ought to be done in a way which is optimal for you, and everyone else, now, and across time. The optimization process must be recalibrated as additional knowledge and insight into circumstantial navigation and our own nature become uncovered to us. As long as the value is in line with what is important to you, consciously, and is an accurate representation of that importance, then we can continue.

What Matters in Uncovering Our Current Value System

We necessarily find more meaning in the pursuit and attainment of the things which we consciously formulate as being of value rather than in the things which we unconsciously carry out in our daily lives (which still contain meaning and value, but they ought to become subservient to the higher goal). The reward system which manifests itself in pleasure and pride can aide the individual in determining if something is meaningful to them. If you gain a specific type of knowledge, create a specific type of art, make progress in a certain direction, and it feels good to do so, if it fills you with a sense of accomplishment, if it moves your psychological state to one of fulfillment, then it is being flagged through the reward system indicators that it is meaningful to you. That being said, every reward system flooding of the subjective experience doesn’t mean that it is a noble or consciously confirmed meaningful act, it merely can be analyzed in order to determine what consciously can be connected to something you value. If you find pleasure in food, sex, and alcohol, and the reward system floods you with a positive emotion which seeks to reinforce those stimuli, you must consciously analyze if they are in line with your value structure, if not, then they are not to be pursued in a goal oriented fashion towards the goal of a meaningful life.

If the activity is retrospectively analyzed as producing a fulfilling mode of being, as well as being in line with the consciously formulated conception of what your value system ought to be, then you can take that as datum towards something which provides meaning, and can be pursued in a goal oriented way. Pleasure and pain in this regard must be analyzed, in short, with discernment, in determining their potential for long term benefit, as well as to their usefulness and potential benefit for you, the people you care about, and the outward circles of influence with which we all are engrossed in (the chain of causality as it applies to relationships between sentient beings). This extrapolation and analysis can be carried out to a larger or shorter extent, but what is necessary before continuing on is that a number of values must be defined, even if it is rudimentary.

Prioritization Of Values

Once we have a list of values, we must hierarchically organize them in order of importance. This organization is predicated based on what we would spend the most time doing, and what would take precedence over the others in terms of effort. While philosophical articulation and elucidation may be high on my list, it always is superseded by people, in terms of family, friendships, coworkers, and any other human who needs help. In this manner, I’ve consciously chosen the value of compassion for people to supersede my most vehement interests. In this way we must organize our value system, in a way that is practical so as to be employable in our actual lives. The establishment of a hierarchy of values is crucial in future planning for how to organize time, and how to maximize the meaning and wellbeing provided to us by pursuing the values (and their distribution across our days/ lives).

Example of Value System Prioritization

The natural inclination toward hedonistic pursuits may result in overindulgence and a large amount of time loss as well as a decline in health. We may consciously and verbally state that we have a desire and find meaning in philosophical knowledge acquisition, in truth seeking and mental exploration, the pursuit of which would better serve to provide meaning in our lives than that sensual drive which could dominate the psyche. The value of power and dominance may fill the opportunity cost of pursuing competency in a skill we value. We find that our current value structure, that which is ingrained in us through society and our biology, doesn’t always serve to provide the meaning and wellbeing which we have the potential of attaining. We pursue what is less meaningful at the peril of our consciously formulated abstract belief system. We still may value the objects of sensual pleasure, and we can allocate appropriate time in their pursual and enjoyment, as well as continue to value ambition in our careers leading to a rise in our place in the dominance hierarchy, but the differentiation of the values, and assigning an appropriate role to them in our lives is here the mission.

Planning Value Pursuance

With the hierarchical organization of our values in place firmly, yet remaining open to further modification, we can then work out the envisioning of what their carrying out would look like. This is a contemplative visualization of what the embodiment, improvement, or attainment of our values ought to look like. With this in mind, we are better equipped to work towards something, and are able to consciously adapt our mode of being so as to be in line with what that visualized image appears to us to be.

Based on our contemplative image of what the embodiment of our values is, we can plan benchmark goals toward their attainment. These can be concrete material or temporal milestones, or abstract urgencies in which we seek to embody. These goals and aspirations we can separate between benchmark placeholders towards the attainment of a meta-goal, or simply as guidelines in which to follow in the progression towards the attainment of more concrete goals. This applies to character traits, virtue embodiment, career trajectory, familial planning, etc.

Habitualizing Values

We can use our ability to consciously direct ourselves to promote the advancement of values, in the form of reinforcing the actions and thoughts, the phenomena which, as manifestations of underlying modes of being, can be used in a reflexive manner to promote the underlying value. The habitualization is necessary to conscious value instantiation and reinforcement, and thus the transmogrification of our value system to that which we consciously assent to. Habitualization to those consciously assented to values has the negative tendency of reducing values which we consciously perceive as less significant, as less time and concentration is allocated to them, as certain things become more prominent in our lives, others become less. Discipline and conscious direction are used, and in turn, also gain from the positive feedback loop of their increased actualization. This adds to the advancement of our ability to consciously direct our experience toward such experiences which are more meaningful. Of course habitualization, whether consciously or not, is often enacted for other aims, and in pursuit of values which we may mistakenly lend our assent to. Experiential wisdom and conscious attentiveness to the process of change in our values and the mode of being which embodies it will serve to inform the individual whether he is on the right path or not.

The Navigation Problem

We ought to have an established image in mind of a future reality with which we look to pursue, which is in line with our hierarchically organized value system while systematically having definite goals in which to pursue towards the embodiment those values. We can then analyze how best to navigate our lives in the direction of the established system. This implies time management, dedication, distraction and entertainment reduction, effort and discipline. Morality comes into question here, and our morals, like everything else we do, will dictate our experience of life and our effect upon the world. Every decision we make can be better or worse at being “good”, if we take for our standard of “bad” the worst possible state of suffering for everyone, as Sam Harris explains in his novel the Moral landscape. In operating from a moral realist meta-ethical perspective, we hold that our actions can move the dial in one of two directions, and since we find value in our subjective experience, and presumably of those we love, those we come into contact with, and in extreme cases, all humans or sentient beings, it is essential that our morals stem from our consciously deduced evaluation system. As for a minor-ethical theory that is optimal to follow, we find that “Wisdom Ethics”, or moral particularism, is the only system that can account for the vast landscape we encounter in novel situations.  Moral dread and guilt are our guide here, and our value system ought to be optimized to account for the effects our actions have on others, as it does more than impact their wellbeing, but has rational self-interested implications as well.

Moral Shame and Dread

A sense of moral shame, and moral dread, are the twin pillars in Buddhism of morality, and we can apply the concepts to shame and dread in the face of deviation from what is meaningful, so as to fuel us in the right direction. The negative emotion experienced in deviating from the optimal path we have outlined, denotes a flaw in our discipline and drive towards what is meaningful. This shame can be recalled, and transformed into a reminder of what it feels like to experience such negative self-image, and allows us to dread its reoccurrence in the future. In this way we can systematically forge our trait of discipline to be fueled by the negative reinforcing attribute of suffering when deviation occurs. In addition, the reward mechanism in pursuance of our values can be altered and consciously recognized so as to be inspiration for future discipline reinforcement, of a positive kind.

Structuring Time

How we spend our time, and the quality of that time spent, will be an integral factor towards our individual trajectory towards our goals. We can retrospectively analyze our current time usage, on a day by day, or weekly basis, in order to see which areas need to be modified, and which can altogether be cut out, reduced, or changed, to be in line with our newly established value system. The analysis of the current system and formulation of the ideal system will aide us in disciplining ourselves towards a pragmatic pathway and daily framework in which to pursue our values. While rigid order and structure of such a sort can be overwhelming and stagnating to the individual, as stated by an ancient philosopher, live first, then philosophize, we can find a medium between organizing the chaos, as well as instantiating novel conceptions towards the system we established. The discipline it takes to create a structured day, allows us the freedom to pursue what we value. Far from being rigid and entrapping of the individual, such a structured and analyzed time management plan actually enables the individual to cut out periods of the day in which he was pursuing things which he doesn’t value as highly as others and in turn replace them with things he values more.

Now such definite daily scheduling can be done to varying degrees, and is always open to re-evaluation, and to alteration by the ever spontaneously arising trials which we encounter on a regular basis. The general planning of how best we ought to manage our time gives us an idea of how we should spend the day for it to be optimal, the broadness of categories, and the designation in the day for ulterior pursuits, all can be part of the “plan”. An ulterior mode of pursuing goals and of planning for the journey to meaning can be used in a more practical prioritizing method, rather than on a concrete schedule. For example, a time expenditure modeled can be based on prioritizing interests in the hierarchically organized value system, so that each node gets touched upon at least for a short time in the day. Higher values in the system would take precedence over lower ones, and more time would be spent engaging in them. If I was engaged in progressing a lower value in the system, and some insight or issue or object which needs attention arises which is categorized in to a higher value on my list, then I would sacrifice the time in the lower for the higher.

The use of wisdom and insight into the pragmatic actualization of time management allows us to navigate how, and when, we should sacrifice values for each other, and in the ways in which we can compensate for the rectifying of time loss in a certain pursuant. Our moral system combined with the value system, combined with practical wisdom, experiential data, all are important factors towards the prioritizing of our values and the plan or framework we devise in the planning of the journey to a meaningful life. If a meaningful, fulfilling life, one of psychological wellbeing, pride in accomplishment, and beneficiality of our deeds to our own mode of being as well as to those we value, is something important to you, then the difficulty and time spent in creating an optimal path, the discipline required to stay on track, and the suffering inherent in the sacrifice of lesser values for higher values, will be surely worth it.

Instantiating a Consciously Formulated Value System

We can to a greater or lesser degree forge an abstract conception of what an optimal solution to the embodiment of our values are. The pursuing and embodying our value structure in our daily lives is meaningful in itself. The path is itself fulfilling as we are spending time and effort towards that which we most value. As a caveat, the discovery of values, creation of a list which accurately represents our optimal mode of being, and the organization of time and effort, is a difficult process, but when the groundwork is laid, and the pursuit becomes habitualized, the wellbeing supplied by such a process is worth the strain. What is a better way to live, than the way you consciously decide is the best way to live? Necessary to the continued progression in the direction of your values is the constant recalibration, updating, and optimization of the path as well as the goals.

Preservation of Value

As we spend time in embodying our value system, in instantiating it into our daily lives, in pursuing what is meaningful, we necessarily gain experiential data and feedback from the real world which we can use to modify the entire system. This is a constant process, as we gain experience, we gain in wisdom, as we gain in wisdom, how we navigate our lives, and the structure with which we abstractly create in which to navigate it, all are modified and can be improved. We should be disciplined, yet hold ourselves and our plans as fallible, we must remain determined, yet simultaneously never hold ourselves to be infallible. What we pursue, the method we use to pursue it, the knowledge gained and the application of that knowledge, must be constantly evolving, in order to better serve our wellbeing and better represent our true values. The abstract ideal values we contemplate often don’t serve the pragmatic utility we gauged them to, and the plans we make always will encounter room for optimization. This recalibration process is something the individual unconsciously undergoes as he moves through life, but here, being as we are phenomenologically analyzing our experience and existential condition, the progression and concrete conceptualization of such novel insights and experiential practicality of actions and time management can and, in my opinion (for our pursuit and journey to be optimal) be something we formulate consciously.

Care and Concern in Attention

The amount of time and concentration any content exacts from us is in exact relation to the amount of “care” or “concern” it has to the totality of our Being. Any phenomenal state that arises merely signifies its meaning to us, in some fashion or another, and we ought to manage the causal foundation from which it stems if we wish to alter our experience away from it. This can mean pursuance, integration, removal of dissonance, or reframing. One way or another, all content of experience is open to modification, and if it happens to be aversive to us, we ought to put forth effort towards its integration, and this doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be carried out.

One manner of promoting our values is in a “negative” revelatory strategy. This requires analysis of those things which fill our consciousness, with which our attention is more prone to be consumed by, give a semblance of meaning, challenge, and desire by their very nature of our directedness towards them. These positive phenomenal states (not optimistically positive, but rather manifesting) provide a clue as to what we value. Whether it be a memory, a skill, a topic, a person, a saying, a thought or an emotion, if it is constantly arising into conscious awareness, and modifying our Being in accordance with it, it is safe to say that it is something we value, whether it is a consciously deduced value or unconsciously embodied. An undesired mental content that produces a conscious concentration despite our desire to remove it from experience, whether it’s a moment or a mode of being, or an archetypal pattern, is content that has “consumed” or “overtaken” the psyche, and it must be something we haven’t adequately overcome. If something is adequately overcome, then it is stored in the unconscious as the conquered bit of chaos which has become ordered. If something produces enough negative subjective experience in us, it is due to the value of that content being high for us. Its integration leads to the baseline of our development that we have moving forward, and while its temporal modification is still inextricably connected to us, our schematization of it allows us to accommodate novel situations to it, and simultaneously to assimilate the schema to those situations. In other words, it becomes part of our pragmatic toolkit.

Benefit of Dealing with Reoccurring Problems

By analysis of what negatively affects us, we not only progress towards the removal of accumulated problems, but we better equip ourselves, psychologically and on a neuroplasticity level, to be better able to deal with challenges that arise in the future. Thus we should seek to optimize our being towards the ability to deal with the totality of problems, through the progression of a fortified character that can do so, and we do this through the individual “problems”. Problems here are any content of subjective experience that we are aversive to, that create dissatisfaction in us, that aren’t consciously desired. Even a deficiency of a conscious desire can be seen as a problem, the rectification of which would be the overcoming either of the desire itself, or of the fulfillment of the desire. The overcoming of the unconquered and the progressing of character enables us to be wiser in our dealings with any problem in the future, and thus is well worth our time in pursuing.

Hardships in Value Pursuance

The silver lining in the case of a meaningful life, necessarily entails hardships, tribulations, unknowns, and their confrontation and conquering. Such potentialities of misfortune or loss should be clearly visualized, even in the extreme case, so that if they arrive, we can be prepared and have an idea of what it would look like to best handle them. This is encapsulated in the Stoic concept of “momento mori” or “remember death”, in which the visualization of the worst, and the ideal way in which to handle such loss is consciously clearly presented to the individual, so that he can embody the virtues and the mode of being he deems most appropriate towards the handling of such challenges while remaining faithful to the developed belief and value systems which give his life meaning. The strength of will to be supportive of family, rather than to be traumatized and a burden in time of a loss of a loved one, or in sickness and in misfortune, provide the individual and those he cares about the best version of oneself so as to aide in the alleviation of suffering. While this may not be a value inherent to everyone, and this is necessarily making a value judgment which, to me, is real and important, yet may not be uncovered as the optimal path by everyone, but as an example this type of visualization enables the individual to embody that image when or if the worst so comes. The visualization of worst case scenarios enables the individual to be the least hindered from deviation of his value system in the face of adversity, as well as provides him the opportunity for character growth despite great tragedy. Our worst fears, the suffering and the undeserving pain which befalls all of us, can be navigated so as to be a positive and beneficial experience in the progression of moral excellence. Rather than view our challenges in pursuance of our goals as a hindrance, which they are, we can simultaneously view them as stepping stones to greater competency in their navigation.

While on this journey the difficulties and tribulations which we previously forethought of may not be the only difficulties to arise, and more often than not, novel distractions and impediments to our wellbeing will constantly prove to be challenges to us in the progression of our being towards the goals which we establish in line with our value system. Seeing as expected or unexpected trials are inevitable in the pursuit of anything difficult, and what is meaningful is never easy, their emergence and handling is of utmost importance to us.

The most difficult situations are opportunities for the greatest victories in our lives. There is no sense of pride, personal growth, and inner peace, without a necessary struggle to overcome difficulty. The opportunity for virtue grows in the face of adversity. When the going gets tough it is the most difficult to do what is correct, to remain virtuous, to sustain from indulgence or resist the urge to escape from reality and what is honorable, for this reason it is in those very situations which we are afforded the greatest opportunity to overcome, and by doing so to advance our wisdom, virtues, and self-image. The pursuit of goals in accordance with the predefined value system, towards those objects of desire which may include but are not limited to skill improvement, character trait growth, psychological wellbeing, career aspirations, relationship development, all are noble and worthy goals to pursue, and in their progression all require necessary hardships.

Once we have a well-defined value system, and goals have been established with a rationalized pathway towards their attainment, we must voluntarily opt to overcome any difficulty that is a necessary prerequisite toward the achievement of the goals, and any other hindrance which diminishes the progression must be dealt with. There is a necessary distinction between the potential hardships which stand as obstacles towards goals one is not inclined to pursue, and those which are directly in the pathway towards the values which one does value. The pursuit of unnecessary difficulty for the sake of difficulty itself, may be useful towards the development of confidence and discipline, and general ability to withstand pain and suffering, but we are not urged by optimality to pursue such tasks. Here I am speaking of only those obstacles which lie directly in the path towards our pre-established values. The unnecessary waste of time and effort to do something difficult in a field which holds no value to the individual, must be tempered by the individual’s intentions and overall insight into the benefit of such pursuit. If an endeavor is not beneficial and useful, yet it is difficult, the endeavor must surely be shunned and not pursued. This isn’t to say that there isn’t potential for personal growth, just that the aim of goal attainment and the difficulty here described are of those which directly hinder one’s progress to their established goals.

In not becoming aversive to sickness, misfortune, and disagreeable situations, we can develop discipline, temperance, and the equanimity to be better equipped at handling problems in the future. It is the meaningful journey of developing morals in alignment with our values that sustains and provides the meaning in which we are looking for in life.

The skills used and gained in merely confronting difficult challenges with good intentions and a firm resolve itself is enough of a reward for opposing them. While we cannot, as a determined being, choose our fate, we can through knowledge acquisition, habit, discipline, and consistent testing, improve the deterministic precursors which manifest action in a way to conquer fate itself in every moment. The voluntary forging by fire method is undertaken by the man who wishes to improve his character while at the same time prove to himself his character is worthy of being respected. The positive subjective experience felt after attempting to overcome a difficult situation in which we are uncomfortable is naturally produced in any situation which is “foreign” to our currently developed mode of being and subsequent experiences. In other words, the confrontation and voluntary decision to attempt to overcome an unknown or challenging situation, produces an inbuilt biological reward. There is something inherent in us which seeks to discover, to explore, to expand our horizon of knowledge and understanding, and it is made into an object of which we can consciously “desire” by the subjective reinforcement of positive emotion in its acquisition. Whenever we learn something new, adapt to a novel situation, become comfortable in an area of which we previously didn’t know how to handle, whenever we travel and discover new places, gain insight into better ways to live, we always are psychologically rewarded by a positive emotion. This can be explained evolutionarily.

Encountering the Unknown

Our emotional system evolved in such a way to promote survivability and reproduction. Ledoux states that “memory is first and foremost a cellular function that facilitates survival by enabling the past to inform present or future cellular function, whether in a single-cell of multicellular organism. The same is true of much of the rest of our psychological life and its manifestations in our conscious minds.” The expansion of memory, and thus the neuronal circuitry which underlies cognitive capacity, is expanded only in the face of novel situations, which gives us good reason to believe that the brain would develop in such a way to promote the experience of overcoming novel, difficult, unknown, situations. The emotional response system signals a positive emotional state in the achievement of such actions, improving the individuals instinctive drive to pursue such interests in the future. The memory of the emotionally positive state produces by the reward system was evolutionary developed to improve the organisms desire to repeat the action, in an operant conditioned way. Currently, we can consciously recognize this ability and, in self-directed conditioned way, seek to consciously direct our behavior with the “reward” of psychological wellbeing in mind as the outcome of pursuit of the unknown.

Richard Dawkins uncovered that the survival circuit (connections between different neuronal areas of the brain) is employed by modern humans, as well as our ancestors, in the promotion of the genes goal. The “method” to which our genetic material uses in its goal of reproduction and survival is that of employing a survival machine (our bodies) to defend, feed, and work towards the goal of the genetic material. Being that we have the subjective experience of consciously directing the survival machine entails that the greater ability we contain to confront novel situations, and overcome them, the greater chance our genes have in their reproduction and survival. For our ancestors, the expansion of knowledge was directed towards the goal in ways such as environmental adaptability, threat recognition, cooperation within groups, etc. The expansion of territory in the uncovering of unknown grounds, enabled the individual to have cognitive access (whether unconsciously habitualized and reactionary, or conscious, depending on which point in development) to more food and water, shelter and habitational resources within his “known” domain, which increases the opportunity of different choices better suited to different situations. This developed improvement in knowledge of the immediate environment, its predators, and in dealing with other individuals of the same species, contributed to a better ability to navigate life so as to increase the odds of the individual surviving and reproducing. This trait in uncovering the unknown, in knowledge acquisition, and the genetic basis for the ability to learn, in general, would naturally be a trait selected for, as those less equipped mentally would necessarily have less success in navigating life towards the age of reproduction, and their genetic material would be less likely to be passed down.

Dr. Jordan Peterson explains the neuroscientific literature on the subject of exploration of the unknown in his Maps of Meaning lectures in a way which also coincides with the experiential notion we gain by pursuing the unknown. He explains that the desire to explore and the optimization of the psyche in accordance with it has been discovered to be located in the hypothalamus, which, not coincidentally, is the home of the dopaminergic system which serves as producing an experientially perceived pleasurable response to survival related activities such as eating and sex. The relatedness between the stimulation of the reward system and the biological urge to explore are inextricably connected in our hypothalamus, and give sufficient ground in explaining the benefit of physical territorial expansion, which in modern life, can be expanded to the novel exploration of the unknown both psychologically and within different fields of knowledge which are connected to our biological value system, which we here seek to make consciously explicit and to consciously direct ourselves in pursuit of. The reward of meaning pursual is thus adequately expressed in the neuroscientific literature in this way. Thus we have a philosophic, evolutionary, and psychological foundation for which to explain why pursuing challenges is not only pleasurable, in their completion, but also to why it arose in us and how it is beneficial to survival for our ancestors.

An important distinction must here be stated, that the evolutionary system that drove our ancestors to develop these cognitive attributes was directed towards survival, but now, in the current zeitgeist, we have access to the same system and its benefits with the additional stipulation that they can be acquired without the direct pursuit of survival related knowledge. People find pleasure in gaining knowledge in the study of ants, or myremecology, which surely is not in any way beneficial to our genes. The areas in which we can employ our ability to explore and confront difficulty are not limited by those which increase reproducibility of the genome. That being said, our conscious goals have likewise evolved into a myriad of different interests and pursuits, and regardless of our current value system, the basis for growth remains, and is rewarded in the same way in which uncovering distant territories, or new food sources, which worked for our ancestors.

Given the evolutionary benefit of “uncovering the unknown”, “learning”, “desire to explore”, and its subsequent physiological change to the brains relational reasoning, and thus “wisdom”, we can likewise carry on the tradition in a novel way. The acquisition of improved mental capacities, and the expansion of knowledge, evolutionarily, would necessarily entail a greater survivability, but for us, in the modern era, it can entail greater psychological wellbeing for him who is seeking growth in any given area of expertise, or character improvement, or overall wellbeing. The application of diligent striving in pursuit of a value which we have personally developed as being “important” is the necessary “meaning” which can provide us with purpose and thus psychological wellbeing as we move through life, and here we have a scientific basis for why this is so. The philosophical school of existentialism has described many methods of which we might find meaning, but here we have a combined production of evolutionary, psychological, and philosophical factors which denote the reason why pursuit of further growth towards an object with which we value, can, and does, produce the meaning with which we can hold as a mitigating factor in the question of existential dread and mitigates the suffering of existence.

Purpose and its Inextricable Link to Difficulty

The fact that such a system exists within us, rewarding us with positive emotion after attempting and specifically achieving difficult tasks, shows that we are built with a source of purpose that is tied into exploration of the unknown, as well as tied to moral duties. This is both biologically, and socially explainable, and is a major reason why virtue ethics, and the continued effort to improve one’s own character and focus on the greatest virtue one might be able to embody in the moment, is so widely accepted and implemented. This is why the stoics make sense to us, and why people choose to embody stoic philosophy in daily life. There is an intrinsic biological reward for consciously carrying down this path, and in viewing the world from a meaningful perspective expressed in the ability to act virtuous in every moment. We gain psychologically the power and embodiment of the wise old man archetype (Carl Jung), as well as reliving an individualized version of the heroes journey (Joseph Campbell). The hero goes out to enforce order upon chaos, to confront difficulty, for the good of the people. He encounters trials and tribulations, he falls down, he stands up and continues. He faces the ultimate source of tribulation, chaos embodied, which in our case is a difficulty which we do not currently known how to handle. In the persistent conscious decision to overcome, and in the victory over the “dragon”, or that which symbolizes a pressing difficult task, the individual receives the treasure, the gold, the fountain of youth, the immortal elixir, the philosophers stone. In our situation, he progresses in the direction of the area which he wishes to pursue, he gains in virtue, expertise, wisdom, or knowledge in a specific area. The hero then returns the boon to the people, he saves the world, he shares his loot with the broader society, and is hailed as a hero. We take the knowledge, the benefit, the gain acquired through difficulty, and are able to manifest the newly developed benefit in our interactions with others, in a way which is beneficial (if the goal is noble). We utilize our psyche to attempt to overcome unknown. In so doing, we organize the chaos in our lives, and we experience subjectively the greater ability to exert our power and influence on the world.

Phenomenological Analysis

The meaning seeking mode of being itself is something which can be elucidated by a phenomenological analysis, as can the mode that attempts to overcome challenges based upon these values. By understanding these modes of being, we can both understand our own nature, as well as the necessity for us to employ them. When analyzed retrospectively using a phenomenological method, the mode of being which is employed in the pursuit of meaning through opposing difficulty is marked by its intentionality, as is every noesis. The noesis here, we will denote as “difficulty opposition mode of being” which is marked by a noema which is abstractly defined as the conscious recognition of difficulty and conscious volition to confront and overcome it. The noetic characteristics here implies directionality tempered by temporality, in so far as the present moment is characterized by the pasts values directed towards future overcoming. Care or concern is uncovered as being directed upon a content which is valuable enough to be consciously assented to in its significance in overcoming. Therefore, in any matter of meaning pursuance, we ought to be embodying the values that authentically represent ourselves in our temporalized care structure.

In encountering difficulty, and embodying the mode of being which is voluntarily inclined towards its overcoming, we experience a negative emotional response in the perception of the object, but the mode of being modifies the object so it is simultaneously something which we strive toward. This noesis is more readily available the more we experience it, and we can more readily experience it through the pursuit of such difficult objectives, the positive feedback loop between the noema and noesis is strengthened. The more difficult situations we encounter, and in reciprocal fashion confront and oppose, the more the noesis is instantiated as a response to future novel unknown or difficult situations. The benefit of this mode of being is clearly seen in the individual’s reinforced psychological state in encountering difficulties in life, a benefit which necessarily entails an increase in wisdom (the ability to navigate life regardless of the situation). The secondary characteristics influenced by such a mode of being would be psychological confidence in confrontation, discipline in maintaining a value system regardless of external factors, and wellbeing produced by the meaning derived through such pursuits.

Existential Benefits of Meaning Pursuance

As we become more competent and efficient at embodying our values our ability to consciously direct our Being towards that mode of being previously described as “difficulty opposition mode of being” becomes more desired and readily available. The conscious recognition of our own carrying out of difficult tasks creates a psychological influence that lends itself to the dopaminergic strengthening of meaningful actions. As we strive on diligently in conscious pursuance of our values, we become the person we had the potential of becoming.

Of course this whole structure of biological imperative, moral imperative, will to overcome, benefit of overcoming suffering and difficulty, the meaning inherit in all these claims that arises from the nature of our being, the nature of the universe, is arising within a universe that ultimately that has no meaning in itself. It is only due to our being humans, due to us arising as beings that have the biological inclination to transform our experience into one in which meaning exists explicitly for us, albeit for the transient lengths of our short lives, that enables us to uncover the meaning which we always contained, and continue to contain as a potentiality. The meaning created in this meaningless framework truly does matter, yet only to us, as the experience of pleasure and pain in sentient beings is the necessary precondition for meaning and morality. The modification of our subjective experience through the pursuit of overcoming difficulty is one that isn’t a zero sum, we have more to gain from it than to lose. The time, effort, diligence, in pursuit of a value which is important to us, fills us with meaning, and entices us to strive on through this life filled with the slangs and arrows of misfortune.